Her fortress was no palace. It was a harvest nest, messy and cruel.
Ten wooden tables stretched in rows, each holding a living host where mortals were bound so tightly their bones seemed to crack beneath the ropes.
Some had no eyes, only black pits staring into nothing. Some had little flesh left clinging to their frames. Only breath, faint and rattling.
And none bled red.
What seeped from their veins was black and slick, dripping into bowls like poison drawn from a spring.
The smug delight slipped away when Isolde’s expression shifted. Concern shadowed her brow as one of her witches uncorked a vial, its liquid glowing milky blue in the dim.
A drop was tipped between a man’s lips and his body convulsed, head shaking side to side in sluggish refusal.
Then another drop. Another.
Each shake of his head getting weaker and less.
Ronan stepped closer, looming over him, his frame swallowing what little light still clung to the cavern ceiling.
The man blinked, then begged. Not for life, but for death. For clemency. For release from this torment.
Behind him, Isolde said nothing. Only watched, waiting to see which mask he’d wear. Would he end the mortal and grant mercy? Or stand aside, obedient to her hand?
He understood the game well enough. And flames curse him, he couldn’t even fault her. He wouldn’t trust himself either.
“Is this,” Ronan inhaled, “what the precious blood I’ve reaped for you has been for?”
The man’s eyes dimmed at that. At the truth that Ronan was not his savior.
“I can’t seem to get it quite right.” Isolde snapped her fingers, summoning another witch. “It must be the dosage.” The scrape of stone on stone resounded as a slab was dragged open along the ground, revealing a hidden, circular hole beneath. “I’ll need another batch quite soon,” she mused. “I’m nearly down to my last.”
Ronan swallowed, jaw locking tight. It was hard to look at. Harder to accept the blood on his own hands. Still, his focus fell, because it always did.
The last Kaida he had brought stared up at him. Immobile and small, its eyes blinking rapidly. Too off and uneven.
He avoided eye contact, as it made no sound, no movement at all, while the stone slid back into place above, sealing it away.
Fury curdled in his chest as he turned, storming up the spiral stairs, needing distance. Needing to be away from her.
But she followed, her footsteps as light as deceit. When they reached the top, he spun, smoke ripping from his body as he seized Isolde, slamming her into the wall hard enough for stone to crack.
“If any of what I just witnessed ends up in Ryuu,” veins rose along his forearms, his neck, his forehead, “I will bathe in the blood you tried to drip down my throat after I tear you to fucking pieces.”
Her smile came all too knowing as she said, “You would make a marvelous king.” As if shedding old skin, she peeled herself from the wall, gliding toward her throne of bones, a hand snapping in dismissal. “Get out.”
Ronan didn’t bow or even look back. Not at what he had done. Not at what he had allowed. And not at what he had let himself become.
But as he stalked through her lair, the sickness of it followed him. The faces. The cries. The Kaida’s eyes fluttering like a dying flame.
This was the necessary work he had chosen. The inevitable bargain he had struck. So why did it feel like it was gutting him out from the inside?
He told himself it didn’t matter. That he couldn’t care. That power didn’t grieve the ruins it left behind. It only learned to live with the cost.
The wind on the Isle was warmer than expected, its salted breath rolling in from the sea, brushing against his face like a sigh.
Ronan had found himself here often lately. The place reminded him of home, if Ryuu had been forged from stars and clouds instead of stone and fire.
Though his wings didn’t belong in a palace crowned in white.
