Page 122 of The Nymph King

Kiran’s hand lifted to rest against the dragon’s neck, fingers pressing into the line of its scales as he stroked it in slow passes. His attention never left Imani, his mismatched eyes holding hers the entire time, burning through the distance between them with an intensity that refused to release her.

The bond answered it again, stronger this time, and the thought hit her before she could stop it—as long as they lived, she would never be free of him.

It comforted and frightened her in equal measure.

She moved ahead of the others, the group parting around her as his attention locked onto her. Emotion flashed behind his green eye—desire first, unhidden, then a deeper and more conflicted emotion rising beneath it. Imani wished she could read his mind.

She put her hand on her hip. “You behaving would be the more alarming development.”

He rose smoothly and walked to her in a few strides. “Even now, you step forward as if you’re mine,” he murmured, with an edge that cut straight through Imani.

“You say that like you’ve ever been able to keep anything that matters,” she sneered.

“I kept you longer than anyone else ever could,” he said, grin widening. “Long enough for you to learn exactly what you’re capable of.”

Her face remained blank, but the bond in her chest twisted.

“You call it betrayal,” he continued, wild eyes still locked on hers, “but you didn’t run from me, Imani. You became something worse.”

A pause. Then softer⁠—

“You became a queen who makes the same choices I do.”

Silence pressed in around them, but Imani’s heart raged against her ribs at the insult, drowning out the rest of the room. Still, Imani ignored it as a slow smile pulled at her mouth. She tilted her head toward the entrance, keeping her eyes on Kiran as a colder feeling took hold.

“Now,” she said loudly, the command brimming with satisfaction as she stood there, unflinching, already knowing exactly what it would do to him.

A shadow at the entrance drew every eye as Saevel stepped fully into the chamber, his massive frame filling the threshold. The obsidian crown jutted from his skull, marking him in a way no one could deny. He advanced a single step, eyes sweeping the room before he pointed to the throne.

“You kneel to a lie,” he said, voice booming in the chamber. “Your king stands before you—and the man on the Throne is a fraud.”

Saevel advanced, dark hair falling around his face, while Kiran stood leaner at the throne with short dark hair, one green eye and one black, his pale bone wand loose in his hand. The same jagged obsidian crown gleamed on both their heads.

Competing voices echoed through the chamber as eyes landed on the black obsidian crown jutting from Saevel’s skull. Heads turned, bodies shuffled, and the word ‘king’ circulated in fragments, disbelief transforming into certainty.

The difference between the brothers was suddenly impossible for Imani to ignore. Saevel’s crown had formed from the same ancient authority that recognized him as Niflheim’s true king. Kiran’s existed only because he kept feeding flesh magic into a glamour convincing enough to imitate what the realm had never actually given him.

Her mouth gaped. Like Saevel’s crown, Meira’s had likely formed naturally too.

Imani’s had probably not.

She had stolen Meira’s Divination magic years ago, and the theft had created a bond neither of them understood. When the Crown of Life finally chose Meira, that bond had carried the magic backward and reproduced it through Imani as well. Her crown was real magic, not a glamour like Kiran’s, but it had never meant the realm had chosen two queens. Meira had been the true queen all along. Imani possessed the crown only because their linked magic had duplicated what belonged first to her sister.

Sickness rose in her belly, but she closed her lips into a hard line.

Kiran’s pointed glance silenced the gathering, restoring quiet. Then air left him in a slow exhale, smoke spilling from his mouth and curling upward.

The dragon lifted its head, muscles tensing, claws scraping stone as it adjusted its stance. Torches along the walls flickered violently, flames bending and snapping as the pressure in the room surged and dropped unevenly. Several High Sentinels rose to their feet without realizing it, while others stepped back as if distance could protect them from what was unfolding between the brothers and the Essenheim queen.

The Throne’s magic wavered, its influence no longer singular, its weight splitting between two forces now occupying the same space.

Kiran opened his arms wide and let a manic smirk spread across his face. He kept his wand held between the fingers of his left hand, taking the center before the room could fully turn against him.

“This is not your king,” he shouted, pointing at Saevel. “What you see is a man dragged from obscurity, broken and unstable, dressed in symbols he no longer has the strength to bear.” He cocked his head at his brother. “So this was your plan?” he taunted. “A disruption meant to splinter this summit before it could begin. And she”—his gaze cut briefly toward Imani—“is the one who brought my brother to our door.”

A wave of unease moved the chamber as Saevel rounded on Kiran. His sheer presence and magic signature captivated attention. Imani remembered when she first felt that signature… and remembered thinking Kiran’s was stronger. She stole a glance at the now-alert dragon, and doubt crept into the back of her mind.

What have I done?