Page 54 of The Nymph King

But he growled back, pressing his mouth harder, pushing his tongue against the seam of her lips.

The tension snapped, and she let him in, kissing him back with equal ferocity—a collision of anger and desperation that offered no resolution, only heat.

The Niflheim king dragged his hand up from her waist to frame her face. “I’ve missed you,” he breathed, his voice rough. “Gods, you’re still so beautiful even if you smell like him.”

His words cut through the intoxicating haze like a blade.

Imani broke the kiss. She tore herself from him with a ragged breath, her focus snapping into place with a bang. Panting, she pulled further away, refusing to let this surge of chemistry decide for her.

Without hesitation, she raised the Drasil again. Magic surged, crystalline energy slicing through the room’s shadows. She directed the power forward, and the air split with a violent tear, revealing a dark, waiting doorway between dimensions.

Kiran reacted with lethal speed, clamping a hand around her wrist as the doorway tore open. His grip was iron, trying to wrench her away from the tear and back against his chest.

“No, you don’t. Not again,” he snarled.

The struggle was brutal and brief. Their magic collided in the cramped space. His was raw and desperate, hers disciplined and relentless. He fought for every inch, but she drove forward, forcing him back, step by agonizing step, until the doorway’s vacuum caught him. With one final, vicious shove, she sent him stumbling through the threshold. His fingers slipped from her skin, and the gate sealed with a deafening crack, leaving no room to reverse.

Again, silence reigned as Imani fell back against the wall with a gasp. Her pulse pounded in her ears as she glanced around at the empty space where he’d just been, afraid he might still be there.

He wasn’t there, but Kiran would come back. Perhaps not tonight and certainly not through the same route, but he would keep looking for another way to reach her.

Since reaching Vathis, and especially in the few days since Ellisar’s return, one crisis after another had pushed Kiran toward the edges of her attention. Tanyl. Lochheim. The Crown. Her claim. She had never forgotten what Kiran was capable of, but for several days she had been allowed to think about dangers that did not begin and end with him.

Finding him inside her bedroom had corrected that illusion.

As her breathing slowed, the larger picture formed in her mind: Ellisar, Tanyl, Kiran. Separate pressures, intersecting agendas, all converging on the same point. This had never been a single conflict between her and one adversary. Reacting, including adjusting and countering, was no longer enough. The pattern was too vast, the players too powerful. If she wanted to survive them, she needed more people on her side.

Allies.

Imani looked toward the massive bookshelves lining the stone wall, her mind narrowing to a knife’s edge. Rulers of this realm had to have recorded how power was shared, contested, and controlled. She moved toward the leather-bound histories.

Knowing the rules wasn’t enough anymore. With three powerful witches vying for her power, she had to learn to rig the game in her favor.

CHAPTER 15

Morning in Vathis carried none of the previous night’s celebratory looseness. By the time Imani stepped into the corridors, the palace had already reset itself into a noticeable rhythm. Servants worked with silent efficiency, and guards stood back at their posts, neatly folding away any reprieve the party had afforded them.

She moved toward the library at a steady pace. Her route was clear but drew constant attention, the court’s watchful eye heavy even in the early morning. The atmosphere was calmer now, yet still uneasy, with a persistent tension in the air.

As she walked, Imani instinctively noticed every shift around her without looking. Guards straightened slightly sooner; servants subtly pressed against walls before she arrived; conversations paused as she walked by. The watchfulness was obvious, but it no longer surprised her. She anticipated the deference and the quiet calculations behind lowered gazes. Because she knew it was coming, she navigated through it confidently, allowing the atmosphere to follow her rather than define her. She saw being observed as a tool, and she planned to use it.

Today, she would find answers. Guesswork wasn’t enough anymore. Now, she needed a foundation for her decisions.

No one else occupied the library this early. Its air held a profound peace. Shelves rose in immaculate, ordered rows, leaving nothing to chance. Ellisar didn’t display his power here; he preserved it in ink and record rather than in spectacle. Imani had never been much of a scholar, but when something caught her attention, it held her fast.

Narrow ladders ran along brass rails beneath the highest shelves, while carved wooden labels divided the collections by century, magical discipline, and Norn territory. Along one wall, glass-fronted cabinets held brittle scrolls and bundles of correspondence whose edges had yellowed with age.

The librarian appeared before Imani had taken more than a few steps inside, moving with a certainty that suggested she had been waiting. She was an older Norn woman, her silver-streaked hair pulled back neatly from a face that held more observation than softness. Her eyes settled on Imani without emotion, and she inclined her head in a measured, genuine greeting, as if she understood exactly who stood before her.

“I was wondering when you’d come by. You have your mother’s posture,” she said, stating a fact rather than offering praise. “And your father’s way of looking at a room, as if it’s already told you a secret.”

Imani nearly gasped but managed a delicate swallow instead, masking her surprise. The past pressed into the present, threading itself through the power she now carried. Disliking the sudden ambush of memory, Imani narrowed her eyes and gave a curt nod, refusing to engage with the sentiment despite her curiosity.

“I need everything you have on wandlore,” Imani stated. “Specifically, the Drasil.”

Her wandlore brand warmed faintly beneath her skin as she looked across the shelves. Norn elves were the only Mesial breed the Fabric marked for wandlore, a distinction their people had spent generations turning into responsibility. Wandlore witches recorded what they learned—woods, makers, binding methods, failures, anomalies—because knowledge that died with one witch could disappear from the craft entirely.

That tradition made Norn archives different from ordinary magical libraries. Vathis had preserved centuries of wandlore records other territories had never thought to keep.