Page 89 of The Nymph King

Flames devoured the spell, flaring a violent, unnatural green. Then, it seized her before she could brace herself. The heat surged, the room warped, and then it yanked her forward—faster, rougher than before, as if the magic had learned her taste and stripped away all pretense of gentleness.

That was wrong, she thought, rubbing her brow.

The first casting had kept distance between her and whatever the spell chose to show her. This one did not. Imani repeated the same sequence, used the same question, and followed the spell exactly as she remembered.

Nothing she had done should have changed the result this drastically, but she had no time to understand why, because a sickening lurch pitched her stomach, and then her lungs filled with air she hadn’t commanded.

She looked down.

These are not my hands.

Dark hair dusted the knuckles, and faint bloodstains colored the fingertips.

Imani tried to look up but couldn’t. Finally, her head moved, and she took in the space. She tried to gasp, but the body gave her no voice.

She knew this room. She knew the scent of these sheets.

Imani wasn’t watching Kiran like last time. She was inside him. No pane of magical glass separated the observer from the observed. But when Imani tried to lift his head, nothing happened. She tried again, pushing uselessly against the impulse to move, but Kiran’s body remained exactly where he had left it. She could not turn his face, raise a hand, force a word through his mouth, or warn him that she was there. His limbs were hers to feel, but never hers to command. His breathing reached her as sensation, each inhale and exhale dictated by him.

She was in his mind without possessing any part of him. An observer trapped behind his senses.

The dim light and cold stone walls of his chamber filtered directly through his senses. A metallic tang of drying blood mingled with the earthy rot of crushed herbs scattered across the floor.

Eventually, Imani discerned that Kiran lay sprawled across the bed, stripped of his usual coiled tension, his posture slack and unguarded. She could see through his half-lidded eyes and felt his mouth curve into a languid, drug-heavy smile—the dreamy aftershocks of a flesh magic ritual.

The door clicked shut, and Kiran whipped his head to the sound. Zadie stood beyond the threshold. Her mouth thinned as she took in the wreckage—the blood, the spent herbs, his slack form.

“Speak or get out,” Kiran mumbled.

“You’re pushing yourself too hard again,” she said. “This isn’t power, Kiran. It’s erosion. She wouldn’t want this for you.”

“I don’t care what she would want,” he slurred.

“Lies,” Zadie spat. Her posture shifted, reprimand hardening into grim purpose. “You need to hear this,” she continued, her voice dropping. “Imani has chosen a new mate. It’s Ellisar.”

Since Kiran didn’t move, Imani became trapped in his stillness. His heart accelerated and his muscles locked beneath the skin, but she could do nothing with the body carrying those reactions. She could only endure them as they happened. His breath hitched, then deepened, chest rising harder as his heart rate drove faster beneath it. Heat climbed up his neck and into his face as his jaw clenched. Muscles pulled tight through his shoulders and arms, hands flexing once at his sides as if deciding between reaching to choke Zadie or holding himself back.

Undeterred, Zadie continued, “It’s done,” she announced. “Not a rumor. Not a negotiation. The court declared it publicly. She has aligned herself with the High Sentinel of the Norn. The mating is real.”

The world narrowed to a single, suffocating pinpoint. Tension locked his jaw like a vise as he lay there, unblinking. His silence carried more weight than a scream.

Then the dam broke, and Kiran’s emotions threatened to drown her.

Betrayal slashed deep, instantly swallowed by a tide of white-hot, consuming rage. But beneath the fury coiled something far more terrifying: possession. It was a primal, unyielding claim over what was his. And the horror of it was that Imani felt it too, the want for him, bleeding into her soul.

Then, in a sudden burst of movement, Kiran lunged to his feet and drove a fist through the nearest table, splintering solid wood and sending glass vials erupting across the stone floor. He seized the heavy bed frame and wrenched it sideways, snapping the posts and slamming the mattress against the wall. A violent sweep of his arm cleared a dresser—blades, bowls, and herbs scattering. He tore a heavy tapestry from its iron hooks and slammed his fists into the stone, leaving blood behind where it tore his knuckles.

Kiran’s First Witch should have intervened, but she remained rooted to the floor as if she’d expected this all along.

He moved with brutal, unthinking immediacy, shredding the room to kindling. He couldn’t slow down. A shockwave of magic erupted from his wand, tearing through the chamber. Shelves exploded. A mirror spiderwebbed and rained jagged glass. A heavy cabinet ruptured at its seams, the stone behind it cracking under the concussive force.

Zadie finally flinched, throwing up an arm to shield her face as she backed toward the door. Kiran didn’t even see her despite looking her way.

Another pulse of magic hit the room, harder, wilder, leaving nothing untouched.

Trapped in his skull, Imani watched with mounting terror. It was raw, unfiltered instinct. Kiran was a force of nature, entirely unpredictable and impossible to negotiate with.

He pivoted and stalked toward the window, crossing the ruined chamber in three massive strides. He tore the latch free and shoved the heavy frame open to the biting wind. For a fraction of a second, he braced against the stone sill, chest heaving, staring at the lethal drop below.