Page 83

Story: Ashes to Ashes

I duck under his guard, aiming for his ribs. He catches my wrist mid-strike, spinning me around until my back presses his chest. His arm locks across my throat, not quite choking but definitely controlling.

“Predictable,” he murmurs against my ear, breath cold enough to raise goosebumps. Among other feelings. “You fight precisely like a human.”

There’s relief in his voice—and that’s when I realize what this really is. He wants me to fight like a human. He needs me to be ordinary.

White-hot fury erupts through my veins. “Fuck that.”

I drop my weight, slip his hold, and sweep his legs. He goes down, but takes me with him, rolling until he’s on top.

“Improved,” he admits, pinning my wrists above my head with aristocratic satisfaction. But his eyes search my face with desperate intensity. “Though you continue to think in disappointingly linear patterns.”

His weight settles over me, and suddenly this isn’t training anymore. It’s something else entirely. Something that makes the thorn patterns beneath my skin blaze with heat that fights his cold magic.

“Get off.”

“Make me,” he challenges with silken authority.

The challenge ignites something primal in my chest. Royal power explodes through my nervous system like napalm in my veins. Every cell screams alive for the first time in twenty-eightyears. My strength doubles, then triples. I buck him off with force that shouldn’t be possible, rolling to my feet as he staggers backward.

His eyes widen, and for a moment, pure devastation flashes across his features before he can hide it.

“There she is,” he says, voice hollow with something between awe and grief.

“There who is?” But I already know. I can feel it—whatever’s been sleeping inside me, stirring to life.

“Demonstrate that you remain human,” he whispers, so low I almost miss it. Desperation bleeding through every carefully chosen word. Then louder, with forced bravado, “Show me more.”

This time when he attacks, I don’t think. I react.

Ancient muscle memory hijacks my nervous system. My body moves like it remembers being someone else—someone royal, someone dangerous, someone worth killing for. Combat knowledge buried in DNA awakens with each exchange.

But it’s my speed that makes him go perfectly still.

I move faster than human reflexes allow. Three strikes land before he can blink—ribs, solar plexus, nerve cluster that drops his arm like severed strings. Not just fast, but Fae-fast. Inhuman reflexes that no human should possess.

His face goes corpse-pale.

“That velocity,” he breathes, voice cracking like winter ice under pressure. “Only royal bloodlines move with such... precision.”

“Maybe you need better sparring partners.”

He doesn’t laugh. Doesn’t smile. Just stares at me with something between awe and absolute terror.

“Kieran? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Everything.” He evades, but his voice breaks completely. “Everything is precisely as I feared it would be.”

The admission slips out before he can stop it, and I see him mentally curse himself for the revelation.

While he’s distracted by whatever internal war just intensified, I make my choice. Not the Academy’s choice. Not the courts’ choice.Mine.

I’m done hiding what I am because others fear it. Done pretending to be less than I am to make others comfortable. If they want to know what Wild Court royalty looks like, I’ll show them exactly what they’ve been hunting for centuries.

I close the distance between us, no longer fighting my nature but embracing it. Instead of striking, I hook my leg behind his knee and use his momentum against him—but this time, I let my real strength show. The strength that comes from royal bloodline, from earth magic flowing through my veins, from finally accepting what I truly am.

We go down together, and this time I’m the one on top.

I cage him beneath me like he’s prey I’ve finally cornered. His pulse hammers against my palms where I pin his wrists—prey pretending to be predator.

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