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“Did we?” I hum.

His jaw locks. “You gave me your power,” he growls. “You swore it was mine to wield.”

“And it was,” I admit with a mocking tilt of my head. “But you didn’t do your part, did you?” I gesture toward Nyxara, still burning bright in the sky, still very much alive. “You were supposed to kill the Dragon Queen before sunrise.”

I glance toward the horizon, where the first slivers of sunlight are creeping over the mountaintops, gilding the battlefield in a soft, golden glow.

Aldric follows my gaze—and there it is.

The horror.

The weight of his failure.

His teeth grind so hard I swear I hear them crack. “I should have slit your throat the moment I met you,” he hisses.

I laugh, light and easy. “Oh, darling, you should have done a lot of things.”

His breath shudders, his body trembling with rage, with exhaustion, with the slow realization that this is the end. And still, he lunges.

Predictable.

I do not move.

Because before his blade can reach me—Nyxara’s fire descends.

The flames engulf him, turning steel to molten slag, melting the flesh from his bones. His screams tear through the battlefield, raw and jagged, his fingers clawing at his chest as if he can rip the agony away.

Fool.

He collapses, his crown slipping from his head, lost in the dirt, in the blood, in the ashes of what he once was.

And still, he does not die.

Because I won’t let him.

I kneel beside him, placing a delicate hand against his charred chest. “A deal,” I whisper, “is only binding if both parties uphold their end.”

His burned lips part—to beg, to curse, to plead, but I don’t let him. I press my palm harder and I pull.

His soul rips free from its mortal cage, thrashing, resisting, desperate. It is gold and ash, tattered and broken, the remnants of a king who thought himself a god. The big pearl on my bodice pulses, hungry. The moment his soul touches it, it is swallowed whole.

Aldric collapses.

Empty. Lifeless.

A useless husk.

I hum, tapping a finger against my lips. “Well. That was dramatic.” But I am not done. A king’s soul should not be wasted. I pluck the pearl from my bodice, feeling the tremor of his trapped essence. Then, I reach down and claim a jagged shard of obsidian, prying it from the fingers of a fallen Sentinel. The blade is slick with blood, dark as the deep. From the ocean,a piece of coral rises, twisting and smooth, its veins pulsing with the magic of the tide.

And at last, the tree.

The one still burning with Nyxara’s Viridian Wrath, its bark cracked with fire, its roots pulsing with the life of this land. I press my hand to the scorched wood, whispering words of salt and sea, of power and promise. The fire does not consume me—it bends, listens, obeys.

The obsidian fuses to the coral. The pearl settles at the peak, glowing, alive. The magic thrums, sealing it all together in a single, terrible thing.

A staff.

A weapon.