Page 100 of A Kingdom of Sand and Ice (Kingdom of Gods #2)

Vera lounged against the wall, arms crossed with casual disdain as she watched the scene unfold.

Hagan carried on as though they were nothing more than shadows in the doorway, ghosts to his pleasure.

If anything, their presence seemed to thrill him further.

His grip tightened around the horns of the witch beneath him, wrenching her head back with such force that Vera half expected to hear the snap of bone.

The witch, however, appeared to revel in his savagery, her cries rising in fervent crescendo as Hagan thrust into her from behind until he reached his peak.

With a grunt of release and not a trace of tenderness, he cast her aside like a discarded garment, her body landing on the bed in his wake.

The drakonian illusion dissolved in a shimmer of smoke, the witch’s true form emerging the moment the glamour slipped away.

Vera recognised her at once but held her tongue, refraining from casting a barb about questionable life choices.

Most of those who lingered within the temple walls were Hagan’s loyal pets, creatures of magic and vanity kept close so he might be endlessly adored and pampered.

‘So, you’ve developed a taste for drakonians now?’ Vera drawled, watching as the witch scrambled to gather her scattered garments and fled the chamber in a fluster. ‘Well, fake ones, at least.’

‘Why are you here, Vera?’ Hagan asked, his tone detached as he turned from her jibe and busied himself with cleaning up, slipping back into his clothes with practiced indifference.

The irony wasn’t lost on her, how much he must loathe drakonians, and yet found such twisted satisfaction in claiming them.

But Vera knew the truth. It wasn’t about lust. It was about power.

Dominance. His own personal revenge, delivered not with a blade, but through possession.

Vera often wondered if, in those moments, he tried to picture his father’s face.

‘I’ve brought you something,’ she said, stepping aside so he could feast his eyes on the bound figures behind her.

‘How generous,’ he said, lowering himself onto the edge of the bed, a faint frown pulling at his brow. ‘And for what purpose?’

‘I want to be... back here,’ she said, though the words clung uncertainly to the air.

‘You don’ t sound particularly convinced.’

Vera rolled her eyes. ‘What would you have me do? Fall to my knees and beg?’

‘That would be a promising start.’

‘I’m not doing that,’ she snapped, her tongue darting out to wet her lips, steadying the nerves roiling just beneath her skin. Thank the gods neither Wren nor Arden had uttered a word. Silent, obedient. For now.

‘You killed my sister, Hagan. What did you expect me to do?’

‘Our sister,’ he corrected softly.

Behind her, Vera felt Wren flinch, the tremor of the reminder crawling beneath their skin like a venom, one of Hagan’s many poisons.

‘Do you want my peace offering or not?’ Vera said, her patience fraying like thread in a storm. The weight of waiting gnawed at her, clawing through her composure.

Hagan’s attention drifted from her to the prisoners behind.

Something passed through his eyes. Subtle, but potent enough to send a cold tide rolling through Vera’s gut, rising like bile to scorch her throat.

She recognised that glint. It was a mirror of her own, though far more dangerous in the hands of a man like him.

‘Bring the white-haired one forward,’ he said, his tone void of warmth, as though bored with the entire display.

Vera shoved Wren ahead with a practised hand. The magical chains shimmered faintly as they stretched, still intact, for now. She would release them when the moment came. Let the wolf draw close, just enough to bare her teeth.

Arden tensed, but Vera stepped swiftly back, slamming her weight into him to keep him from doing anything rash. Hagan, mercifully, hadn’t noticed. His eyes were fixed on the girl approaching, hungry in a way that made Vera’s skin crawl.

Wren moved with silent grace, unaware, perhaps wilfully so, of her own beauty. Silver-white hair spilt down her shoulders like moonlight over snow, her delicate features sculpted in porcelain: a doll come to life, fragile in appearance, but forged of steel.

Hagan appeared momentarily spellbound by her beauty, captivated enough to draw her closer, his palm resting possessively against the small of her back. In one fluid, predatory motion, he forced her down onto the bed. Over his shoulder, his voice slithered like oil.

‘I think I’ll enjoy the feel of this one wrapped around my cock.’

He ran his fingers through Wren’s white hair with an almost reverent touch, but there was nothing soft in the way his eyes gleamed, sharp and unrelenting, fixed not on the girl beneath him, but on something else entirely.

He wasn’t looking at her.

He was watching Arden.

Studying him with calculated intensity.

And the very moment Hagan tore at Wren’s trousers, shredding fabric with careless violence, Arden moved.

Shit .

Though still bound by Vera’s enchantment, Arden surged forward, a blur of motion that belied the restraint of magic.

He reached Hagan before Vera could tighten the spell, her magic a heartbeat too slow.

Until now, Arden had never revealed the depths of his training, what it truly meant to be a Black Lotus.

With deft precision, he twisted through the air, leaping over his captors and landing with lethal grace behind Hagan.

In one seamless motion, he seized the magical chains and wound them around the warlock’s throat .

‘You will not touch her,’ the Fae hissed, his voice laced with venom, the chains biting deeper with every word.

Hagan merely chuckled.

Those gleaming purple eyes sparkled with malevolence, and in that moment, Vera understood.

Arden cried out in agony. The chains fell limp from his fingers as his body twisted violently, convulsing in a grotesque display, forced by a power far beyond his own. Wren screamed, but her cry was cut short by Hagan’s hand curling around her throat like a noose.

Before Vera could utter a word, Hagan dragged Wren into the shadowed corridor, disappearing with her into the darkness.

Vera dropped to her knees beside Arden, whose body now lay eerily still. She pressed trembling fingers to his throat. A pulse, faint but there.

She rose.

There was no time to waste. Wren was in danger. She would return for Arden.

She would .

The thought that she might not flickered like a flame in her mind, but she stamped it out. She would not become Hagan. She would not make herself a monster.

Hagan had descended the spiral staircase, a dark spectre dragging an all but unconscious Wren across the temple’s marble foyer like a ragdoll discarded by fate.

‘What are you doing?’ Vera’s voice rang out, sharp against the silence.

He halted, turning with a slow, deliberate menace.

His hand remained clamped around Wren’s throat with such brutal force that Vera felt the phantom pressure on her own windpipe.

Another minute and the princess’s trachea would be crushed.

The fact that Wren still drew breath was nothing short of a miracle.

‘What was your grand plan, Vera?’ Hagan asked, his voice rough and low, scraped raw with fury. Yet beneath the grit, something cracked, something soft, lost… childlike. ‘Feign surrender, gift me prisoners… then slit my throat?’

Vera gave a half-hearted shrug. ‘Something along those lines.’

Hagan released Wren, letting her crumple to the polished floor in a graceless heap.

He looked down at her, brow furrowed, seemingly mesmerised by the subtle rise and fall of her chest. Vera dared to step closer, but the moment her boot slid across the stone, his eyes snapped back to hers, sharp as blades, unforgiving.

‘Is that how deeply you despise me?’ he asked, barely above a whisper.

‘You murdered our sister.’

‘You hated me long before that,’ he said, and for the briefest of moments, a hairline fracture appeared in the cold mask he wore. ‘All of you did. But you, most of all. Because she chose me over you.’

‘No,’ Vera said quietly, her voice bitter but sure. ‘That’s not why.’

A glint of surprise passed through his eyes.

‘Then why?’

She owed him nothing, not after the carnage he’d wrought, not after the blood that stained both their hands. And yet… perhaps she owed him this one truth. The root of her hatred. The ache that had festered since childhood.

‘Because she was still able to love. Because no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t.

Every time I looked at you I was reminded of my own wickedness,’ Vera said, each word cutting through the air like a shard of glass.

‘Your father raped her, and still, she stayed. She loved you. Chose you. But in the end, it killed her.’

A single tear traced down her cheek, silent and salt-heavy. ‘If it hadn’t been for you, she might have come home. She might still be alive. But instead, she died loving you .’

Hagan flinched.

A strange thing to witness, such a fragile, mortal gesture upon a creature who had long since forsaken humanity. Her words had struck him like the keen edge of a blade, slicing through flesh and bone until they found that splintered thing he dared call a heart, shattering what little remained.

‘Do you think I grew up loving myself?’ he snarled, voice cracked and raw. ‘I was a child, Vera. Just a child. And the only love I knew came from a mother who abandoned me, who left me in a den of vipers and never looked back.’

‘She left me too,’ Vera replied, her voice cold steel wrapped in silk.

‘But you had your sisters!’ Hagan roared, fury spilling from him in waves. ‘At least you had someone. Someone who loved you!’

Vera recoiled as if struck. The words, though pitiful in their honesty, would not sway her. She would not falter. She would not feel sorry for the monster who had killed her sister. No matter the ache that echoed beneath his rage, there was no forgiveness. Not now. Not ever.