Page 22 of A Kingdom of Sand and Ice (Kingdom of Gods #2)

I failed my very first test. But I will do better. I’ve uncovered a form of magic no one dares speak of. There are whispers that it’s forbidden, that using it takes a part of your soul. Still, I intend to study it, just a little. To see whether it might be used in my next test.

Tabitha Wysteria

Vera waited.

She had lingered in silence for what felt like an age, ensconced in the room Dawn had claimed as her own.

It was difficult not to flinch at the sight of the delicate furnishings and careful touches, a room so clearly once crafted for someone else.

Every tapestry, every black and silver frame whispered a name that wasn’t her sister’s.

The door creaked open.

Dawn halted the moment she noticed Vera, seated upon the grand bed, fingers gliding over the silken sheets as though smoothing the creases might erase what had once taken place there.

‘Of all the chambers in this castle,’ Vera said, ‘you had to choose this one, didn’t you?’

‘It’s not what you think.’

Vera’s lips curled into a knowing smirk. ‘Do you lie here at night and picture him, touching her as though it were you?’

The words, cruel and barbed, struck deeper than any of the thorn-laced roses Queen Cyra had once cultivated in her royal gardens. Yet Dawn did not flinch. She moved instead towards the adjoining chamber, where an enormous bath awaited, its basin carved from black stone, now filled with chill water.

Dawn stripped without ceremony, her blood-streaked garments falling silently to the floor. Vera followed, pausing at the doorway, leaning against the frame with the casual air of someone pretending not to see the red that stained her sister’s clothes.

‘I feel nothing for him,’ Dawn muttered, before disappearing beneath the water’s surface.

‘Then why sleep in the bed he chose for Mal Blackburn?’ Vera’s voice was laced with scorn. ‘Why linger in the same room he once loved her in?’

Silence. But Vera knew the truth, had always known it. Dawn had been sixteen when she first slipped into the court under the guise of Adara, a drakonian lady of noble blood. Her task had been simple: seduce the Fire Prince, glean what she could. Everyone believed her role was an act.

Vera had never believed that lie.

Dawn had loved him then. And worse, she still did.

‘He’s dead, Vera,’ Dawn whispered. ‘He must be. The curse must have been broken and… This room reminds me of him.’

Vera felt a smile tug at the corners of her mouth, dark and indulgent. She should have felt guilt. Her plan to stop Hagan would wound Dawn, place her once more in Ash’s path, but Vera had long since accepted the truth of herself.

She would kill for her family. And she would wound them, too, if that pain served a greater purpose .

She folded her arms across her chest, awaiting a retort, a denial, any feeble defence. But Dawn said nothing. Instead, she rested her arms on the lip of the tub, tilting her head to glance up at Vera with those soft, dove-purple eyes.

‘Killing drakonians won’t dull the ache,’ Vera said. ‘It’s not their fault he never loved you.’

A spark of anguish passed through Dawn’s violet gaze. ‘You needn’t be so cruel.’

‘And you needn’t obey Hagan like a trained hound.’

‘He’s led us to victory,’ Dawn countered, her voice calm but tight. ‘Thanks to him, we’ve conquered this land.’

Vera barked a laugh. ‘ Conquered ? Is that what he’s feeding you all?

We’ve claimed one city, Dawn. Just one. The rest of this kingdom hasn’t reacted yet because we decapitated the royal family and left them flailing like headless chickens.

But word will spread. The other kingdoms will come.

We’ve spilt royal blood. That sort of crime demands retribution. ’

‘Hagan says—’

‘Fuck Hagan.’

‘Vera,’ Dawn said sharply, ‘you’re being unreasonable. You’ve always hated him.’

Vera uncrossed her arms and wrapped them tightly around herself, stepping further into the chamber. At Dawn’s quiet command, the candles flickered to life one by one, casting a warm glow against the encroaching gloom of nightfall.

‘Every time I look at him,’ Vera said, her voice barely above a whisper, ‘it’s as though I’m staring into the eyes of the very monster who destroyed mother. And still, I cannot raise a hand against him, because of that damned promise I made her.’

‘It wasn’t Hagan’s fault, Vera. He wasn’t the reason she took her own life.’

The words, calmly spoken, struck like a blade between her ribs. Vera gasped, feeling the familiar sting rise in her throat. She had spent years avoiding such thoughts, especially of their mother. And yet, how could she truly forget, when every breath Hagan took served as a reminder?

‘That drakonian lord raped our mother,’ she said, turning slowly to face Dawn, her eyes hollow. ‘He forced himself upon her, and from that violence, Hagan was born. She never recovered from it. And in the end, it consumed her.’

‘You can’t hold him accountable for that,’ Dawn said gently.

Vera knew she was right, but that knowledge didn’t make the bitterness easier to bear.

Their father had remained in their homeland, while their mother had journeyed west to join the cause.

Disguised by glamour, she had posed as a lady of the drakonian court.

But even magic had its limits. It was near impossible to infiltrate a court where everyone knew everyone else.

One man in particular, a powerful lord, had taken an interest in her.

When she’d tried to rebuff him, claiming a husband waited for her back home, he had ignored her pleas.

What followed was unspeakable.

He left her disgraced and ruined. But their mother had not bowed to his cruelty. She had bewitched him, turned his mind inside out with her spells until he fell hopelessly, obsessively in love with her. He married her soon after.

Then she killed him.

When their father learnt of the truth, it broke something inside him. He grew frail, sickly, and within months he had passed away.

Vera had been in the drakonian lands by then, accompanying their mother. She hadn’t been permitted to return home for the funeral. Her sisters—older, and already sent to live with distant relatives—had said their goodbyes in her place .

Vera had been raised as the handmaiden to a drakonian lord’s wife.

In truth, her mother, glamoured to deceive the court.

After leaving their homeland to join the cause, her mother had brought Vera with her under the guise of servitude, presenting her not as a daughter, but as a girl of no consequence, hidden in plain sight.

And so Vera grew up pouring tea and fetching cloaks, while silently watching the woman who had given birth to her slip into a new skin, laughing with strangers, and dining beside the very people who had once called for their kind’s destruction.

It was a performance laced with quiet agony, the child forced into silence while her mother played lady of the court.

When she turned ten, she was moved to the castle, no longer just an invisible helper in noble halls, but now a ghost haunting the very corridors that had once belonged to the people who had shattered her kingdom. And it had been excruciating.

She would pass the drakonian ladies in silence, lounging beneath the carved arches of the royal gardens, sipping their honeyed teas and gossiping in warm voices, never knowing one of their own was a witch in disguise.

And at the centre of it all sat her mother, laughing amongst them, feigning delight as if the blood on her hands had long since dried.

But what wounded Vera more deeply than all the rest was Hagan.

Watching him grow had been a quiet torment.

A boy who bore the face of their mother’s pain, and yet was embraced as if he were pure.

She had seen him run through the sunlit courtyards with Alina and Ash, their carefree laughter echoing off the stone.

She had watched their mother brush the hair from his brow with the same tenderness she had once reserved for her daughters.

She had loved him. Protected him .

As though he had never broken her.

‘Ash will return,’ Vera said, forcing the memories back into the locked box where she had buried them long ago, the key cast into oblivion.

‘He’ll come to reclaim his kingdom. To avenge his sister.

He doesn’t know she’s still alive. And when he does come, Hagan will kill him. You understand that, don’t you?’

‘How do we even know he’s still breathing?’ Dawn replied flatly. ‘Mal would have killed him by now. Hagan says the curse is broken.’

Vera gave a careless shrug. Perhaps Ash Acheron was already dead, slain by the very woman he had chosen to love. But if life had taught Vera anything, it was this: love had a way of blinding even the sharpest minds. Ash didn’t need to be alive. Vera just needed Dawn to believe it.

‘Knowing Mal Blackburn, she found a way to save him,’ Vera said.

‘He’s alive. And if Hagan finds him...’ She turned fully now, her gaze steady, letting her words seep into the air like ink into cold bathwater.

Dawn faltered, her silence betraying the storm that stirred beneath her composed facade.

The thought of Ash meeting his end at Hagan’s hand cracked something open inside her, something long buried but not forgotten.

Vera almost wondered why she felt no shame in toying with her sister’s wounds. She ought to. And yet… she didn’t.

‘There’s nothing to be done,’ Dawn said eventually, her voice carefully bored, as though she hadn’t heard a word that mattered. But they both knew she had.

‘Someone could help him,’ Vera whispered, her tone hushed as though the walls themselves might bear witness to treason. ‘Someone could guide him. Protect him. Show him the path. It’s him or Hagan. Perhaps someone who knows them both could tip the scales. ’

Their eyes met, and in that moment, no more needed to be said. A single glance, veiled in silence, exchanged like a cipher between spies. A signal only they understood.

Vera didn’t need Ash to wield the blade. She only needed the fire he ignited in others, the loyalty he inspired. His army. His name. And most importantly, the woman who had once loved him in secret.

She knew her sister well. Knew that Dawn, no matter how deeply buried, had never stopped being the girl who had called herself Adara, the girl who had once dreamt of a future beside the Fire Prince. And that girl would burn the world to keep him breathing.

Vera would keep her promise to their mother. She would not lay a hand on Hagan, and she would try, truly try, to protect him. But if someone else were to hand him over to death…

If Dawn gave the enemy the key to his undoing...

Hagan could be stopped. He could be replaced .

And once the dust had settled, once the fire had burnt itself out, Vera would rise from the ashes and take what was left.

‘Someone has to do things properly,’ she whispered, disappearing through the doorway and leaving her sister alone in the room where the man Dawn loved had once loved another.