Page 66 of A Kingdom of Sand and Ice (Kingdom of Gods #2)

‘It felt like justice, in a way. Punishment. She was chosen, all those years ago. And I wasn’t. Perhaps it was petty, but I let her suffer for it.’

Dawn sighed, the breath catching in her throat.

‘I suppose we’ve always been a little vile, our whole twisted lot. Maybe that’s why I wanted to be Adara so badly. A new name. A clean slate. A chance to begin again. To be someone better.’

A single tear slipped from her cheek, landing with a whisper-soft touch on Kai’s face. She wiped it away swiftly, as though he might wake and find her exposed like this.

‘He made me better, you know?’ she said, teeth pressing into her lower lip to stem the tide of words, though they came anyway. It was easier like this, speaking into the quiet. He was here, yet not. A presence that could not interrupt, could not judge. She could pretend.

Pretend he was a friend. Pretend he was listening.

And the comfort of it all was knowing that when he finally woke, he would remember none of it.

It was like a confession spoken into the dark, heard by no one.

‘He might believe it was all a lie. But it wasn’t. Not to me. I felt... alive. Even in someone else’s skin, when I was with him, I was more myself than I’ve ever been. And it terrifies me that I may never feel that way again. That I’ll never be known that deeply. That truly.’

She noticed a small leaf had drifted down and landed on Kai’s chest. With gentle fingers, she brushed it away.

Then she stilled.

Something was wrong.

His breathing was uneven, too shallow. She pressed her ear to his chest, frowning as she listened carefully.

A rattle.

Her heart sank. A chest infection. Not good. Not good at all.

A small trickle of magic had returned to Dawn, just enough to begin the slow, agonising process of drawing the poison from Kai’s body. She knew it would hurt. Not him. Her .

Poison removal was one of the first lessons taught to witches and warlocks, introduced in childhood and perfected only through years of practice.

What many didn’t realise, not until far too late, was the cost: to remove poison was to absorb it.

To pull it into one’s own veins and hope the body was strong enough to endure it.

Dawn knew she couldn’t afford to delay much longer.

And yet… she lingered.

The silence was gentle, and strangely soothing. Kai Blackburn, unconscious and still, his head resting in her lap, depending on her. It stirred something inside her. Something warm. Something she wasn’t accustomed to feeling.

Needed.

She had never been needed before.

Among her siblings, Dawn had always felt like the invisible one—present, but often overlooked. Though her sisters would deny it if asked. They’d claim she was the spoilt one, the favoured one. Sweet Dawn. Innocent Dawn. The darling of the family.

Some even dared say she was the prettiest.

They fought over such trivialities, endlessly rearranging the invisible ranking that hovered over them. One day Allegra was the most beautiful. Vera, the most intelligent. Dawn, the gentlest. And by the next day, the order had changed again.

Dawn snorted softly at the memory, amused and weary all at once.

Each sister bore her own scars, wounds not etched into flesh, but buried deep beneath skin and silence.

They never spoke of them. That wasn’t their way.

They swallowed their fears, choked down their insecurities, and turned their sharpness on each other instead.

Words became weapons. Their bitterness, a language they all understood.

They hurt one another in small, cruel ways, yet the love between them never truly faded.

All except for Hagan.

Hagan had never been loved by any of them.

Allegra had always felt apart. Not because she wasn’t beautiful.

She was, in her own striking way, but because she looked different.

While all three sisters shared the same warm brown skin, Allegra had inherited their father’s bolder features—fuller, stronger, and in Dawn’s opinion, unquestionably more lovely.

Her hair, a halo of thick brown curls, stood in stark contrast to Vera and Dawn’s long, pale platinum locks.

The difference, though superficial, had carved a quiet distance between them.

It made Allegra feel like the outsider, like the sister left out of some unspoken twinship.

And Dawn hated that. Hated the idea that Allegra might have believed herself lesser, simply because of how she looked. Especially when both she and Vera had often envied Allegra’s beauty, her strength, her presence, the way she carried herself.

Vera had always possessed a relentless urge to save them all. She burnt for it. But she couldn’t save herself.

And Dawn?

Dawn had simply existed, caught between the fragments of what their family had once been and the fantasy of what it might have become.

She had wanted wholeness. A family restored.

But they had been broken long ago, splintered for a cause that was meant to heal them, meant to make something noble of their pain.

Now it was Hagan who wore the mantle of saviour, the one who would return the witches and warlocks to their former glory. Who would raise them from shadow and silence back into power.

And yet, even cloaked in the language of salvation, Dawn could not forget that he had never been part of them .

Not truly.

Dawn tensed at the mere thought of Hagan, of all he had done, and all he still intended to do. Some of it she had witnessed firsthand, having once been part of his innermost circle. She had played the part well. Compliant, loyal, careful with her words, long enough to earn a sliver of his trust.

But now?

Now she was stranded in the Kingdom of Fauna, with a poisoned wyverian prince resting in her lap.

And Hagan would not forgive betrayal.

Not unless she did what had been asked of her. What she had set out to do.

With a weary sigh, Dawn gently eased Kai into a more comfortable position, adjusting his weight so she could lean over him. Her movements were hesitant, trembling. She had to lower herself just enough to press her lips against his, an act not of love, but of survival. A ritual.

The very thought made her shiver.

His condition was worsening. His pallor had drained to a ghostly white, and the veins along his throat were darkening, knotting like twisted roots beneath the skin as the poison continued its slow, merciless work.

She hesitated.

There, in the hush of the forest, with the rain still pattering softly on the roof of the hut, the temptation whispered to her.

If she let him die, if she did nothing and returned to Hagan with Kai’s head, perhaps he might forgive her for not doing what he asked.

The secret she had kept from Vera. The true reason she had accepted to run off and find Ash.

But the truth was, what Hagan had asked of her.

.. she had been the one to leap at the opportunity.

A chance to ease the ache in her chest, to begin again.

To finally learn how to breathe once more, to forget the man who had poisoned her soul.

Couldn’t she?

Dawn cursed under her breath as she shifted over Kai, straddling his body with determined urgency.

She cupped his face in both hands, steadying him, anchoring him.

Because once this began, there would be no turning back.

Without giving herself the chance to hesitate, she leaned down and pressed her lips to his.

She inhaled, drawing in the sickness like a thread of smoke, searching for the tell-tale tug of poison within him. The moment she felt it stir, coiled and clinging inside his veins, she breathed deeper, harder.

The poison surged.

It tore through Kai’s body like wildfire, his limbs seizing beneath her, arms and legs twitching violently as the venom was pulled from him and into her.

As soon as it entered her bloodstream, agony bloomed like thorns under her skin.

Dawn bit down on the scream rising in her throat, refusing to let it escape.

The pain was searing, merciless. Infecting every inch of her, flooding her muscles with sickness, darkness, wrongness. Her body cried out for release, for escape from the torment, but still she held on. Still she pulled.

Their bodies twisted in unison, limbs shuddering in a grotesque dance as the poison fought to keep its host. It clawed to remain inside the wyverian prince, to bury itself deeper. But Dawn would not yield.

She would not let Kai Blackburn die. Not here, not like this. She would not be left behind in this cursed forest, alone. She would not surrender her power, not to the whims of fate, nor to Hagan, nor to some wretched forest weed.

With one final, desperate breath, Dawn felt the last tendrils of poison rip free from Kai, slicing through her like ice, embedding themselves deep within her own veins, just as Kai drew in his first breath.

His eyes snapped open.

A shuddering sigh left her lips, relief crashing through her, swift and sharp. Without warning, she collapsed into his arms as unconsciousness stole her away, the poison curling like smoke around her fractured heart.