Page 58

He’s back

Iryen

I woke at dawn, drenched in sweat and unrest. Sleep had been a cruel, flickering illusion, just flashes of memory, suffocating truths, and the sound of my heartbeat hammering like war drums beneath my skin. The city still lay in hushed slumber, but inside me, chaos reigned.

The moment I saw her— Adrian’s mother— everything cleared up.

The lost princess of Erythion. How had I not seen it?

The eyes, the presence, the magic seeped into her bones.

It was all there. It had always been there.

And I, daughter of Aetheria, a ruler forged from blood and obligation, missed the signs.

Stupid. Pathetic.

I should have pieced it together sooner.

I should have questioned harder, dug deeper, listened to my instincts .

But I was too distracted by him. By the pull.

From the warmth of his voice and the way he looked at me, I felt like I was the only thing that mattered.

I let my guard down. Goddess, I let my guard down again.

I didn’t resent her. On the contrary, I envied her. She had done what I never could. She’d walked away. Left behind duty, crown, expectations. Chosen love. She made it look so easy. Like courage and recklessness were the same thing.

But I couldn’t walk away. I won’t . Not after everything I’ve lost. My kingdom needs me.

My people cling to a fragile hope that I won’t abandon them the way she did hers.

I can’t give in to the ache clawing at my insides every time Adrian looks at me like I’m already his.

I can’t afford to want him, not truly. And yet…

I’m falling. Damn it, I’m falling so hard I can barely breathe.

And not because of the bond. Not because some celestial thread deemed it fate.

No, this was always here. The moment he stepped into my world, I felt it.

Before the snap, before the knowing. Something in him spoke to something buried in me.

I dragged a hand through my tangled hair, bile rising in my throat.

Heir.

That word rang through my skull like a curse. He wasn’t just anyone . He was the heir to Erythion’s throne, a kingdom that had long walked the line between wary ally and potential threat. A hybrid prince. My mate. A political powder keg wrapped in desire and danger.

If the council found out… if the court suspected even a shred of truth about what he was…

They’d never let him live.

I rose from the bed as silently as a ghost, every muscle tense with dread. I gathered my things slowly, methodically, like the motions might anchor me to this room for a moment longer. But I had to go. Before he woke. Before I did something unforgivable, like stay.

Coward.

The word echoed in my mind, bitter and cutting. But I couldn’t face him. Not after last night. Not with this storm inside me tearing me limb from limb.

I reached for him with my mind, just to be sure he was still asleep, and felt nothing but a void. A thick, dreamless unconsciousness. Good. He wouldn’t know I left. Not yet. I can’t say goodbye—leaving already hurts.

I stepped out of the guest room, past the still air and luxuries of his penthouse. Everything gleamed in the faint light of sunrise—the white marble, the polished gold, the ghost of my shadow on the floor. And I hated it. Hated how it already felt like a memory.

I left, each step peeling skin from bone.

By the time I reached Thalassa’s secluded pier, the sun was climbing, indifferent to its warmth. The waves moved with cruel serenity as I stood before the yacht, his yacht. It loomed like a monument to everything I couldn’t have.

The moment I slipped beneath the surface, the chill of the water devoured me. It was a small mercy, numbing. But it didn’t silence the echo of his voice in my head or the phantom of his touch still burning on my skin.

He was with me the whole time.

When I shifted, the ache was there. When I crossed the border to Aetheria, it deepened. And when I saw the barrier shimmer like a wall of glass and memory, it almost undid me.

Elora and Sienna were waiting. My sisters in everything but blood. Kieran and Ronan weren’t there, thank the gods.

When I finally reached them, I shattered. Right there at the border, where the ocean met home, I broke like glass, loud, messy, sobbing with an agony I didn’t even know how to contain.

They didn’t ask questions. Their arms closed around me, grounding me as I shook and sobbed into their shoulders. Elora didn’t speak. She just raised her hand, and the water bloomed into deep blue flames, cloaking us in a camouflage of magic and grief.

For now, I remained hidden.

But nothing could shield me from what I’d just left behind.

“I had to… leave him,” I choked out, each word splintering in a ra gged breath. My throat burned. I felt a rusted blade hollowing out of my chest. “It hurts… so much.”

Elora didn’t flinch. Just pulled me closer, her hand tracing slow circles between my shoulder blades. Calming. Anchoring. A quiet mercy.

“I know,” she murmured, barely above the sound of the waves lapping against the reef.

“I know it hurts… and I wish I could tell you it gets better. But it doesn’t.

You did what you had to do. You had no choice.

” She hesitated, then softly added. “Maybe… maybe you still could be with him. It is the will of the goddess.”

The will of the goddess.

I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood.

I didn’t answer. What could I say? That I wanted to burn the will of the goddess to ash? That the weight of my crown was suffocating me, and yet I’d never dare let it fall? Or that I couldn’t have him even if I tore the world apart to try?

Because that’s what it would take…destruction, betrayal, and treason. I’d burn Aetheria to the seabed if it meant being with him… and I hated myself for that truth. I hated the part of me that wanted to.

“Oh, sweetie…” Sienna’s voice drifted through my haze like a lullaby drowned in sorrow.

Her fingers brushed my tear-streaked cheek.

“It all works in the end,” she whispered, her silver eyes losing focus, clouded with whatever vision now bled through her sight.

“Trust in the goddess. Your fate shall be fulfilled through her.”

Cryptic nonsense. I almost laughed. Almost.

Instead, I swallowed another breath, like it might stop the turmoil inside of me. “Why… why did you meet me out here?” I rasped, desperate for anything to dull the sharpness carving through my chest. “Is everything alright?”

They both glanced away. At the same time .

Dread, cold and metallic, slid down my spine like a poisoned blade.

“We need to talk,” Elora said finally, her voice flat now, eyes like shards of turquoise ice as they locked onto mine. “But not here.”

Something in her tone twisted the air.

“Let’s go to the palace,” I said quickly, forcing myself to move, to stand, to pretend I could function. “We can talk in my study—”

Then pain.

White-hot. Ripping. Total. Pain.

My body buckled. A scream clawed its way from my throat but never made it out. My hands trembled violently. My vision fractured, spinning, flashes of the sky, the water, their faces, and then it all blurred into chaos.

Voices muffled, frantic, distant. But I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t move. My heart pounded so hard it felt like it might shatter through my ribs. Blood boiled beneath my skin, each vein a conduit of flame. My lungs wouldn’t draw in air. My mind… exploded.

And then, amid the agony, a pulse. Not mine.

His.

Grief, raw and molten, bled through the bond, his sorrow crashing into me like a tidal wave, searing hot, unbearable. I felt his pain branded into my soul. Like it was mine. And just before the darkness took me completely, just before everything went still, I realized…

He felt me leave. And it broke him, just as it broke me.

***

Rushed voices drift around me, muffled like I’m underwater. The soft weight of blankets presses against my limbs, but I don’t remember lying down or fainting, for that matter.

“She’s too weak,” a grave male voice cuts through the haze, sharp, controlled, and utterly unyielding. Ronan. Only he would speak like that to Elora. “Between the spell and the goddess’s wrath, she can’t take more stress. This news will break her. You know that, Elora. ”

News?

The word slashed through my fogged mind. What happened? I search for the last clear thought. Thalassa, the border, Sienna and Elora, the tension wrapped around their shoulders like a second skin. Their insistence that we talk. That something was wrong.

“She needs to know, Ronan,” Elora snaps back, her voice like cracked fire glass. “He’ll come for her. She needs to know he’s back.”

He.

That single word sends an involuntary chill down my spine. My body tightens beneath the sheets, though I stay still. Listening.

Elora’s voice lowers sharper now. “Besides, he’s not the only threat anymore. It’s embedded in this very palace. In her council.”

A long pause.

“We always knew that,” Ronan mutters darkly. “We just weren’t sure how deep it went. Now we do.”

“And she needs to know too ,” Elora snaps, unrelenting.

“But—”

“Enough.” Sienna’s voice cuts through the rising storm, calm, controlled, but firm. Unmovable. “It doesn’t matter. She heard you. Didn’t you, Iryen?”

I draw in a slow, rattling breath and sit up against the headboard, blinking at the three of them gathered in my chambers like a tribunal. I feel like a corpse at my postmortem.

“Yes,” I murmur. My voice is dry, foreign in my throat. “He’s back.” I let the words rot on my tongue before speaking again. “And I assume the threat inside the council is Thalor. Am I wrong?”

Silence.

My gaze sharpens. “For the goddess’s sake,” I snap, the edge creeping back into my voice, brittle and sharp, “someone tell me everything. In detail.”

Elora sighs and pushes her hair behind her ear, irritation flickering across her face. “After you left, Ronan and I followed Thalor. Your orders, remember?”