Page 61

Not again

Iryen

I tried to control my powers, tried and failed, again and again. Every time I reached for them, they lashed out like wild currents, unpredictable and violent. So I stopped wasting time and focused on what I could bend to my will. Water. Ice. Shields.

I crafted barriers so precise, so cold and dense, they shimmered like obsidian in the water. Layered ice reinforced with tightly compacted bricks of frozen current, a wall no blade could pierce. If I couldn’t tame the chaos inside me, I’d make sure no one else could reach it either.

All I could do now was wait. Wait for Sienna and Kieran to return so I could strike.

Elora and Ronan had already unearthed enough to damn Thalor for the rest of his miserable life.

A poetic sentence, turned to stone and condemned to watch the goddess’s temple rot from the outside, powerless and forgotten.

He was what, sixty? He’d live another sixty, maybe more if the gods were feeling cruel, and I’d make sure every single second was a slow descent into regret.

It gave me time. Time to sharpen the blade he’d buried in my back and carve out a reckoning with it .

As the wall thickened under my will, sweat trickled down my temple.

My arms trembled from the effort. Normally, I could hold this kind of shield for an hour.

Today, I barely crawled past the ten-minute mark.

My control was slipping, and I hated it.

Hated the weakness. Hated him for dragging me back into this mental ruin.

I was pushing toward the eleven-minute mark when I heard it, a soft, deliberate click that echoed from the far end of the training grounds.

I dropped the shield and turned toward the noise.

The training fields behind the military school of Aetheria were quiet and remote, surrounded by coral and wreckage, a place reserved for solitude and silence. That was the point. That’s why I came here. To be alone with my fury. With my failure. With my ghosts.

I swam toward the sound, weaving through broken masts and the bleached ribs of long-dead ships. And that’s when I saw it.

A small enchanted shell sat nestled in the hull of a half-sunken sailboat, glowing faintly, humming like something alive. Then it played.

That laugh.

Gods, that laugh . I would’ve carved out my own eardrums just to forget it. But there it was again, dragging me back to that night.

Then his voice followed, slick and venomous, curling around me like poisoned ink in water.

“I’m coming for you, my little divinity.”

That name. That stupid, sacred name I once let him use. I told him too much. Trusted him too deeply. That mistake would be the last I ever made .

“You belong to me.”

Once, those words had made my heart stutter. Now, they only made my stomach turn. But I wasn’t that girl anymore. I didn’t freeze. I wasn’t helpless.

I snatched the shell, scanning the shadows between the broken ships, checking every crevice and jagged coral edge. No green tail. No trace of him. Coward.

“You think I don’t know you’ve been looking for me, my little divinity?” he drawled, his voice soaked in amusement. “I’ve been watching you. Every step. Your court every whisper. Every trail you thought you were clever enough to follow. I let you find only what I wanted you to find.”

My blood ran cold. Not from fear— rage . Pure and volatile.

“I told you that you would understand. But I can’t stay away forever, baby. So how about you keep your bitch of an enforcer out of my business?”

He meant Elora. My tail twitched, a reflex I couldn’t suppress. The threat was obvious. But it backfired.

I grinned.

She rattled him. Elora was close, closer than he expected. And that meant we were winning.

The shell fell silent. I knew he was long gone. This was just a message, a performance. Still, I searched, just to be sure. Once satisfied, I tucked the shell into my fishnet bag and turned back toward the city.

I swam fast, slicing through the water with violent strokes, my body thrumming with adrenaline and fury. The glowing lights of Hyrem blurred past me, but I didn’t care.

Because this time, I wouldn’t freeze. This time, I wasn’t breaking.

I was hunting.

“Meet me in my study.”

I sent the thought to Ronan, sharp and clipped, severing the mental thread before he could respond.

The swim back burned through me. Every stroke carved deeper into the already aching muscles, but I didn’t slow down.

I couldn’t afford to. Fatigue had become a parasite, gnawing at bone and will alike, but I shoved it down like everything else, like the pain in my joints, the pressure behind my eyes, the cold echo of his voice still coiling through my mind.

Ronan was already outside my study when I arrived, arms folded, expression carved from stone. Of course he was. Ever the loyal shadow.

I said nothing as I passed him, threw my fishnet bag onto the obsidian table, and pulled out the damned shell. Its surface gleamed with a sickly sheen, as though it enjoyed being handled. I didn’t give it the satisfaction of hesitation.

“I found this near one of the old vessels at Sapphire’s training grounds,” I said, the words like grit in my mouth. “It’s from him. I want the spell signature traced.”

Ronan took the shell silently. The moment his fingers curled around it, the recording played again, that voice dripping with arrogance and venom.

Ronan stiffened. His eyes darkened, the light bleeding out of them until nothing but shadow remained. His power reacted before he did, casting jagged streaks of darkness across the room. The threat embedded in the message echoed again, vile and familiar, and the air thickened with his fury .

Good. At least I wasn’t the only one raging.

“Rein it in,” I snapped, sharper than intended. My voice echoed against the glass walls. “I’m furious too, but Elora can handle herself.”

His jaw clenched as he sucked in a breath that scraped through his throat. Slowly, reluctantly, his shadows receded.

“Now,” I continued, tone flat, “what could Elora have found to set off that rotting coward?”

He hesitated, something twitching in his expression.

“I don’t know. We’re… not on speaking terms right now. She blocked me out.” His voice was raw around the edges in a way Ronan rarely allowed.

“Again?” I groaned, scrubbing a hand down my face. “Solve whatever mess you two created and focus. I don’t have time to babysit bruised egos.”

I made a mental note to check in with Elora myself, and make sure she hadn’t gotten herself killed chasing ghosts. Or worse, turned into bait.

“Do you at least know where she is?”

“She said she’d be at her father’s when we… parted ways.” The pause was heavy, the weight of unsaid words pressing between us.

I didn’t ask. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t care. She is my best friend, after all.

“Fine. Trace the signature. Bring me everything.”

I dismissed him with a wave of my hand, already turning toward the window when it hit me—a tug against my mental shield.

Familiar. Unwelcome. I lowered it just a sliver. And there he was again.

That voice.

“You liked my present, little divinity?”

His voice slithered into my mind like oil, coating everything in filth.

I locked down every stray thought like a vault sealing shut.

Not a flicker of Adrian. Or a trace of my plans.

Not even the satisfaction I’d feel watching his blood stain the gold on my father’s trident.

I became what my mother raised me to be—the heir, carved from ice and iron.

Turned into a cold, calculating queen with the desire for revenge.

“Why don’t you come see for yourself?” My tone was low, each word honed to a blade. “And while you’re at it, impale yourself on my father’s trident. Save me the trouble.”

He laughed.

That laugh.

Smug. Familiar. Poison.

“You’re angry today, aren’t you, my sweet little lioness?”

I hate him.

No, hate is too small a word for what lives in me now. It’s something deeper. Something corrosive. I once believed I loved him. Foolish, wide-eyed, deluded. Now I see clearly. There is nothing in him but rot, and in me, nothing left for him but the cold precision of retribution.

“Now, now. I know you’re eager for our wedding, but I have matters to settle before I take your crown.”

He says it as a joke. As if my entire lineage, my birthright, is a pawn on his board. It takes everything in me not to unleash the full weight of my fury. But he feeds on reaction. So I starve him.

“I won’t marry you.”

The words come out like frostbite, deadly and final. “And you’re delusional if you think you’ll ever wear my crown.”

Then I slam the link shut, cutting him off mid-laugh, but not before it slices through my skull like a serrated edge.

He won’t win.

Not again.

I will freeze the ocean before I let him take anything else from me.

Fuming in my study, I replay every step I took in the field like a broken reel, again and again, but aside from the cursed shell, nothing stands out. Nothing explains how he keeps getting so close. The thought alone scrapes against the raw edges of my mind.

A knock breaks the silence, too soft to startle me, but it does. My nerves are thin and frayed, like salt-soaked threads.

“Come in.”

Sienna enters first, with Kieran at her side. I hadn’t even registered their return from Erythion. My sense of time has been bleeding.

“Tell me we have permission to punish him by our means.”

No greetings. No false courtesy. I don’t have the patience for games today.

They exchange a glance, subtle but telling. I don’t miss it, but I’m too coiled to dwell on whatever quiet conversation passed between them.

“Yes, he did,” Sienna says. But her words hang unfinished, like a thread fraying at the edge of a blade.

“What is it?” My voice is a cold cut.

It’s Kieran who answers, rubbing the tension from his temples like it might actually go away. “He wants something in return.”

Of course he does. No one in that court moves unless their pockets or egos are lined.