Page 65

My vision blurred at the edges, the room bending like it had slipped underwater. She was dead. She was dead . Cast into the abyss. Her soul swallowed whole by magic and sealed beneath layers of salt and time.

But there she was, alive. Whole. Smirking.

My breath caught in my throat. No. No, no, no…

I must’ve whispered it, because Draven’s voice sliced in, smug and sharp enough to bleed .

“Oh yes, little Divinity. Banished indeed, but not dead.” He paced lazily, circling like a shark scenting blood. “While the sea witches brewed a potion to null Elora’s powers, I made sure they released my mother. A fair trade, don’t you think?”

His mother. His father. The monsters at the root of every curse were now parading their triumph.

This wasn’t a strategy. It was theater. A masterpiece of cruelty, scripted from the beginning, and I, stupidly, had played the part of the na?ve heroine.

I stared at Ithra. Her skin untouched, her presence still so sharp it cut the air, and bile rose in my throat. Every inch of her screamed power. Defiance. Not a ghost. Not a shadow. A weapon sharpened and set loose.

My fists trembled at my sides, nails carving deep into my palms until the pain grounded me.

They’d planned this. Every move. Every loss. Every illusion of safety. And I… I had walked straight into it, unarmed and unprepared, believing that love was a shield.

Fool.

But that part of me, that soft, golden-hearted girl? She died four years ago.

And something darker was crawling out through the seams.

***

My grandmother was no longer the woman who raised me.

She lay crumpled on the marble floor, stripped of dignity and light, her skin, once luminous with age and power, now bruised and torn, as if the gods themselves had turned on her.

Purple welts bloomed over her ribs like rotting flowers, the aftermath of Thalor’s fists after he joined Ithra in her merciless work.

I watched every moment. F elt every scream. Each cry crawled under my skin and nested in my bones until I couldn’t tell where her pain ended and mine began.

And then, silence.

When her voice frayed into a whisper and her body stopped flinching, they finally stepped back. For now, the monsters felt satisfied.

The quiet should’ve been a relief. It wasn’t.

It was the silence that comes before a ship breaks apart under pressure. The kind that waits for something worse.

I didn’t know how long we’d been here. Time had dissolved.

Hours maybe? I knew it couldn’t have been long.

Someone would come looking for her eventually.

That’s why they chose the dinner hour. The perfect window.

No one would notice the Queen was missing.

Not right away. They would assume she had retired for the evening.

It wouldn’t be until tomorrow that they noticed.

They were buying time, but they wouldn’t need all night unless there was more to this. It wasn’t just about the crown. Not about love. Or revenge.

This… this was something else. I just knew.

I forced the words past the rage clogging my throat.

“What else do you want, Draven? Why torture us? What are you really after?”

His face lit up as though I’d just handed him a gift wrapped in blood. “I already told you,” he said, voice honey-sweet and rotting underneath. “You need to learn your place. And your dear grandmother has unfinished business with my lovely mother.”

He glanced toward her motionless form and smiled as if it were art. “After tonight, we’re getting married. And maybe next time, you’ll think twice before trying to destroy me.”

I laughed. L aughed . The sound tore out of me like glass dragged across coral .

“I won’t marry you.”

His smile didn’t falter. He just turned toward Elora, lifting a hand laced with black tendrils, and chained her with his dark magic like it was nothing.

Coward.

He could’ve bound me with a flick, but he made Ronan do it. The bastard wanted a show. Wanted us to play his sick games.

“Ronan,” he said smoothly, moving toward me, “be a good pet and keep her still.”

The shadows moved before he could touch me—cold, familiar, choking.

They coiled around my limbs like serpents obeying their master.

Ronan dragged me back away from Draven. Kieran lunged to my side, his motion instinctive, protective, fierce, but Thalor was already waiting, one hand coiled tight around Sienna’s throat.

“Oh no, Kieran,” Thalor sneered, his grip tightening just enough to make her flinch. “You stay right where you are. Or I touch more than her neck. You know I’ve been dying to.”

His grin split wide, feral. I saw red.

Kieran froze mid-step. The water was heavy with tension, electricity arcing off his skin in angry sparks. His fists clenched, the bones straining against flesh, but he didn’t move.

Not yet.

Not while Sienna was still a hostage.

“You’re playing a dangerous game, Thalor,” Kieran said, his voice a storm barely contained.

Thalor chuckled, a sound that made my skin crawl. “Dangerous? No, Petros. You misunderstand. I make the rules now. You, your little seer, your broken queen, your precious crown princess… all of you are pawns in a game I already won.”

Sienna locked eyes with Kieran. No tears. No fear. Just twisted with pain.

“Don’t,” she mouthed, barely a breath, but her meaning carved through the room like a blade.

The room pulsed—the walls seemed to vibrate under the tension. I felt the magic in the air shift, volatile…unstable. A single spark could ignite it.

I couldn’t breathe. I wanted to scream. To boil. To rip them apart until the water ran thick with their blood.

But I couldn’t. Not without risking everyone.

I was drowning in my restraint, teeth clenched so hard my jaw ached, hands curled into fists as I fought back the roar building inside me.

I had all this power. All this fury. And I was still nothing.

A caged siren. A goddess with her hands tied behind her back. I will remember this moment.

I will remember it all when I wreck their minds .

“You know, none of this would have happened if you had married me four years ago.” Draven’s paws caress my cheek, pushing a stray strand of hair behind my ear.

“You murdered my parents. I would never have married you after that.”

“And now you will have to choose.” He moved towards my grandma and pulled Elora to her side, binding her to the floor. His words registered when he gestured between them with his dagger.

“NO.” My voice raised, echoing in the silence. “I won’t choose. You want to marry fine. I will marry you, but I won’t choose.”

“You know, none of this would’ve happened if you had just married me four years ago.”

Draven’s voice slithered through the air like venom, his fingertips brushing my cheek with mock tenderness as he tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. His touch made my skin crawl.

“You murdered my parents,” I hissed, my voice splintering under the weight of old grief. “I would never have married you after that. Not then, and certainly not now.”

His eyes gleamed, not with love, never with love, but with victory. “Well… you’ll have to choose.”

He stepped back toward my grandmother, yanking Elora with him like she was nothing more than a rag-doll, her limbs limp, her body bruised and bloody.

He forced her to crouch beside the queen, binding them both with a flick of his cursed hand.

His dagger glinted in the low, flickering light as he gestured between them.

Something inside me cracked.

“NO!” My scream tore out of my throat, sharp and jagged, echoing through the stone walls. “You want a wife, fine. I’ll marry you. But I won’t choose between them. I won’t! ”

Draven’s grin widened into something grotesque. “I don’t believe you.”

He didn’t hesitate.

Didn’t flinch .

His blades flashed once, twice, and sank deep.

Their screams…

Gods.

Their screams were not from powerful sirens. They were the sounds of souls being ripped apart. The moment his daggers found flesh, the world stopped spinning.

My body buckled.

Ronan dropped to the ground beside me, his shadows vanishing like smoke in the wind, as if they, too, couldn’t bear to witness what had just been done.

Draven’s laugh filled the chamber, thick and triumphant, cutting through my rising hysteria. It curdled my blood. I couldn’t hear anything else, not my heartbeat, not my thoughts, just his laughter and the sound of them , the women I loved most, dying .

I stumbled forward, tail weak, hands outstretched, but everything felt slow, like I was wading through a nightmare that refused to end.

“No… no, no, no…” The words spill from me in a hoarse whisper, then a sob, then a scream. “Please!”

I dropped beside them. Blood, their blood, soaked into my skin, hot and vivid and far too real.

Elora convulsed once, her mouth twitching with pain, her gaze finding mine with a look I would never forget.

And my grandmother… gods, she looked so small .

Her radiant skin, once so fierce and commanding, was now pale gray and drenched in crimson.

Her chest rose in shallow, shuddering gasps.

“Don’t do this,” I begged, pressing my hands to their wounds, my tears blinding me. “Don’t leave me. Please, please don’t leave me. You’re going to be okay. You have to be okay.”

I was lying.

I was breaking .

Their blood clung to my hands, and I didn’t know where to push, what to seal, how to stop it. I couldn’t feel anything but the terror ripping through me, the pure wrongness of this moment. My sobs were ugly, wracking, guttural things that made my ribs ache.

“You’re okay,” I whispered again, voice shaking, as if saying it enough times would make it true. “You’re okay… you’re okay… please be okay…”

My grandmother’s hand fluttered over mine, the faintest pressure. Her lips parted, her voice nothing more than breath. “Iryen…save her, child.”

“No, don’t.” My voice cracked as I leaned in. “Don’t talk as if it’s over. You’re not going anywhere. I won’t let you.”