Page 79

Archer Lynch

It had been three months since Klaus died, and not a day passed where I didn’t see that final moment play out in my mind. I’d had a year to prepare for this, knowing the girl would eventually be summoned to the Serpent Academy to claim her father’s title. Still, I couldn’t say her name.

My grandfather had hosted my titling ceremony. I walked out halfway through. I couldn’t stomach the pomp, the polished smiles, the way they acted like I’d won something. I hadn’t. I’d lost everything.

Ciaran had gone into healing after Skyfall. I hadn’t seen her since, though I could feel her—faintly, distantly. But lately, she’d been in my thoughts more than ever.

His sister.

After the ceremony, I found my father on the balcony. I needed to ask about the Blanches. I needed to know if she was safe. Facing Victor was never easy, not since my mother died. But now, after failing him, after failing Klaus… it felt worse.

“So,” he said, fingers tapping the iron railing, “I see my bloodline wasn’t strong enough for you to win my title.”

“I didn’t choose my power, Father.”

“Weak,” he scoffed, draining his drink in one swallow. “Do you see what this makes me look like?”

“Maybe my mother was stronger,” I said. “You could accept that.”

He rolled his eyes. “Your worst traits were always hers.”

Victor knew how to piss me off. But so did I .

“I’m considering a trip to North Colindale,” I said evenly. “To offer aid. And to pay respects to Klaus’s family.”

“No. You are to stay away from the Blanches.”

My body tensed. “Father, I think I heard the daughter in my mind. I just need to understand why.”

Victor’s gaze snapped to mine. “Not this truemate nonsense. Has your grandfather poisoned you with fairy tales again?”

“What is a truemate?”

He let out a sigh. “Someone who strengthens your title. You don’t chase them. You don’t fall in love. You make a strategic choice. Your grandfather has a list of noble girls for you. That ice-wielder’s daughter? She belongs to Damien. Or Kian. Not you.”

“She’s not property.”

“She’s a deal. And you will not speak to her.” His hand clamped around my throat. “Or I will tear the sun from this land.”

I didn’t even think. I slammed my fist into his jaw, hard enough to split skin. “Get the fuck off my land.”

Victor wiped the blood from his mouth, smiling. “So you want war? Fine. When this realm starves, you’ll know who to blame.”

“I want Kian with me,” I growled. “You won’t touch him.”

Victor’s expression darkened. “You’ll never see him again. I’ll make sure of it.”

Gods, I wanted to kill him.

“We’ll see what happens if he gets his shadows,” I said. “If you hurt him, I’ll hurt you worse.”

Victor stepped in close. “Touch that girl, and I’ll turn every alliance I’ve built against you. You ruin everything you touch, son. Don’t pretend she’s anything more than a mistake waiting to happen.”

I didn’t speak. I didn’t trust myself to.

Because all I saw was red. I wanted to burn his legacy down to ash and make him watch as I claimed everything he said I’d destroy.

I had spent my entire life trying to earn his name, to carry it like it meant something.

And still, even now, he looked at me like I was nothing.

Maybe the mistake was believing I owed him anything at all.

He left that night. No goodbye. No parting threat. Just silence.

Before the sun rose, I boarded the first boat out of Demetria, bound for North Colindale.

Five days across the Amber Sea. I slept on deck with nothing beneath me but splintered planks and a sky I couldn’t look at without thinking of her.

The wind scalded my cheeks. I puked five times from the rocking.

Maybe more. I stopped counting after the first storm.

I hadn’t brought armor. Gods, I hadn’t even brought food. No coat thick enough for the North. No plan beyond the ache that drove me. Just one reckless decision and a voice I couldn’t silence.

Her voice.

Each night, I waited for it to return. Some echo in the bond. But it never came. By the fifth day, my lips had cracked. My throat was raw. My tongue felt like sandpaper. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d slept without dreaming of warmth.

When the ship finally docked, a sailor kicked the heel of my boot. His accent rasped like salt across old wounds. “Last port,” he barked. “Get off my dock, Serpent.”

I staggered down the gangway, legs cramping with every step. The solid ground betrayed me with its stillness. My boots cracked over frostbitten mud. I passed skeletal trees and broken fences. A stone marker too weathered to read.

Above, the sky spun in whipped flurries. The snow muffled everything. It was a cruel kind of silence. And when my knees finally gave out, I dropped into the snow.

“If you keep going, you’ll die,” Ciaran warned through the bond .

“I know,” I said. “But I need to see her.”

“Death is not the answer.”

“It’s frozen,” I whispered. “Everything fucking frozen here.”

“Your heart is, too. You’re dying, Archer.”

Then, like a blade through bone her voice slipped into me.

“Sivil, do you think we could make ice necklaces later today?”

Godsdamn ice necklaces. I was half-dead in a snowfield, barely breathing, frost crawling up my spine and cracks that I didn’t even know could freeze, and she wanted to make necklaces. With someone named Sivil?

But it wrecked me. Hearing her again shattered every wall I’d built to survive. Because I knew it was her. Not a dream. Not a memory.

Her.

I didn’t care that my lungs were failing. That my skin felt like stone. I had to see her. Even if it meant collapsing at her feet. Even if it meant begging her to release me from this bond she hadn’t even realized we shared.

So I walked.

I didn’t stop. Not when the cold cut through my leather. Not when my legs buckled beneath me. Not until the moon rose high, casting silver shadows across the village. Not until I reached the frozen path that wound toward her estate.

At the edge of the woods, I opened a portal.

I had marked it with shadows, using the last of my strength, just in case I didn’t make it back.

No . Not in case. I would survive. Even if she hated me, I’d return here.

Because the more I tried to forget her, the more I wanted her.

Maybe Father was right. Maybe I had lost my godsdamn mind.

Her estate rose above the lake, half-wood, half-stone. The iced trees bowed around it like quiet sentries. The garden on the left was dusted in frost .

And all I saw was Klaus.

It felt like stepping into a fairytale sculpted from frost and grief, and I wasn’t ready for this. I was the villain on her doorstep. I knew it. But still, I knocked.

“The post is here early,” came her voice inside my mind. Always clipped. Just small, fragmented pieces of thought.

A moment later, the iron door creaked open.

And there she was. Barefoot, wrapped in a sheer nightgown that clung to her skin like a second breath.

Her pale arms were folded tightly around her middle.

That streak of white framed her jaw with effortless perfection.

Her cheeks were flushed, kissed by sleep and cold.

Her lips were parted, like she’d just woken from a dream.

Through the thin fabric, her breasts peaked in the cold air. And gods, she had no idea how devastating she looked.

She didn’t speak. And that silence wrecked me more than any scream ever could. I was going to ruin her.

“Who are you?” she asked, voice hoarse with sleep. But the moment her eyes landed on the shadow relic in my palm, realization struck.

My face had been plastered across every Serpent Press headline. She knew who I was.

“He looks cold. I should invite him in… he’s a Serpent, it would be rude not to.”

No. If she spoke what she was thinking, if she asked, I wouldn’t have the strength to walk away. I’d give her every broken piece of myself and take whatever parts of her she was willing to offer.

No, I wouldn’t stop there. I’d ruin her for the rest of the world and sleep soundly after. I wasn’t ready for her.

I needed someone to slap me. Or drag me into a snowbank and keep me there until this obsession froze off .

She was Klaus’s sister. That should have been enough to keep these thoughts away.

“Who are you?” she asked.

But through her thoughts, I heard something else. “He needs a shower and food. I could bring him up to my room and have Sivil thaw some soup.”

Her room? She didn’t even know me. Fuck, she had no sense of danger.

Then she rolled her shoulders back, and the strap of her dress slipped down her arm. “Did you want to co—”

“Klaus is dead,” I said.

Silence crashed between us.

Shit. Not like that. That wasn’t the plan. I was supposed to give the letter to her father, maybe read her part aloud if I could stomach it. But I hadn’t even looked at what Klaus wrote. For all I knew, it could have been a confession. A goodbye. Or a joke cruel enough to outlive him.

But the moment I saw her, everything else vanished. All I could think about was the weight of what I carried, and the way she looked at me, like she might ask me in. Like she wanted to.

I had to stop her. Because if she did, I wouldn’t hesitate. I’d follow her through that door and into her bed. And gods help me, I wasn’t ready for her. I knew myself too well. I’d run. And I’d leave her in ruin.

There was no logic left in my skull. Only her.

She blinked. “What?”

And those damn tears filled her eyes, green and endless and wrecked. I was drowning in them.

A shout split the quiet. It was Andri, her father. His boots slammed over the wooden flooring. He barreled past me, yanking her behind him like I was the monster at the door.

“You can’t take her,” he snarled. “Tell your father the bargain is over. ”

“I didn’t come to take her.”

But then her voice shattered inside my head. He’s dead. He’s dead.

Andri’s stare bore into me. He knew who I was. What I wanted. And gods, after the thoughts I’d just had of her in that nightgown, I probably deserved to die for it.

“Why are you here?” he demanded.

I swallowed. “I came to tell you that your son, Klaus, was my friend.” A breath hitched in my chest. “And he’s dead.”

“I know,” he said. Then the door slammed in my face.

I stood there in the freezing dark, shadows twitching at my fingertips, grief coiled tight around my throat like a collar.

She didn’t even know.

But he did?

Klaus once told me his father was terrifying on most days, but I’ll admit, having a seven-foot man shout in your face really cements the memory. Still, I didn’t move. Not at first. Because right then, I learned three things.

First, I’d never let Damien or Kian marry her.

Second, Severyn Blanche would hate me for what I just told her.

And third, I wanted her. Not just tonight. Not just once. I wanted her to be mine. Only mine.

And in the end, I was. At least, that’s what Klaus’s Seeker journals claimed. I’d take her, brand her as mine, and destroy her in the same breath.

There was one last story he wrote about us. The undoing of it all. Maybe that was the curse—knowing parts of it and wanting it anyway.

Still, I hoped tonight was the beginning of her unraveling. Because if I was the villain in her story, at least I’d be written into every page. I’d be the shadow at her back, the fire in her blood, the name she could never quite forget .

And the story he started about us? He never finished it.

But I will, even if it means becoming the thing she has to destroy.

Even if it means we burn before the last chapter ends.