Page 11 of The Rivaled Crown (The Veiled Kingdom #3)

CHAPTER 11

VERENA

I was drowning, engulfed by an unrelenting wave of agony.

It pressed against me, dragging me under, deeper and deeper, until there was no light, no breath, no escape.

All I could feel was the vessel.

Time blurred in this darkness; seconds stretched into hours, hours into eternity, broken only by the relentless cycle of torment.

The vessel coiled around me like a venomous snake, tightening its grip with each passing moment.It fed on my suffering and drained my magic until there was nothing left to take.

But somehow, it found more.

I screamed until my voice was hoarse, pleading with my father to make it stop. I begged him.

But mercy wasn’t a trait my father possessed.

He hardly glanced at me while my lips split and started to bleed; he didn’t seem to hear me even as my throat grew raw and shredded from the screams that now lingered as silent echoes in my mind.

I wanted to fight against this, against him, against the way I seemed to meld with the vessel, my very bones aching until they no longer felt like they were my own. But I had no fight left.

The floor beneath my knees was unforgiving, cold stone biting into my skin with every movement I made, but it was the silence that crawled beneath my skin and laced every inch of me with fear that I couldn’t escape.

Because the silence meant he was waiting, waiting for me to beg again, for me to give into what he wanted.

But I didn’t know what else I could give him, what was left of me that he hadn’t already taken.

The vessel still pulsed before me. I could feel it, a monstrous thing that breathed in tandem with me, its hunger curling inside my chest. It was alive, ancient, unrelenting, and it wanted me to bend to its will.

The force of it was tugging at my magic, twisting it with relentless intensity, its threads gradually unraveling me with each ragged breath we shared. I could feel its invasive presence as it compelled my magic outward, allowing my siphon to gently brush against each person in the room. It was as if we were cautiously sampling their magic, savoring the unique taste of each individual, calculating precisely what it intended for me to absorb to appease its insatiable hunger.

It was as if my very being had been reduced to a dwindling flame, flickering and fading with each passing moment. The vessel rushed through me like a wind, plucking at the threads of my magic, unraveling me bit by bit.

“She’s close,” my father mused, his voice a quiet, calculated thing, as though he were watching an experiment unfold before him. “Verena, let go. Let the vessel take care of you.”

I turned to look at him, my movements so swift my vision seemed to lag behind. I fixed my gaze on my father, on the man whose blood ran through my veins, a river of history that bound us in our fates.

The vessel paused, reluctant to reach out, but I urged it forward, compelling it to sweep over his skin until I could feel the power that dwelled within him, the very magic that he had passed down to me.

I needed to see for myself, to discern how much like him I had already become.

But the moment we touched him, I recoiled.

It was a visceral assault on my senses, like sinking my teeth into rotting fruit, its blood and decay flooding my mouth. His magic didn’t feel like anything that I recognized, there was no reflection of the power that pulsed with me.

He was a vacant shell, a husk of a man, with blackened bones.

He felt like death.

Micah stood rigidly by his side, his posture portraying an unsettling stiffness, while an overwhelming wave of pity washed across his face as he gazed down at me. The power inside me churned restlessly as I took in the familiar features of someone I had once cared for so deeply.

I felt a serpentine chill weave through me as my hatred rose, dark and menacing, to the surface, and the vessel purred inside my veins, lapping up my anger as if it was the very thing it had been craving all along.

And that feeling inside me, it did nothing but fuel the surge of loathing I felt for Micah at what he had become. The leverage my father held over him was irrelevant as he stood there, a silent sentinel beside my father, as if his allegiance was undeniably pledged to him, and the sight seared a permanent mark of betrayal into me.

Just as he had been the one to mark my skin with the rebellion sigil what felt like an eternity ago.

He had told me then that it would protect me, but he lied.

We were nothing but two traitors whose fates were undeniably linked, but we were as lost today as the day we had found one another.

I forced myself to look away from him, and I pushed my trembling hands against the stone. Bolts of agony lanced through my body, but I forced myself to lean back, bracing my weight against my palms until I could look my father in the eye.

I refused to give in to what he wanted, but he was going to take it either way. Even if my body shattered beneath me or the power tore me apart. He would get what he wanted, but it would not be given willingly.

The moment I raised my head, my father’s eyes glinted with dark amusement.

“Still fighting it?” His voice held a dangerous edge as he stepped forward, his boots dragging across the floor.

My body screamed at me to stay down, still trembling from what I had seen within him, but I would not bow before him.

He was no king of mine.

“Isn’t this what you wanted?” I rasped, my hands shaking visibly against the stone.

His expression flickered, his lips pressing into a thin line as he tucked his hands into his pockets and leaned against the vessel without a trace of fear. “I’ve been ashamed of you, Verena.” He cocked his head and watched me for a reaction. “The heir to the greatest kingdom in the world, and she turned out as useless as her mother.”

I jerked back, flinching as if I could protect myself from his words, but pain ripped through my body.

“A weak, pitiful thing that would bring ruin to this kingdom.”

The vessel beneath my trembling hands seemed to throb with a vibrant, almost palpable intensity. Its surface quivered and shimmered in response to the storm of emotions churning within me. I couldn’t discern whether it was my fury that fueled its relentless energy or if my inability to maintain control had somehow become the sustenance it craved.

“You don’t have to be.” My father squatted before me until he stared directly into my eyes, so close that I could reach forward and touch him. “You’re trying to control it, but you need to relent. Give in, Verena, and I can show you power like you’ve never dreamed.”

He reached his hand out, skimming his fingers over mine, and his mouth dropped open with a sigh as his eyes rolled closed.

“It calls to you,” he murmured, his words almost euphoric. “It knows you as it knows me.”

“I am nothing like you.” There was no conviction in my voice because I could feel it, the way I was changing. “You are going to destroy us just as you did Veyrith, and our people hate you for it. The rebellion…”

His pupils flared until the inkiness leached every bit of color from his narrowed eyes before his magic lashed out at me, slamming into my chest.

I hit the ground with a sickening thud and the breath was knocked from my lungs. I tried to scramble to my knees, but another wave of power crashed into me, searing against my skin like fire.

I choked on ash.

My father crouched before me, gripping my chin between his fingers and forcing me to look up at him. His touch was like flames and his magic unfurled along my skin as if he were staining me with his corrosion.

“You’ve always been a foolish girl,” he sneered, his voice laced with cruelty. “Clinging to false hope, to people who abandon you so willingly.”

I tried to twist free of his hold, but his grip only tightened, threatening to crack my jaw.

“They can’t save you,” he taunted. “And they won’t. People only love you when you have power, Verena, and the vessel will give you more power than you’ve ever dreamed of.”

I clenched my teeth, trying to block him out.

“You talk of Veyrith, but it will be you who brings ruin to Marmoris. You are fighting me, fighting the vessel, and in doing so, you will damn them all.”

His grip tightened, and my teeth ached as if they were on the verge of cracking. “Give in to the vessel, Verena. Give in or you can watch as the kingdom burns at your hand.”

Heat seared my chest. It started as a flicker, a small, pulsing ember, barely noticeable beneath the pain.

But then it grew.

“I’m not capable of what you want.” It wasn’t a lie. I could feel the vessel destroying me from within, eating at my very soul. My mother had said he needed a siphon, that he needed someone powerful, and I felt more powerless now than I ever had before.

Powerless to the agony that ate at me, but something else surged inside me, a heat, fierce and wild, slicing through the suffocating pull of the vessel like a blade against taut rope. It didn’t demand, didn’t take. It reached for me. Steady. Unyielding . A lifeline.

I gasped as it wrapped around my ribs, burning through my veins with a desperate kind of fury, anchoring me when everything else was unraveling.

Dacre.

I felt him. Not a fleeting thread at the edges of my mind, not the ghost of a bond I feared had been severed.Real. Solid. Here.

A shock wave of warmth surged through me; a force so fierce it nearly knocked the breath from my lungs.His presence roared through my veins, fighting against the vessel’s grip,fighting for me.

A strangled gasp tore from my throat, my body trembling under the weight of it, of him. He wasn’t just close. He was here.

And my father knew something had changed. I could see it in the way his gaze sharpened, the way he frantically looked over my features as if trying to find it.

He leaned in, his breath ghosting across my face like poison. “I will break you, Verena. Just as I broke your mother.”

Magic crashed into me before I could brace for it. A searing tide, violent and relentless, dragging me under, splintering me apart. Pain shot through my body, sharp as shattered glass, and a scream wrenched from my throat.

It was unnatural, the way his magic hit me. Not like a force striking from the outside, but something ripping through me from within. Like his power wasn’t his at all, but something stolen, something pulled from the same source that was trying to devour me.

The vessel.

It was his tether, his lifeline, and I could feel it now, the way he needed me.

I was like a channel, a link that let him take from the vessel without it taking from him, a siphon carved from his own flesh.

He was wielding my pain, my magic, the vessel, and turning it against me. Every ounce of suffering, every drop of agony that seeped into my veins from the vessel, he was feeding from it, drinking it in, and twisting it into a blade aimed straight at me.

My body seized, every nerve raw and flayed open as his magic pushed through me, siphoning everything I had left to give. I choked, my fingers clawing at the stone beneath me, but there was nothing to hold on to.

Because I wasn’t just breaking, I was being consumed.

The warmth in my chest staggered, faltered, and, for one terrifying second, it flickered out.

Panic surged with the pain, wild and destructive. No. I reached for it, for him, for the one thing that still felt real as my father’s power tore into me like talons sinking into flesh. I would not lose him.

I sank my nails into the bond, digging deep, desperate. Focusing on nothing but Dacre. Only him. His magic curled against the tattered edges of mine, a wildfire against the cold.

It was him and me, and it was the only thing I allowed myself to focus on.

He was the only thing I wanted to feel when I finally broke.

The ground groaned beneath me, a deep, guttural sound that rattled through the stone like the castle itself was coming apart. The very walls shuddered, trembling under an unseen weight, as if something far greater than us had been set into motion.

Something unstoppable.

“Dacre.” His name slipped past my lips, a breathless, desperate thing. A prayer. A plea. A promise.

And then the world exploded. A deafening blast ripped through the chamber as the door exploded outward, shards of stone and splintered iron sent flying like shrapnel. A shock wave tore through the room, a force so violent it sent cracks splintering across the floor beneath me, stretching out like jagged veins.

Dust and debris billowed into the air, swallowing the chamber in a choking fog of ruin.

The guard barely had time to react before a blade flashed through the haze, cutting through flesh like parchment. A sharp, wet gasp, his blood pooling across the broken stone.

And then, through the wreckage, through the smoke, I saw him.

Micah was already moving, his blade flashing as he tore through the chaos. But my father turned just as Dacre dropped his guard to the ground.

Dacre’s dagger was still dripping red and glinting, his chest heaving, his body taut with fury. His eyes locked on to mine, searing, wild, alive, and something inside me shattered.

There was no hesitation. No thought. No fear.

Just power.

Magic detonated from my chest, a raw, untamed storm. The walls trembled, torches sputtered, the air itself seemed to fracture under the force of it. A blast of energy roared outward, tearing through the chamber.

My father barely managed to lift his arm before the blast slammed into him, sending him careening across the room. His body collided with the vessel, the impact so violent that a deafening crack split the air. The vessel shuddered in response, its eerie glow flickering wildly.

Dacre was already lunging for me. A snarl on his lips. Blood in his teeth.

Micah turned to Dacre, his blade flashing in the dim torchlight, his posture rigid with deadly intent. “Get her and go!” he shouted.

But my father was already climbing back to his feet.

Blood dripped from my father’s mouth, and still, he smiled. The fury pouring from him was a living thing, slithering through the air like a snake coiling around its prey.

I tried to move, tried to stand, but my body betrayed me.

A jagged bolt of pain ripped through my limbs, locking them in place, my muscles trembling and useless. I gasped, but even that felt like too much effort. My vision fractured at the edges, dark spots clouding my sight.

I had used too much magic, too fast. My father had drawn too much power from me, from the vessel. Gods, the vessel, it was still there, drinking me down to the marrow. It was pulling, pulling, pulling, devouring everything I had left, dragging me to the edge of nothing.

“Verena!” Dacre’s voice slammed through the haze, sharp and desperate.

I forced my head up, searching for him, my heart a frantic, stuttering thing. His eyes were wild, blazing with a fear I had never seen before. He reached for me, but before he could touch me, my father moved. Faster than I had ever seen him move before.

A black current of magic lashed from his palm, cutting through the air like a whip of pure darkness, magic that I had seen fall from my own hands before.

It struck Dacre in the chest, hard, brutal, merciless, and the impact sent him flying. He crashed into the stone wall with a sickening crack, his body folding in on itself, his breath ripping from his lungs in a choked grunt.

My world fractured.

“Dacre!” His name tore from my throat, raw, broken, the only thing I could still feel.

But he didn’t move.

My father barely spared me a glance as he advanced on Dacre, slow and measured, a predator savoring the kill. His lips curled into a sneer, but his posture was too relaxed, too composed.

But I could feel it, I could feel his rage.

It coiled through his veins like black poison, a deadly, creeping thing, waiting to strike again. He was pulling it from me, the magic to kill my mate.

“You’ve come a long way just to die,” my father mused, rolling his shoulders, as if this was nothing. As if Dacre wasn’t worth the effort.

But Dacre finally moved. He shoved himself off the wall, staggering just for a second before he snarled like an animal. Murder burned behind his gaze, hot and feral. His dagger gleamed in his grip, its tip still wet with blood. His own blood dripped from his nose, from the corner of his mouth, but he didn’t care.

Because he wasn’t looking at my father. He was looking at me.

And there was something primal in his eyes. Something reckless and unyielding.

He was going to kill my father; he was desperate to end him.

But he was going to fail.

I knew it, felt it.

The power inside me swelled, a pressure so vast, so crushing. My father was pulling harder now, ripping at the vessel with a hunger so vicious it felt like the very walls of the palace might collapse under the weight of his greed.

More. More. More.

He was drawing too much, and it was enough to tear this place apart, to shatter stone and bone alike.

Enough to kill Dacre, and I couldn’t let that happen.

Dacre lunged. A flash of steel, a blur of motion, a death sentence carved in the air.

The room detonated into chaos. I tried to move, tried to scream, tried to reach him, but I had no control, the vessel’s power coiled around my ribs like iron bindings as it flowed through me and into my father.

Dacre’s dagger collided against my father’s blade, the impact sending a burst of sparks skittering across the stone. But I could see it, feel it.

My father was toying with him.

No, no, no.

Magic crackled through the air, a suffocating storm of power that made my skin prickle and burn as I forced myself onto my knees. I could barely track their movements, their figures weaving between light and shadow, the clash of metal a brutal symphony.

Dacre was fast. But somehow, my father was faster.

Every strike, every vicious thrust of Dacre’s dagger, every deadly arc, my father countered with ease. As if he had been waiting for this fight.

The power rolling off them shook the chamber. The torches lining the walls flickered wildly, shadows twisting and writhing like specters against the stone.

A dagger whistled through the air, a silver streak aimed for my father’s throat. My father shifted, dark magic bursting from his palm, and the dagger hit the ground with a sharp clatter.

Another dagger flew through the air, faster than the last, and a strangled sob tore from my throat.

Kai’s gaze flicked back to the guard before him, to the guard who now charged against Wren. They had come. They were fighting.

Kai’s hand moved like smoke catching in the wind, and another dagger soared through the air, but magic collided with steel as the dagger didn’t meet its mark.

Dacre’s movements turned desperate, sharp and brutal, a warrior refusing to fall.

But I could feel it, the shift inside me, the sickening pull of my father’s power as it bled through me, siphoning from me.

His hunger slid down my throat, a taste that wasn’t my own. It coated my tongue, like the moment before a beast strikes, when hunger becomes certainty, when the kill is inevitable.

I could already taste his satisfaction, the ruin, the power.

And I knew if I didn’t move, if I didn’t stop this, Dacre was going to die.

Dacre staggered, his body folding as his knees slammed into the stone. The sound cracked through me, louder than any thunder, sharper than any blade.

I couldn’t bear to watch. I would not lose him.

With every ounce of strength I had left, I clawed my way up, my hands slipping against the cold, unforgiving ground. My breath came in ragged gasps, shallow and trembling, my body a battlefield of agony.

But I couldn’t stop.

Not when Dacre was still fighting for me. Not when the bond between us strained, screamed, a raw wound torn wide open.

A distant shout cut through the haze, followed by the roar of boots pounding against stone. There were more guards. A wave of them. I could hear their steel hissing from their sheaths, could feel the death they carried rushing toward us.

Micah cursed violently, darting forward to intercept them, his blade a flash of silver as he cut down the first guard to reach the doorway.

I froze.

Micah.

He moved like a man possessed, blade carving through flesh without hesitation, without mercy. Not for my father. Not for the king he was sworn to protect as a part of his guard.

A sharp, bitter taste coated my tongue. He showed no loyalty to my father, and my mind staggered under the weight of it.

He had been standing beside my father, watching, guarding, but now he was killing for me.

The hate I had clung to curled in on itself, twisting into something else, something sharp-edged and uncertain.

“Wren!” I screamed for her, my voice shaking, raw.

She was already moving, already sprinting toward me. She dropped to her knees, her hands skimming over my face, my shoulders, searching for injuries even as she trembled.

“We have to go.” Her voice wavered, but her grip on me was strong, urgent. “Come, Verena. We have to get out.”

A laugh slithered through the room, cold and tainted with amusement. The sound wrapped around me like a slow-working poison, seeping into my pores, winding into my lungs.

“Foolish.” My father’s voice was silk and steel, a quiet thing that promised devastation.

He lifted one hand, palm open, poised to strike, while the other pressed firmly against the vessel. He was still tethered to it, still taking. I wasn’t giving him enough.

A violent wrenching tore through my chest, a force so brutal it felt as if my very soul was being unspooled from the inside out. The vessel, my father, ripped into me, an unrelenting pull that sent ice flooding through my veins. He was taking everything.

A jagged scream caught in my throat as my body lurched forward.

Magic, black and violent, exploded outward. I barely had time to see it coming before the force of it slammed into Wren.

Her strangled gasp hit the air as she was flung backward, her body colliding hard into Kai’s. They crashed to the ground in a heap of tangled limbs, and the sharp, wet sound of impact sent nausea curling up my throat.

The room fractured into chaos. A wall of guards surged into the chamber, their footsteps thundering against the stone floor. Micah still fought near the doorway, his blade a silver blur, desperation etched into every strike. He was fighting, cutting them down, but there were too many.

“Shit, Wren.” Kai had Wren’s head in his hands, his fingers pressing against the deep gash at her temple, blood slicking his palms.

His magic curled at his fingertips, but I could see it, the trembling, the way his body sagged with exhaustion. He was too drained. And Wren wasn’t moving.

The world fractured around me, spinning too fast, tilting at an angle that sent me reeling. I couldn’t find my footing, couldn’t find my breath. I was drowning in the chaos, in the blood, in the screams.

And they were fighting for me.

I saw Kai’s hands slick with Wren’s blood. I saw Micah outnumbered, the guards slamming into him now from every side. I saw Dacre, still on his knees, breath ragged, pain twisting his features.

They were fighting, and they were losing.

Dying.

A sound ripped from my throat, raw and feral, a scream that wasn’t just pain, wasn’t just rage. It was terror. The storm inside me was snapping, convulsing, the magic twisting, desperate to be free.

I fought it, fought to hold it in, but it was too wild. Too much. It burned, crackling against my ribs, pushing against the fragile barriers of my body until I thought I might shatter.

I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to control it, tried to tame it.

My nails bit into my palms until the skin split, my teeth sank into my lip, copper flooding my tongue, but still the magic didn’t obey.

It roared.

A surge of raw, electrifying energy erupted inside me, bursting through every fiber of my being like a dam breaking and unleashing a raging torrent. It flooded through my veins and consumed me completely until I could no longer tell where the magic ended and I began.

My body thrummed, the power inside me pulsing, seething. It licked up my spine, curled around my ribs, and settled into my bones, a symphony of fire and fury.

And still, I let it consume me.

I opened my eyes, and the world blurred in heat and rage. My father stood just beyond Dacre, smiling. His cruelty dripped from him like poison, his pleasure thick in the air, feeding off the torment he had crafted.

And Dacre was on his knees, bleeding, gasping, reaching for me.

Panic and fury ignited inside me, fusing into something uncontrollable. Power swelled, raged, howled for destruction, for vengeance.

My father’s hand lifted, fingers curling into a fist, aimed at Dacre.

Another scream tore from my throat, feral, broken, unstoppable. “No!”

Dacre was closer to me now, so close, but I couldn’t reach him. I couldn’t stop this.

I reached out for him, a sob tearing from my lips, and a raw, uncontrollable force erupted from my chest, a storm of unbound, raging magic. The entire chamber convulsed, the ground cracking beneath me.

The air shook as the magic swallowed everything, sending everyone in the room flying.

Through the chaos, my gaze snapped to the Sight. She stood unmoving, untouched by the devastation, her white hair gleaming like a specter in the dark. Her eyes were glassy, distant, as if seeing something none of us could.

A whisper curled through my mind. A tide, a choice, a reckoning.

But I had no time to decipher its meaning, no time to dwell on the destruction I had wrought, because Dacre was still on the ground.

His pain lanced through our bond, a raw, visceral thing, and I pushed myself up, my legs trembling beneath me as I staggered forward. The vessel shook with every step, a furious, writhing beast inside me, but I didn’t care.

I called out to it, not as a prisoner, not as a pawn. I demanded that it bow before me, that it bend to my will.

The air was thick with smoke, the sting of burning magic curling in my throat, but I barely registered it. Because the moment I stood, my father struck.

Dark power slammed into me, crushing, suffocating, wrapping around my throat like iron chains. He was still trying to control me, still trying to own me, but I wasn’t his to command.

Not anymore.

“That’s it, Verena.” His voice was a ragged, breathless thing, but still, he smiled.

He leaned against the vessel, one arm wrapped around his ribs, his breathing uneven, but his eyes never left me.

Studying me. Weighing me.

“You feel it now, don’t you?” he murmured, almost reverent. “What you are? What you can be?”

Something inside me twisted. I wanted to hurt him. Gods, I wanted to watch him break the way he had broken me. I wanted to take Dacre’s dagger and carve him apart, piece by piece, until there was nothing left but the wreckage of a man who had spent his life taking.

“Look what you’re capable of,” he said, voice dripping with approval. “Feel how powerful you’ve become.”

The magic inside me preened at his words, basked in them, and bile rose in my throat.

This was what he wanted. This was what he had always wanted. To twist me into something he could use. To make me love the power the way he did.

Once, I might have given anything to be this girl, to be the heir he had always wanted, but that girl was dead.

Magic roared through me, writhing, as if it couldn’t decide who it belonged to, who I belonged to.

But it slowed as we felt him. A sharp, searing pulse through my bond. Dacre’s desperation cut through me like a razor, slicing through the storm inside me, dragging me back from the abyss.

I snapped my gaze toward him just as he staggered to his feet, blood staining his skin, his face twisted into a snarl of rage.

“I’ll kill every one of them.” The words slithered through the air, and everything inside me froze.

I turned to my father, my pulse a deafening roar in my ears as I tracked his gaze, not on me, not on Dacre.

On them, Wren and Kai.

Kai was hauling Wren to her feet, his hands steady, but his eyes locked on to my father with pure, unfiltered rage. His lip curled back, teeth bared, like a wolf ready to tear out his throat.

“Don’t fucking touch them.” The words ripped from me, low and guttural, a snarl that barely felt like my own. I moved before I could think, shifting just enough to block his view of them, a silent threat.

His eyes slid past me as if I were nothing, and they landed on Dacre.

“Him, then?” He tilted his head, thoughtful.

His hands rose, one toward Dacre, the other toward my friends. Smoke curled from his fingertips, thick and black, dripping like oil. “Rulers must make hard decisions, Verena.” His voice was almost gentle, deceptive. A father teaching a lesson to a child. “Sacrifice becomes a necessary evil.”

The words twisted through me. Not them. Not him.

They were not a sacrifice I was willing to make.

My magic crackled, violent and untamed, scorching through me in a frenzied, brutal surge, and I didn’t hold it back. Didn’t restrain it. Didn’t let him speak another fucking word.

I let it loose. A vicious, feral wave of power—mine.

It slammed into him with a force that sent him hurtling back, his body crashing into the vessel, hard enough that taste of ash flooded my mouth as I felt his bone snap.

The guards staggered, hesitated, and I felt it. Their fear. I could taste it, could feel it seep into the air like smoke. I fed on it.

“You will not touch them,” I said, and my own voice felt wrong. Deeper. Rougher. Something more.

I rolled my neck, feeling the raw power licking up my skin, wrapping around my bones like a flame. And my father laughed.

Low, breathless, but not as calm as before. There was something else beneath it now. A crack in the foundation.

But still, he smiled.

“I can feel it,” he murmured, bracing himself against the vessel, steadying himself like a man gripping on to the last threads of his own power. “The way you have responded to it, and it to you.”

I bared my teeth. I wanted to snarl, to spit my denial, to force him to choke on his own words, but he was right.

I could feel it slipping through my ribs, whispering through my veins, weaving itself into the marrow of my bones.

Not my father’s power, not my own. The vessel’s.

It wanted me. It was still taking, still pulling, whispering, begging— stay, stay, stay.

“No.” My voice wasn’t steady, wasn’t sure, but I said it anyway as my stomach turned.

I shook my head, tried to shake the thing inside me loose, and my father’s smile widened.

“Do you feel your pain fading?” He straightened, pulled himself up fully. “Think of what it could do, what we could do together.”

I blinked. The pain that had once torn through me like razors, the agony that had stolen my breath, I could hardly feel it anymore, could barely feel anything except the way it moved within me.

Strong arms wrapped around me, pulling me back, and Dacre’s breath was at my ear, warm, urgent.

“Verena,” he murmured, and I could barely hear him. “We have to go. Now.”

The bond between us roared back to life, a fierce tug-of-war against the vessel’s hold. I was being pulled in two directions, my mind splitting, unraveling, caught in a haze of power and need.

A dagger flew through the air, the blade sinking into my father’s shoulder, and he let out a snarl of pain as my gaze snapped to Kai.

Dacre didn’t wait for the impact to settle. “We’re leaving!” he barked, but Kai was already moving, already lifting Wren, heading for the door.

The power inside me paused. It slowly pulled against me, but Dacre didn’t give me a choice, didn’t give it a choice.

His arms tightened, his grip unrelenting as he lifted me from my feet.

I sucked in a breath. The vessel was screaming, humming, begging. I could still feel it reaching for me, its claws in my skin, its voice in my head.

I couldn’t control it, couldn’t break it.

There were so many guards, so many obstacles that kept us locked in this palace, and I could feel the weight of them pressing in, a force we couldn’t outrun.

Micah was still fighting, blood slipping from a wound on his arm. Kai’s magic flared, a last-ditch attempt as he took out another guard, his exhaustion written in the slow drag of his stance.

They were all tired. They weren’t going to make it out. We weren’t going to make it.

Something inside me coiled, twisting tight, too tight, and then, Dacre’s hand was on my face. His thumb brushed my cheek, calloused and warm, his grip steady, grounding.

“Verena.”

A whisper.

A plea.

I locked on to him, on to the bond between us, on to the only thing keeping me from losing myself completely.

And I did the only thing I could do. I let go.

Not of myself. Not of him.

But of the vessel’s hold.

And in its place, my own magic answered.

It ripped free from my chest, an explosion that sent the entire chamber quaking. Stone cracked, torches winked out, and the guards were flung back, their swords clattering against the stone.

Even Kai was sent to his knees, his hands bracing against the floor before he pushed himself up, reaching for Wren.

Dacre tightened his hold, his arms unrelenting as he sprinted toward the stairs.

The chamber trembled behind us, the vessel raging like a violent sea.

Micah was at our backs, Kai and Wren ahead, leading the way through the falling debris.

I looked back.

And the last thing I saw was my father.

Still on his knees, blood dripping from his nose, and his gaze locked on to mine.

His rage.

His hatred.

But beneath it?—

A flicker of something else.

Fear.