Page 7 of The Rivaled Crown (The Veiled Kingdom #3)

CHAPTER 7

VERENA

T he scent of lavender hung heavy in the air, curling through the room like a whispered lullaby. It was suffocating, too sweet, too cloying. Once, it had been a comfort.

Now, it was a lie. This was not my home.

I traced a trembling finger along the windowsill, feeling the cool stone beneath my fingertips. The sun dipped below the horizon, setting fire to the sky, as gold and orange melted into the deep blue water of the sea.

My stomach ached as I watched the waves roll in against the shore. The sea felt as restless as I did.

As a child, I had dreamed of what lay beyond it, of places untouched by my father’s power. Of freedom. But now, when I looked at it, I thought only of Dacre.

I had begged the gods for years to let me leave this place, to be free of its walls and whispered cruelties. And when I’d finally escaped, it hadn’t been to freedom. It had been to war. To a rebellion that saw me as nothing more than my father’s daughter.

But Dacre had been different. He looked at me like I was more than a crown, more than a weapon, and I had allowed myself to hope for things with him that I had never wished for before.

But that hope had slipped through my fingers like the sea slipped through the sand.

The water stretched out before me, vast and endless. White foam bubbled and frothed at the crest of each wave, taunting me with the fact that freedom was right before me, yet the roots of who I was kept me buried on land.

Buried in this palace.

My roots were buried deep in the very place I had prayed to the gods I would never return to.

A hollow ache spread through my chest, a heavy weight that no amount of rest or sleep would alleviate. I dragged myself away from the window and collapsed onto the silk sheets. My muscles tensed as I tried to force my eyes shut, knowing that sleep wouldn’t bring me peace, but rather another battlefield in my mind.

But my body was too heavy with exhaustion to fight it, and the dream came swiftly, just like those waves crashing against the shore.

It was inescapable.

I was still in my room, but it was different. Shadows stretched long across the walls, flickering like candlelight. And beneath the thick perfume of lavender, I caught another scent.

Vanilla.

Familiar. Comforting. I turned, my heart pounding as I frantically searched the room, and there she was.

My mother stood at the foot of my bed, her emerald eyes soft and knowing. Her dark hair cascading over her shoulders, untouched by time.

I had spent years trying to remember the exact curve of her smile, the precise shade of green in her eyes. But now, standing before me, she was as vivid as the last day I had seen her.

“Come, Vee.” Her voice was a gentle hum, threading through the silence like a melody I had almost forgotten.

I hesitated, my throat tightening.No one had called me that since she died.

She stretched out a hand, waiting for me to take it. I reached for her, desperate to feel the warmth of her skin, but my fingers passed through hers like mist.

She didn’t seem to notice.

“Mama?”

“You found your power,” she said, studying me as though she could see the magic curled beneath my skin.

I swallowed as I shook my head. “I don’t know what I’ve found.”

“It’s been waiting for you,” she murmured, lifting a hand to brush against my cheek. The touch sent a shiver through me, not quite there, yet somehow more real than anything I’d felt in what seemed like forever.

“We don’t have much time.”

The room shifted suddenly. The scent of lavender was gone, the sea breeze disappeared, and my nose burned as it was replaced with moss and earth and decay. Damp stone surrounded us, the walls pulsing with veins of gold, shimmering faintly like trapped starlight.

I didn’t recognize this place, yet it somehow felt like a memory.

A well loomed in the center of the chamber. Dark. Pulsing. Alive.

A sense of unease crept over me as I tentatively took a small step forward.Whatever was in the well seemed to shift like a living creature, constantly pulsing between hues of gold and sickly green.

I took another step closer, and I could feel it.

My mother’s hand, gentle yet firm, caught me by my wrist and snapped me out of the trance. She shook her head ever so slightly.

“What is this?” I whispered.

“The last of them,” she said. “The last vessel.”

A chill wrapped around my spine, and she exhaled as she stepped forward, pressing a hand against the well’s edge.

“The vessel was never meant to be ruled by one kingdom,” she murmured. “It was a covenant. A balance. Created by the five nations, each with their own vessel, each sharing magic freely across the lands.”

She lifted her gaze to mine. “It was never meant to be hoarded. Never meant to be drained.”

Dread settled in my stomach as my father’s words echoed in my mind, the way he spoke of the tithe, of his right to take what he needed.

“What happened?” I asked, and my mother’s expression hardened.

“Marmoris was not content with balance,” she said. “One by one, the other kingdoms fell. Their vessels lost. Until only this one remained.”

I clenched my fists. “Father.”

She nodded. “And the kings before him. But your father promised peace. He promised an alliance. And I believed him.”

Her voice trembled.

“And so had my father.” Her eyes searched mine. “We were the final two kingdoms, the two lands desperate to survive, and I thought that he wanted peace as badly as I did. He had convinced me with his words, with the way he made me fall for him.”

She swallowed hard, and her eyes glittered with unshed tears. “I had loved your father, and I had believed in him. Until it was too late.”

The truth struck like lightning.

“You were…” I swallowed.

She let out a slow, shuddering breath.

“The King of Veyrith,” she whispered,”was my father.”

Everything inside me went still. The world around me blurred, the glow of the vessel suddenly too bright, too sharp. I staggered back.

“No,” I choked.

I had grown up hearing tales of Veyrith, whispered bedtime stories that she would tell me of a make-believe world that thrived and flourished. She would tell of their people, of their lore, and all that time, I hadn’t known.

My mother had been their princess.

“Veyrith is real?” I asked, although I knew the truth; it hummed inside me, leaving no room for doubt.

“It was.” She nodded, but her eyes shuddered. “But that land was long ago turned to ash, its people a sacrifice my father never agreed to make.”

I clutched my stomach, bile rising in my throat.

“Our vessel was failing, and our land with it.” She glanced toward the vessel before us. “Marmoris had grown too powerful, the share of magic unbalanced between the kingdoms.” She looked back at me. “I was betrothed to your father, to be his queen, and in return, the balance was to be restored.”

But he lied. She didn’t need to say it. I could feel the truth.

“He married you to take Veyrith’s vessel,” I whispered.

She nodded. “I loved your father, and I think a small part of him had loved me too. But his greed was more powerful than anything we ever had.” She looked away from me, glancing down at the vessel. “After we were married, I was bound to him, bound to this kingdom. And he didn’t falter in showing me who he truly was. He killed my father.” Every ounce of longing and sadness disappeared from her voice as it was replaced with anger. “He killed him before he drained our vessel until there was nothing left of Veyrith. The land I loved became void of magic, and without it, the rivers slowed until the water dried up, the crops withered, and with them so did our people.”

My father had built his empire on the bones of stolen kingdoms.

And even that hadn’t been enough.

Her fingers trailed back and forth over the edge of the vessel. “My home was turned to ash, and this is the final vessel that remains.”

The silence stretched between us before I finally forced myself to meet her gaze.

“You could have left,” I whispered. “You could have run.”

Her eyes softened. “No, my love.” She reached out, her fingertips brushing the air between us.”I stayed because of you.”

Tears burned at the edges of my vision.

“When I saw your power, when I realized what you were, I knew I had to protect you.” Her hands trembled. “You were so young the first time you siphoned, younger than most discover their power. I was hiding behind your drapes as you looked for me. I could hear your little giggle, but then I felt it, the moment you got scared. You couldn’t find me, and before I could tell you where I was, your power found me for you.”

“I don’t remember…”

“You were too young.” She smiled. “But the moment I realized what happened, that I realized the amount of power that flowed within your tiny body, I knew that your father could never know.”

Her words settled over me like a weight, and I looked back to the vessel, the magic within it shifting and writhing as if it were beckoning me forward.

“So, I hid it.”

I sucked in a sharp breath. “You cursed me.”

“I protected you,” she said fiercely. “I did what the queens of Veyrith have done for generations.”

I swallowed hard. “Why? Why would the queens need to hide their power?”

She exhaled and searched my face. “Because Veyrith was a kingdom of balance. Of magic. Of power. And where there is power, there is always someone who seeks to take it.”

Her emerald eyes searched mine, steady and unyielding.

“The queens of Veyrith were not just rulers. They were guardians of magic itself before magic turned against our lands and the kings sought to fix it. It ran through our blood, deep and untamed. And that power, if left unchecked, could be twisted, manipulated.”

I shivered, thinking of my father, of what he had done. “So they hid it?”

“They did more than that.” Her voice was solemn. “The queens of Veyrith wove a protection into the very bloodline of their daughters. A spell as old as the vessels themselves. It was meant to shield us, but that spell became watered down with time. Just as everything does. Our magic weakened, it became angry, and the very magic that had sustained us began turning against us all.”

I searched her eyes, begged her with one look to tell me this was all a lie.

“You are not just the daughter of Marmoris, Verena. You are a daughter of Veyrith, the last daughter, and I bound your power to protect you. I bound your magic so it wouldn’t awaken until you found safety in someone who wanted you to have power, but did not wish to use it.”

Dacre.

The moment my magic had surfaced, I had been with him.I had felt safe.

I had been powerless until him.

My mother’s expression turned sorrowful.

“I had already lost Veyrith. I would not lose you, too.”

My throat tightened.

“And now?” I whispered. “Now that this protection is broken?”

Pain flickered through her gaze.

“Now, my love,” she murmured,”your father will do everything in his power to claim you as his own. He will do the very thing that our magic rioted against that forced the kings to bind it to the vessels in the first place.”

The vessel pulsed behind her, casting long shadows along her face. I could feel the anger she spoke of, feel the way it trembled with fury.

“The tithe was never meant to be a tool for power,” she said. “It was meant to restore the balance within our magic, to pay the price for what we had destroyed. We gave back to our magic, to the vessels, but your father…he has twisted it.”

A shiver ran through me, but I forced myself to ask, “How?”

She exhaled, pressing a hand to the stone. The gold veins beneath her fingers flared, illuminating the room in an eerie glow.

“The vessel feeds on sacrifice, the magic had demanded it,” she explained. “For years, the people of all five kingdoms gave willingly to the vessels, and the vessels gave back to our kingdoms in return.”

She shook her head gently. “But to wield it is something else entirely. It angered the magic, forced its rage to ravish through our lands, and first, the people of Veyrith paid for your father’s greed. But now, it will take Marmoris. It will take him.”

I sucked in a breath, and she quickly said the next words so quietly as if she feared the vessel would hear. “You must surrender something of yourself to wield it as your father has done. A piece of your soul. A piece of your life.”

I swallowed hard. “Then how has he used it for so long.”

“He has stolen what he cannot afford to give. Each tithe, the people of Marmoris suffer. They are drained, their magic stripped far more than they are willing to give, their lives shortened. But even that isn’t enough.”

The weight of her words pressed against my ribs, choking me as they cut off my air. My father had taken from his people, and still, the vessel demanded more.

“He realized too late,” she continued, “that he could not stop.”

“I don’t understand.” I shook my head, trying to grasp what she was saying. “Stop what?”

She met my gaze. “Dying.”

A cold dread slithered through my veins.

“He siphoned from the vessel because he thought he could control it, but it has been devouring him from the inside out. His magic is not his own, it is borrowed, stolen, temporary. And now, it is running out.”

I forced down the bile rising in my throat. “He needs more power,” I breathed, thinking about how desperately my father had been trying to find power in me, how he despised me for being powerless. The way he had looked almost euphoric when I had siphoned the life from that guard.

“He needs an heir.” Her gaze softened as she studied me. “The vessel will not bind itself to just anyone. He needs someone powerful. He needs a siphon.”

I clenched my fists, nausea rolling in my stomach.

“If I bind to it,” I whispered, “if he forces me to take his place…”

“The vessel is corrupted.” Her voice was pained. “It is angry, and I fear that it will never find balance again. It will run through you as it does him, and it will take from you.”

I stepped back, shaking my head. “No.”

“It will demand sacrifice,” she whispered. “It will hunger.”

I pressed my hands to my temples, my breath coming too fast. My father hadn’t been torturing me out of cruelty alone. He was hunting, preparing. He didn’t just want to be more powerful; he needed me to be powerful.

“In the other kingdoms, in Veyrith, were the kings bound to the vessels there?”

“No.” She stepped closer, her hand brushing over mine. “But those vessels have been gone for many, many years, and your father, his greed, has turned the vessel into a weapon. He’s turned it into a curse.”

A sharp chill ran down my spine.

“He has already given too much of himself,” she murmured. “And now the vessel is tied to him, it feeds off him, drains him, makes him desperate. But your father is no fool. He has been searching for a way to free himself from its grasp without losing what it has given him.”

“How?”My voice trembled. “How will he do it?”

My mother let out a slow, pained breath.”The vessel will not simply let him go. It will not release him willingly after all that has been done.”

I swallowed against the lump rising in my throat. “Then how…”

Her expression was sorrowful but unyielding. “To sever the bond, he must tether it to someone else.A willing sacrifice cannot be forced.That was the original magic of the vessels, a kingdom willingly giving, bowing before the magic. But your father has found ways to twist even that.”

I shook my head. “I will never willingly take his place.”

Her fingers clenched into a fist. “That is why he has spent so many years trying to break you.”

The pieces were falling into place too quickly, slotting together with a sickening finality. Thetorture, the isolation, the pain, the fear. It had not been simplypunishment. It had beenpreparation. To weaken me. To leave me with no choice but to become what he demanded.

I pressed a hand to my chest, trying to steady the erratic beat of my heart. “And if I am bound to it?”

Her gaze faltered. “Then you will be as he is.”

Corrupted. Controlled. Changed.

A shudder racked through me.

“The vessel’s hunger will become your own,” she whispered. “You will feel it inside you, pressing against your ribs, sinking into your bones. You will crave magic. Crave power.And if you do not take it, if you do not siphon from others, you will wither.”

I clenched my fists, nausea rolling in my stomach.

“You will be stronger than you have ever imagined,” she continued. “You will feel it thrumming beneath your skin, a limitless well of magic at your fingertips. But it will never belong to you.” Her voice grew quieter.”And the vessel does not share.”

I sucked in a sharp breath, dread curling in my gut. “What do you mean?”

She turned to face me fully. “It will not let you leave. It will not let you disobey.”

I shook my head violently. “No?—”

“Your father controls the vessel because he hasfed it for years.But if you take his place, you will be something different. The vessel will crave you.It will crave your power, your sacrifice, and your father will use that against you.”

Her hands trembled as she reached for me, but I barely felt the ghost of her touch. “If you are bound to it, he will have power over you, Verena. He will never fully break his bond, and you will become the conduit between him and the vessel’s power. He will not need to force you to obey, your own body will betray you.”

My vision blurred as the walls of the chamber seemed to shrink around me. I was drowning. Drowning inhim, in this place, in the future that was waiting for me.

“No,” I whispered. “No, I won’t.”

Fear flickered across my mother’s face, and it stole my breath. I grabbed her wrist, or at least, I tried to. My fingers passed through her skin as if she weren’t there at all.

“Mama.” My voice sounded so young, so weak.

The vessel pulsed behind us. It writhed in the anger that she spoke of, and the walls shuddered as if bowing before it.

“Verena.” Her voice trembled.”There is a prophecy.It has been whispered through centuries, hidden in the bones of Veyrith. Your father fears it. He has buried it, burned it, tried to erase it. Just as he has erased history, erased the traces of what he has done.”

A sharp, biting wind tore through the chamber, whipping around us like a storm. The vessel pulsed harder, and my mother’s form flickered.

No.

Not yet.

“What does it say?” I begged, reaching for her. “What does the prophecy say?”

Her lips parted and her eyes softened as she took me in one last time. “You are a siphon, Vee, but you are also a daughter of Veyrith. There is power there.”

“What power?” I frantically asked as I tried to reach for her, desperately tried to cling to another moment.

“Trust the tides, darling girl. They always know when to rise.”

The wind howled harder, echoing in my ear, and then she was gone and the chamber shattered around me.

I woke with a gasp, my chest heaving. Lavender still clung to the air, but it was the smell of my mother that still enveloped me.

But everything else was gone. Her, the chamber, the vessel. They were all gone, but the words she had left behind still echoed inside me.

I shoved the blankets off my body, a tremor running through my fingers as I tried to steady my breath.It was just a dream, but I knew better.

This was a warning.

I pressed a hand to my ribs, wincing at the lingering ache. The room was suffocating, too silent, the heavy weight of the palace pressing in from all sides. I needed air.

I swung my legs over the side of the bed, ignoring the stiffness in my limbs, and pushed myself to my feet. Something wasn’t right. The floor was too smooth beneath my bare feet. The silence was too thick.Everything felt shifted, like the dream had followed me into waking.

And then I saw it.

The bookshelf across the room, the gilded spines of ancient tomes that had been there all my life catching the flickering candlelight. But one was missing. A gap sat between two books, an empty space where somethingshould have been.

I swallowed hard, scanning the floor, and my breath caught. A single book lay open near the foot of my bed, its pages curled at the edges, its spine cracked with age.

Chill bumps rushed over my skin as I slowly dropped to my knees and reached for the book with trembling hands. The moment my fingers brushed the cover, a sharp pulse of somethingcold and ancient curled through me. I flinched but didn’t pull away. Instead, I turned it over in my hands, my heart thundering as I read the faded lettering on the cover.

Veyrith.

My mother had read it to me as a child, a collection of myths and old stories passed down through the ages, a book I once believed to be a mere fairy tale.

But it was a book from her own childhood, her home. It wasa history buried beneath metaphor, hidden in poetry, and on theinside of the cover, scrawled in elegant ink,was a note in my mother’s handwriting.

My breath hitched as I took in her script. It was rushed, smudged in places, as if written infearrather than care.

If you have found this, then it is already beginning.

Read the words.

Find in them the truth.

I pressed my fingers over the ink, tracing the curves of each letter. My mother had left this for me.She had tried to warn me. It had been right in front of me all along.

Dread curled in my stomach as I turned the page. The book opened easily, as if itwanted me to find this place.

I quickly flipped through pages, reading the words etched within them that seemed to leap off the parchment as if they carried their own magic. It spoke of power, of balance, of harnessing energies long lost in time.

It spoke of the covenant, of queens and their people. It told stories of oaths made and promises broken, of temples in each of the five kingdoms that had once been sacred to the magic, temples where people had bowed before the magic of their land, temples that were now lost in time.

And there, written in a script thatwas not my mother’s, were the words I was meant to find.

The prophecy.

When shadow swallows the golden throne,

And rivers run dry where magic has flown.,

The cursed shall rise with fate-bound hands,

A tethered soul to shifting sands.

Born of ruin, blood, and war,

Bound to take yet cursed to mourn.

The tideborn’s gift, bound in chain,

To break the bond or bind again.

The room seemed to press in around me as I read them over and over. The words were scrawled in the careful, precise script. But on the margins, in ink far darker than the rest, was the handwriting I recognized.

My breath hitched as I looked beneath the first line at what my mother had written.

The shadow is already here.

A chill ran down my spine.

Beside the third line another word was scribbled, a single word.

Siphon.

My stomach twisted because she had known exactly what I was.

Her notes continued, fragmented thoughts scattered like pieces of a puzzle waiting to be solved.

Bound to take. The hunger will not subside.

Tideborn. You are the tideborn. She underlined the word three times. The people of Veyrith are born of the sea. You are born of the tide.

My fingers tightened around the edge of the page. She had left this for me, but it created more questions than answers. It created more fear.

I stared at the last line. Read it over and over again.

To break the bond or bind again.

To break the bond.

I flipped through the pages desperately, searching for more. But there were no answers, only riddles, poetic history, and a final note, written so faintly I almost missed it.

The sideburn’s gift, cursed in the wrong hands. Wielded with intent, it can set the world right again. But beware, my love. Beware of the weight of fate.

The words blurred before me.

A tethered soul to shifting sands.

To break the bond or bind again.

The meaning struck me all at once. This was not just a prophecy about the vessel. It was aboutme.

I was not just my father’s daughter. I was not just a siphon.

I was the choice.

I pressed a hand to my chest, as if I could still feel my mother’s presence there, still feel the warmth of her words before she had vanished. But warmth had no place in this kingdom, and if I didn’t find a way to stop my father, neither would I.

I closed the book, my fingers trembling over the worn leather cover.

The choice was coming.

And I didn’t know if I was strong enough to make it.