Page 9 of The Rivaled Crown (The Veiled Kingdom #3)

CHAPTER 9

VERENA

P ain at my father’s hand had become a constant presence in my life, like an old, unwelcomed companion.

It no longer came in sharp, sudden bursts; instead, it clung to me like a stubborn stain, sinking so deep into my skin that I could never scrub it away.

He was tearing me apart from the inside, forcing my power to the surface, demanding that I siphon, that I yield to what I was.

But for the past few days, he had left me alone.

It should have been a relief, but it wasn’t.

The absence of his cruelty was its own kind of torment, a silence thick with unspoken threats.He was waiting. Preparing for something worse.

I curled into myself on the massive bed, staring at the carved canopy above.I barely had the strength to move, to breathe.Even after the healers had come and gone, they hadn’t been able to take away the pain.

My father hadn’t wanted them to.

“I need her strong,” my father had instructed. “Heal her, but don’t let her forget.”

And they had.

My body was no longer broken in the way it had been before, but I was fraying.

And Micah hadn’t come back, not in days, not since I siphoned.

I squeezed my eyes shut and forced myself not to think of the guard’s face. It had haunted me for days, the life absent from his eyes, his body limp against the stone floor.

The palace was still, but beyond the walls, I could hear the city.The muffled hum of life carried on as if nothing had changed. As if I was not here, trapped in this room like an animal waiting to be led to slaughter.

I would have given anything to be back there. To feel hunger gnaw at my stomach instead of this.

I was unraveling.My magic thrummed inside me now, as desperate to escape as I was, and tendrils of chaos pulsed within me, threatening the scraps of sanity I had left.

I felt hollow as I thought of what my father had called me, of what I knew I was, but it was my mother’s words that haunted me.

“Beware of the weight of fate”.

The words staggered through me and my stomach lurched violently.

I didn’t want to believe her words. I wanted to revolt against them, even when everything inside me knew she was telling the truth.

But her truth felt too late. She knew of my power, knew of the consequences I would face, yet she hadn’t prepared me for what was to come.

She should have stolen me away, boarded a ship, and sent us sailing past the coast until my father could no longer see us.

Until he could no longer touch us.

And anger tore through me because she hadn’t.

I wavered between fury and longing, torn apart by the fear that she had failed me, yet aching for her presence, hoping she would slip back into my dreams and never let me go.

The heavy wooden door of my chambers creaked open, pulling me from my thoughts, and I hated how my next breath slipped from my lips different from the ones before it.

I didn’t move, didn’t flinch.

I kept my eyes on the canopy above as his presence smothered the air, like smoke creeping into my lungs.His boots scraped against the marble floor as he stepped closer.

I counted his steps, bracing for what was to come.

“Sit up.”

The words were soft, deceptively so, but I didn’t move.

A sharp inhale, the sound of fabric shifting, and then, his hand wrapped around my ankle, yanking me down the bed. I gasped when my knees slammed into his, but he didn’t stop. He fisted his hand in my hair, pain searing across my scalp as I was wrenched upright.

“I gave you days to rest.”His voice was quiet, almost thoughtful.“Yet, here you are, still wallowing.”

I clenched my jaw, swallowing against the nausea curling in my gut, and his grip tightened.

“Do you think I am a cruel man, Verena?”

The question sent ice through my veins. It was a trap, a test, and I knew better than to answer him. Instead, I forced my body to remain still, to keep my expression as blank as his.

He sighed, as if disappointed. “You think I do this because I enjoy it.”He released my hair abruptly, and my teeth slammed together.“You think I take pleasure in your suffering.”

He bent his knees, lowering himself until his eyes were level with mine, and the urge to look away from him was overwhelming.

“I do not enjoy it, Verena, but I will do whatever is necessary to make you into what you were meant to be.”

A shiver ran down my spine. I had heard these words before, a hundred different times that had fallen from his lips, but now,they carried a new weight.

“Get up.”

I buried my hands into the sheets. “Where are you taking me?”

“I won’t ask again.” He reached forward, his hand brushing against my cheek, and I jerked away from his touch. “You will not defy me.

Tears welled in my eyes, hot and stinging. I could feel my magic building inside me, but I had never felt more powerless.

“Please,” I cried, and he touched me again, his hand sweeping away the hair that was stuck to my lips.

There was a sharp knock at the door, and I looked away from my father to watch Micah hesitating near my door. He didn’t look at me, refusing to meet my eyes.

Something was different about him.

His shoulders were stiff, his posture more rigid than usual, and there was a red mark at the base of his throat, a fading imprint of fingers.

“Take her,” my father demanded as he stepped back, running his hand over his mouth.

Micah hesitated for half a breath before he crossed the room in two long strides.

“Don’t,”I whispered as he reached for me.My voice was raw, trembling. “Please, Micah, don’t.”

But he did.

His hands closed around my arms, firm but careful.His touch was not cruel, but it didn’t matter. Without a word, he hoisted me against him, the rough fabric of his uniform pressing against my skin, and a tear trailed down my cheek.

Micah’s grip was steady, but it didn’t matter. I fought him anyway. I twisted, dug my nails into his forearms, anything to slow my descent into whatever nightmare awaited me.

But Micah did not let go. He barely reacted as a sob clawed up my throat, and I slammed my fists into his chests.

“Verena,” he growled my name under his breath, so low that I thought I imagined it, but when I looked up into his wide eyes, they bore down on me, warning me.

I stopped fighting as he pulled me across the room, the cold floor biting into my bare feet, but sobs still racked through my body.

The hallways stretched endlessly before us, twisting into familiar corridors I had once known so well.My father walked ahead, his pace unhurried, and he didn’t look back to know that we followed.

Servants bowed as we passed, and not one of them met my eyes. There wasn’t one of them who even glanced in my direction as my cries echoed off the walls.

We reached a heavy metal door, and I knew exactly where it led. My father didn’t stop, and another guard scurried forward, opening the door to the dungeons before he could reach it. Micah stared straight ahead, and he didn’t look at me, even as I clung to him, even as I whimpered against his arm.

Step by step, we descended farther into the darkness until we reached the dungeons that I had grown to know too well, but my father didn’t stop. We passed cell after cell before we turned a corner, and my stomach lurched violently.

The stairwell ahead of us was different from the rest.Older. Uneven.

“Please,” I begged, but no one was listening.

Micah’s fingers twitched around my arm, as if bracing himself, and I felt it too. The air changed the moment we stepped over the threshold. It was heavier, venomous, alive.

I had felt it before; I had known it from my dreams.

“No!” I dug my feet into the unforgiving ground as my body trembled with another sob, but it was no use.

The first step was cold, and the second was even colder. By the time we reached the tenth, the temperature had dropped so low thateach breath burned in my lungs, but still,we went deeper.

Down and down, farther than I had ever been before.

The stone walls pulsed. At first, I thought it was my own unsteady breathing, my own erratic heartbeat hammering too loudly against my ribs, but the walls themselves seemed to breathe.

Micah’s grip on me tightened as a massive, dark iron door appeared before us. A heartbeat that was not my own thundered in my ears. The vessel knew I was here, and it was waiting.

We passed through the door, and Micah’s hand tightened against me before he finally let me go. Vaulted ceilings stretched high above us, and torches lined the walls, their flickering glow lost against the unnatural light spilling from the center of the room.

The vessel.

The massive well looked just as it had in my dream, like a wound in the earth that pulsed and churned. That same sickly green glow flowed within the vessel, flickering between shades of black and gold, as if the magic inside was constantly shifting, constantly struggling against itself.

A slow exhale drew my attention away from the vessel. Across the chamber,half cloaked in darkness, stood the Sight. Her robes pooled around her feet, her hood drawn back so the sharp features of her face were revealed, her white hair glowing like moonlight.

She did not move. Did not speak. She only watched.

And then, the vessel whispered.

A sharp pang shot through my chest. The pressure increased, the air thickening until it pressed against my lungs.My father was speaking, but I couldn’t hear him.

Becausethe vessel spoke to me now. Not with words.

With need.

With hunger.

With pain.

A sudden, searing heat licked up my spine, curling beneath my ribs. My knees buckled, but Micah caught me before I hit the floor.

I gasped, my fingers clutching at his arms, my vision swimming.The whispers grew louder, twining through my mind like vines creeping through cracks in stone.

Its pain merged with my own, blurring the lines between us until I couldn’t remember who it had belonged to before.

Then whispers inside the vessel turned to something else. A pull. A desperate, clawing need. My body arched involuntarily, my magic surging toward it, toward the hunger waiting inside the well.

It wanted me. It thirsted for my power. It was trying to take, and my magic suddenly recoiled.

A low, keening sound filled the chamber. It was coming from me. I gritted my teeth, trying to resist, trying to hold myself together, but my body was weak.

I was weak, and my magic…

It was unraveling, slipping out of my grasp like sand through open fingers.

A sharp pain shot through my chest, stealing my breath away. My vision blurred and tunneled as I gasped for air.

I found myself moving closer to the vessel, my own movements outside of my control, and my fingers dug into the cold stone edge, anchoring myself as my body trembled uncontrollably.

I tried to recall what my mother had told me, tried to think of anything except the overwhelming urge to press my hand into the vessel. I wanted to feel it across my skin, inside my veins.

I clamped my eyes closed and tried to block it out.

But another voice cut through the air, soft but unmistakable. I opened my eyes and turned my head sharply, my movements feeling unnatural.

The Sight.

Her lips moved, whispering words too faint for me to hear, but her eyes, milky and unfocused, seemed to stare through me, her head tilting ever so slightly.

“What did you say?” my father demanded. I had almost forgotten that he was in the room. I could no longer feel his presence. I couldn’t feel my fear.

The Sight lifted her head fully, but she didn’t look to the king.

“The tideborn.” Her voice was soft, eerily detached.

A chill wrapped around my spine.

My mother’s voice echoed in my mind, the prophecy, her notes scrawled in the margins.

The tideborn’s gift, bound in chain,

To break the bond or bind again.

The vessel seemed to pause. It held its breath along with me as we watched her.

“What does that mean?” My father’s voice rang out, but the Sight didn’t acknowledge him and neither did I.

“Born of two kingdoms,”she murmured.”Bound to take, yet cursed to mourn.”

The vessel whispered then. It grew urgent and louder, curling around me like unseen hands. I swallowed hard, feeling the pressure in my chest building with each passing moment, drowning out everything else.

“Please.” Tears ran down my face as I pleaded with her, my voice raw and desperate, but I didn’t know what I was asking.

She blinked, and whatever force had overtaken her seemed to fade.She swayed slightly, reaching for the stone wall behind her as if steadying herself.

My father took a slow, measured step toward her.”What was that? What did you see?”

The Sight finally met his gaze, but her expression remained void of emotion. But I couldn’t hear her words as she spoke. I was waning, buckling under the overwhelming weight of the vessel’s power.

But then a tiny spark ignited in the air, triggering a shift in the atmosphere around me. A warmth circled in my chest, steady and strong, cutting through the hazy fear that consumed me.

I sucked in a deep breath, my pulse racing as I blinked and looked around. But every eye was still on the Sight, my father’s face reddened and filled with rage.

I pushed against the vessel, trying to force the otherworldly magic out of my chest as the other feeling took root.

The magic that pushed inside me now was like warm honey pooling within me, slow and steady, a quiet strength in the chaos. It wrapped around me, not pulling, not taking—only shielding. It was different from the vessel’s hunger. It didn’t want to consume me. It wanted to keep me whole. It wanted to keep me safe.

It was my bond. It was my mate.

I didn’t know what was real inside me and what was an illusion, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. I could feel him, and nothing else mattered at that moment.

My own magic twisted inside me, not in pain this time, but in recognition.

Dacre was fighting.

He was coming for me.

My fingers curled against the stone, and I could feel bits of it crumble beneath my touch.

“Verena!” my father shouted my name, but I barely heard him.

Instead, I clung to the only thing keeping me tethered to myself.

And in a whisper, so soft it barely passed my lips, I breathed his name.

“Dacre.”