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RHAEGAR

S he doesn’t look back.

Even after all I said. Even after the bond between us pulsed hard enough to shake the earth beneath our feet, she walks several paces ahead of me through the Wastes, her shoulders stiff, her silence louder than any scream.

And I don’t stop her.

I’m afraid of what I’ll do if I get too close.

Every step away from that ruin steals something from me. My strength. My clarity. The iron wall of control I’ve spent centuries mastering begins to erode with every mile we put between us and the truth buried beneath stone.

Memories from the past comes flashing. Swirling images that keeps dancing in my head. Sometimes I catch it, sometimes I don’t.

That tomb was meant to be my end. Not my beginning. And yet here I am, watching the one who sealed me beneath it stumble across the sands, her face pale with shock, her scent drenched in magic and fear.

Fear of me.

I taste it in the air like blood.

I feel it under my skin like fire.

The hunger is clawing at my insides again. I can feel it rising, wild and primal. It isn’t just the need to feed, it’s the bond. Her magic calls to mine like a wound refusing to scab over. And I’m not whole without it.

Without her.

But this isn’t hunger anymore.

It’s craving. Maddening. Consuming.

I stumble slightly, bracing one hand against a jagged outcrop of stone to steady myself. My claws scrape against the rock. I try to breathe through it, to ground myself, but the smell of her is too close. Her emotions are a symphony that plays too loudly in my head. Pain, confusion, rage, guilt. They thread through me like a drug I can’t refuse.

And I want to drink it.

I want to press my mouth to her throat and draw her magic into me until I’m solid again. Until I’m whole. Until I forget what it means to be cursed and carved and hollow.

She stops walking.

I blink and realize I’ve closed the distance between us without meaning to.

Her voice is sharp. “Don’t come any closer.”

I freeze. She’s turned halfway toward me now, her hair windswept, her eyes too bright. Her aura pulses visibly, her magic bristling like a storm around her skin. She’s scared. Of what I am. Of what I want.

“You’re losing control,” she says, barely above a whisper.

She’s right.

And still, my feet move.

One step, another.

“Rhaegar,” she warns, her voice cracking.

I feel it before I realize what I’m doing—my hands tremble, my body seizing, muscles flexing in pain as the bond pulls taut. I reach for her before I can stop myself, fingertips grazing her wrist, skin to skin.

It’s like lightning.

A jolt that cracks through my chest, straight to the hollow where my heart should be.

I feel her magic rush through me in a dizzying, beautiful burn—and my fangs lengthen. My breath hitches. She gasps, pulling back, but I follow, my other hand catching her waist.

“Rhaegar—don’t?—”

My lips graze the hollow of her throat.

Gods, her pulse. Her heat. Her essence.

One taste. Just one.

“Stop!” she shouts.

I slam myself backward so hard I nearly fall. I stagger, panting, my hands shaking violently.

She stares at me, eyes wide, her hand pressed to her throat.

I don’t see fear in her face this time.

I see betrayal .

“I wasn’t going to hurt you,” I rasp.

“You weren’t going to stop either,” she says, voice hoarse.

She turns and walks off into the night.

And I let her go.

Because if I follow, I won’t stop next time.

Because this hunger is winning .

That night, I can’t sleep.

Even when my body tries to pull itself into stone, I fight it. I don’t want to dream.

But Protheka is cruel. Magic here has a memory longer than life itself. And it always remembers its debtors.

When the dream finds me, it’s not mine.

It’s Medea’s.

I’m on my knees in a throne room carved of obsidian, a circle of stone warriors surrounding me, their faces hidden beneath ancient helms. My wrists are bound in chains that glow with runes I recognize now. Purna magic. Hers.

She stands before me, not with guilt, not with grief, but with resolve.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“No, you’re not.”

“I never wanted this.”

“You chose it.”

She steps forward and presses her hand to my chest. To the space where my heart once was. “You’re too dangerous.”

“You made me dangerous.”

Her magic pulses into me, and I scream—not from pain, but the terrible intimacy of it. Of knowing her power. Of craving it. Of being created from it.

“I won’t kill you,” she says. “But I’ll seal you.”

“You coward.”

“You love me,” she whispers, tears in her eyes. “That’s the problem.”

The chains pull tighter. The stone rises. My body turns heavy.

And her voice, Medea’s voice, shakes the world as the seal falls:

“You are mine. And I destroy what’s mine.”

I wake in a sweat, breath ragged, body trembling.

The bond pulses between us. I feel Nora not far, sleeping restlessly beneath a ridge of stone where we made camp. Her dreams are tangled with mine now. I can sense her magic like a heartbeat beside my own.

I loved her. How did I fall for a purna? A purna so powerful, she controlled beings like the Wraithborns, those that refused to cross to the other side?

I turn to Nora, staring at her form.

The same woman. The same soul.

But not Medea.

And if I can’t control myself...

She never will be.