Page 21

21

NORA

B y the time Rhaegar returns from wherever he disappeared to, the sun has begun to set. The sky bleeds orange and bruised purple, casting long shadows across the crumbling edges of the forgotten city. A storm brews on the horizon—slow and ominous, like the pressure before a scream.

He doesn’t look at me.

I don’t look away.

He brushes past me with a barely contained energy that crackles at his edges, his jaw clenched, eyes dark with something I can’t name. But I feel it. It dances along my skin like lightning, electric and unwelcome.

My fists tighten. “Where were you?”

He doesn’t answer.

Typical.

I rise from where I’ve been sitting on a cracked pillar and stalk after him, fury rising like bile. “You vanish. Again. And when you come back, I can feel something has changed, your magic is different. You are different.”

Still, silence.

“Do you think I’m stupid?” I snap, rounding on him. “You’ve been hiding things from the beginning—dragging me deeper into this cursed wasteland while I unravel piece by piece, and you still refuse to tell me the truth!”

He stops, then turns.

His face is a mask of restraint—barely held together by threads of control. “I’m keeping you alive.”

“At what cost?” I hiss. “You won’t talk to me, you won’t explain the whispers, the Wraithborn, the way you look at me like I’m both yours and your executioner?—”

“Because you are,” he says, voice low and sharp as obsidian. “You are everything I’ve lost. Everything I should hate. And the only thing I still want.”

The words hit like a spell.

I stumble back a step, breath catching, heart pounding like a war drum. “That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the only one I have left.”

Rage burns through me—rage and something worse: fear. I don’t understand him, and I don’t understand me . Not anymore. Every second I spend near him, I feel more like her. Like Medea. Like the ghost of something powerful and terrible wearing my skin.

And I don’t know if I want to stop it.

“I’m done talking to a wall,” I say, turning on my heel and storming off.

He doesn’t call after me.

He never does.

I find a fractured alcove at the edge of the ruins, where the stones slope inward like a broken cathedral. The wind howls louder now, and in the distance, thunder rolls. I sit with my knees drawn to my chest, arms wrapped tightly around them, as the first cold drops of rain hit the stone around me.

Then lightning tears across the sky.

And he’s there.

Rhaegar steps into the alcove like a shadow given form, wings slick from the rain, his eyes burning like gold fire through the dusk.

“Go away,” I whisper.

“No.”

A single word. Unshakable. I look up, and the storm behind him flickers like it knows this moment is sacred. Or cursed.

“You make me feel like I’m unraveling,” I say. “And not just the Medea part. All of me.”

“I know.”

“You should have left me to die.”

“I couldn’t.”

The wind gusts, pushing rain into the shelter, cold and sharp against my skin. I should move. Should turn away.

But then his voice lowers. Rough. Unsteady. “Do you want to know what I found in the heart of this city?”

My heart stutters.

He steps closer.

“I found proof of what I already feared. That you— she —made a pact. With the Wraithborn. A blood oath that can’t be broken.” His voice cracks. “They think they own you.”

I breathe in sharply, every word a cut I can’t stop bleeding from.

“I’m going to sever it,” he says. “Whatever it takes.”

And then he looks at me like he’s seeing me for the first time—or maybe the last.

“I won’t lose you to them,” he says. “Not again.”

I don’t know who moves first.

Maybe it’s both of us. Maybe it’s the storm. Maybe it’s the bond that’s always been there, waiting for us to give in.

But then he’s kissing me.

And I’m kissing him.

It isn’t soft.

It isn’t sweet.

It’s desperate . Furious. A collision of grief and fire and everything we’ve never said. His mouth devours mine like I’m the only thing keeping him tethered to the world, and I clutch at him like I’ll shatter if I let go. His claws bite into stone just beside my head as I arch into him, the heat between us so violent it turns magic to flame.

A blast of energy erupts from my spine, slamming into the wall behind us.

Stone cracks.

A section of the ruin collapses with a roar.

We break apart, gasping.

The sky screams with thunder overhead.

I stare at him, breathless, lips swollen, heart racing.

He looks wrecked.

Like he wants to say something, but the words won’t come.

So he does what he always does.

He turns and walks away.

And I’m left in the broken remnants of our storm, hands trembling, lips burning, magic pulsing through my veins like lightning.

Wondering what the hell we’ve just done.