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RHAEGAR

I should have seen the betrayal coming.

The moment their leader softened her voice, cloaked it in honeyed diplomacy, I should’ve known what followed wasn’t peace—but poison. I let myself believe, even for a heartbeat, that the Purnas had changed. That they had learned from the centuries of ruin we left in our wake. But Protheka remembers its monsters. And I, it seems, still wear that title with ease.

Now I kneel, bound by ancient sigil-wrought chains sunk deep into the earth, magic woven with a precision I hadn’t seen in generations. It saps the very marrow of my power, bleeding it away like a slow leak. My body, volatile and half-formed, flickers with instability. Obsidian skin pulls taut, ember-like cracks webbing across my arms. I grit my teeth through the pain.

Across from me, Nora lies still—silent but far from calm. The collar around her neck gleams dully in the torchlight, laced with suppression runes etched by someone who knows what she is. Not just what she’s becoming—but what she was.

She doesn’t speak. Doesn’t scream.

But her gaze slices sharper than any blade, locked on the woman standing over her—Matriarch Ivenna. Leader of the surviving Purna coven.

“Kill the gargoyle,” Ivenna says coolly to her warriors, her voice calm as spring frost. “He’s served his purpose.”

“No,” another interjects. “His blood might still be of use. Gargoyle flesh doesn’t decay. He could be a reservoir.”

I don’t flinch. Not at the word reservoir. Not at the way they talk about me like I’m not a being—but a resource. I’ve been this before.

Nora jerks against her restraints, fury etched in every line of her body. “He’s not yours to use.”

Ivenna turns her head, her silver-streaked hair catching the firelight. “Neither are you, child.”

“I’m not your child,” Nora spits. “I don’t belong to anyone.”

Ivenna studies her with cool disdain. “You carry her essence. You wear Medea’s skin. You are hers, whether you admit it or not.”

A quiet falls over the gathering. One of the younger Purna shifts uneasily. They all feel it—the press of something ancient in the air.

A pressure building like a storm behind glass. It's me. The longer they keep these chains on me, the more unstable I become. I can feel the core of my body tremble, the cracks widening like fault lines beneath the surface.

“You shouldn’t have bound me,” I mutter through clenched teeth.

Ivenna flicks a look my way. “You shouldn’t have existed.”

My mouth twists into a smile that’s more threat than humor. “I still do.”

Their attention shifts then, just for a moment, as they begin discussing something else. Something older. Sacred. The words reach my ears—quiet, half-whispers.

“The artifact... it’s close,” one says. “We follow the leyline to the vault.”

“It was hers, wasn’t it?” another asks. “Medea’s?”

“It was hers to wield. The Wraithbinder. The artifact that sealed the blood-pacts and unsealed them. It could control them all if it’s real.”

A fire ignites in my gut, one hotter than magic. Wraithbinder.

That name, I remember it—half-buried in ancient memory, in forgotten wars and burning cities. I remember her raising it like a god-chosen blade. I remember what it did. What it undid.

It doesn’t just control the Wraithborn.

It breaks the contracts.

And if that artifact still exists—if these coven-witches are hunting it—then it could sever Medea’s claim on Nora. Or...

Or enslave her all over again.

I close my eyes. Beneath my ribs, the hollow where a heart should be throbs with a different kind of pain.

I can't let them find it.

Not before I do.

Not before I decide what must be done.

Nora’s eyes catch mine again. There’s a question in them. Always the same question: What aren’t you telling me? What are they talking about?

And the answer, always the same: Everything.

But not forever.

Tonight, I will get free.

I will make a move.

And gods help them all if they stand in my way.