Page 93 of Volatile King (The Kings of Wayward Academy #6)

Y uliana

My boots crunched over the snow as we walked along the darkened path, my breath curling like smoke in the bitter air. It swirled around my head with every exhale, a ghostly halo that felt far too holy for the woman I’d become.

The rhythmic thump of footsteps behind me should’ve stirred pride. They marched in time like soldiers sworn to a queen. But there was no pride in my heart—only gravity and grief.

Mylo and Vlad followed close, silent but alert, their eyes scanning the shadows we didn’t fear, but they’d been trained well. I trusted them with my life even when I had nothing else left to trust.

The moon was cloaked in clouds, but I didn’t need its light. I knew this path, every broken stone, and every tree warped by time. I’d walked this path in my dreams—in my regrets.

It had been years since I’d seen her, since I’d heard her laughter. She used to hum when she was focused, fingers tapping like a rhythm only she knew. She loved fiercely, even when it hurt, especially then. And now she was here.

Beneath the frost and dirt. Beneath the silence that followed a life that should’ve burned longer than this. I never told her goodbye. I never got to whisper thank you. I never got to say the things I thought I had time for because, in the end, time took everything from us.

Or maybe I did.

I swallowed against the lump in my throat. The frigid air bit at the corners of my eyes, freezing the moisture in place. As if the cold knew that if I cried, I would fall, and I refused to fall.

But she…she deserved more. They all did. All those who had already died, innocents caught in the middle of a war.

The snow fell soundlessly around me as I reached the grave. It settled like ash on the edges of the stone. I didn’t need to trace the name carved into it to know what it said. I carried it in my heart.

She’d been a light. Kind, loving, understanding and I never gave her enough credit.

Protective and loyal even when it broke her.

And now she was gone. And I…I’d missed so much of everything.

Not just here with those already gone or the seasons that pressed on without me.

But I’d lost time with Eddie…my soul…and I missed my daughter.

A year and a half of her life…gone. I missed the bruises and tears.

The love. The betrayal. The people she chose.

The ones who failed her and those who hurt her.

I missed her laugh, her sharp tongue, her pain.

I missed watching her rise, fall, and rise again, even when the world tried to flatten her. She was always my little queen.

I watched from the shadows, always just out of reach.

My fingers curled behind doors I wasn’t allowed to knock on.

Ren thought I was dead because I made her believe it.

Because I had to—to protect her. Because a war she knew nothing about had been set in motion years before she was born, and you could only hold the beasts from hell back for so long before you had to fight them head-on.

I let her think I’d been murdered. I left her screaming in that safe room while men staged my final breath.

I heard her pounding on the door. Heard the way her voice cracked when she cried for me.

My heart shattered, and I almost lost my resolve, but I knew it would never end, that we would never be safe, so… I didn’t answer.

I disappeared. I let the world and those I loved believe I was gone so I could build the world Ren deserved.

I’ve had so many nights to doubt it. So many moments where my hands shook and my chest hollowed with the ache of her absence and the fear that she would never forgive me.

But every time I thought of turning back, I remembered what they would take from her if I didn’t finish this.

What they had already taken from me…I could never allow that.

The grave at my feet held a piece of that cost.

I kneeled in the snow, let it bite through my jeans into my skin.

A queen shouldn’t kneel, but I wasn’t a queen in this moment.

I was a daughter, a mother, a warrior, a ghost. I was a mother who chose a warpath over the warmth of her child’s arms. Many would’ve said that I was a traitor to my family, that I was the enemy, that I was a horrible person, but sometimes in war, sacrifices were made to win.

I tore my heart out the night I left Ren, and it had been locked in a box of misery ever since.

But to save her…I would destroy all those who sought to use and hurt her, falling on my sword and letting the chips fall. That was my legacy. That was my choice as a queen. That was my destiny since the day she was born. For that she may never forgive me, but it was what I had to do.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, voice cracking. “I’m sorry you’ll never get to see this. Never get to see the new world you helped build with your sacrifice.”

I stood and brushed the snow from my gloves before turning to the two men who had been by my side for years. Mylo and Vlad waited without speaking. Their loyalty knew no bounds.

“Mylo,” I said, voice low. “Is everything in place?”

“Yes,” he replied, dipping his head like a bow. “The network’s active. No one’s seen us. No leaks.”

“Vlad?”

He nodded once. “Safehouses are ready. The list has been finalized. Everyone is in place.”

The list…every traitor, and every name branded into my memory with blood and betrayal. Every person who thought they could dismantle me and mine and avoid a reckoning. They were wrong. I’d sacrificed too much. I’d become something too brutal to bury.

And now?

Now it was their turn to grieve.

I turned one last time to the grave and let my fingers rest against the stone. Not as a farewell, but as a promise. To finish what was started and finally take my place on a throne made of thorns.

I rolled my shoulders, a storm blooming quietly behind my ribs. The old fire was still there. It had never gone out. It had just been smoldering while it waited. Coiled like a phoenix in the dark, waiting to rise from the ashes of the fallen.

“Then…it’s time to end this.”

B OOK 7: Vexatious Queen