Draevyn flinched. “Well, I’m the only chance you’ve got. And if you stay here, you’ll die. All it may take isoneof those bullets to shred your heart. I can’t—” His voice faltered.
Her silvery blue gaze lifted to his. “And if my heart has already been shredded?”
For a moment, Draevyn thought he took a velsinyte bullet to his own heart as he listened to her. The words were on the edge of his tongue—everything Syrena did and lied about to tear them apart. “Esmyra, that’s not?—”
“Aim your guns, men! We can’t let her escape.” Atlas’s voice sounded as his shadows slipped between the flame’s wisps. “Draevyn, you better fucking move.”
Fuck. They were out of time.
Draevyn’s wild stare met the storm in hers. “Just go. I know I’ve lost your trust. I know I’ve lost everything. Just let me do right by you now. Please.”
Her lips parted at his confession.
For a long moment, they just stared at each other—two people bound by a history neither of them fully understood, their fates tangled and broken for at least a thousand years.
Esmyra’s spine straightened, and she gritted her teeth. “I’m serious. This changesnothing,” she spat, though he didn’t miss the tiny wobble of her lip.
“I know, Wildfire.” His throat tightened, praying to Irah to protect the goddess he once loved until she fled Lephyrin. “The guards will be after you. Don’t engage unless you must. At least until you heal.” He looked her up and down as she stood there in disbelief. “Give ‘em every hell, baby.”
And with that, Draevyn turned from her, stepping into the raging flames that separated them from his brother and soldiers. The men he’d served Lephyrin alongside. The men he’d fought and bled for. And the men he’d just betrayed for the woman he loved.
With a grim set to his jaw, he walked through the wall of fire, the familiar rush of power flaring around him like an old friend. Though, deep inside, he could feel the weight of every choice he’d made.
On the other side, Atlas stood at the center of the throne room, surrounded by soldiers. Their armor gleamed in the firelight, their swords drawn, every jaw set in a hard line.
The room was eerily silent, the tension thick as the smoke in the air.
Atlas’s eyes met his from halfway across the room. There was no love there. No recognition of kinship. It was as if the fire Draevyn put between them was only a fraction of what had already burned them apart.
“What the fuck have you done, Draevyn?”
It wasn’t the voice of his brother that reached him. It was the voice of Lephyrin’s new king.
The voice of a man set on revenge.
CHAPTER 12
Atlas
Lephyrin’s throne room was in ruins. Water dripped from the shattered windows, pooling in the cracks of the marble floor. The lifeless body of their father had been removed, but the stain of his death lingered.
Atlas had never truly imagined himself on the throne, and certainly not likethis. Not while his brother, the one person in the entire realm he trusted to no end, became a traitor to the crown.
Draevyn just aided their father’smurderer.
The room had cleared, the guards storming the streets in search of Esmyra, though he knew they likely wouldn’t find her. He hadn’t spoken a word to Draevyn in the last few hours, unable to stand the sight of him.
Atlas stood at the base of the dais, staring up at the throne that was now his, when footsteps sounded from behind him. A familiar warmth pressed against him as Draevyn stepped up to his side, but it only made his lip curl in disgust.
“You helped her escape.” The words were clipped as he tried to hide the tremble in his voice, his hands balling into fists at his sides.
Draevyn huffed through his nostrils, but he said nothing.
He didn’t even deny it.
Atlas scoffed as he turned to face him. “Not going to defend yourself?”
“She would’ve died,” Draevyn finally said, his voice sharp. “If that bullet?—”
