Lara turns away, retreating into the shadow of the cave. “One hour,” she reminds, striding back toward the coven.
Seren shoves down her rage. “I haven’t asked youmyquestion.”
Lara half-turns. “Well?”
Seren steps toward Lara, closing the gap between them. “If you are governed by coin and coven, whose coin are you currently taking?”
This. This is what she needs.Who are they employed by?
Lara’s mouth twists into a devilish smirk. “Everyone’s, little witch.”
She turns fully, staring at Seren with the kind of gravity that precedes something realm-shifting.
Seren swallows thickly under Lara’s gaze, feeling suddenly transparent.
“We do assignments for every kingdom. But you want to know who fills our coffers and puts food in our bellies, don’t you, little witch?”
The cave suddenly becomes smaller.
Seren nods slowly, knowing that whatever comes out of Lara’s mouth next changes everything.
Lara smiles wickedly.
“Nymeris.”
And Seren’s blood turns to ice.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
The clever fox may know the trail
The wiser snare ensures he'll fail
Ronyn hasn’t seenJax in two days.
Not since the night those words finally broke loose between them and scattered across the floor like shattered glass.
Not since she used him, discarded him, and refused to let him in.
She hurt him, and he’s not afraid to admit it. Because despite her assumptions, he’s not hiding his pain, or pretending it doesn’t exist—he’s choosing to live loudly in the face of it. Choosing to defy what Thalmyr wants him to become: bitter, broken, and callous.
He’s seen it before, in the eyes of every broken Earthbound in Virellin.
And he refuses that fate. Refuses to drown in his own misfortune. Because Revryn taught him something years ago: the past shapes how we see the world, but it doesn’t get todecide who we become inside it.It can’t.Pain cannot be the only measure of his life.
He will not add to the suffering of the Known Realms. He will defy it at every turn.
The day he watched his parents swing from the gallows, Ronyn decided something:
His mark on the world would be joy.
Because anger was easy.
Bitterness was easy.
The world was already drowning in men who let their wounds turn them cruel. Joy, though? Joy in a broken world—that was defiance. That was a rebellion all of its own.
Sometimes he had to fake it first—he wasn’t blind to the atrocities of the world. But the strange thing about joy was that if you practiced it long enough, it started to feel real. The more he smiled, the more he believed he was happy. The more he laughed, the more he believed he was leaving the world a little better.
