“Well,” she murmurs, almost pleased.
Her hand closes around the amulet.
Kael surges against the chains. This time, it is not hunger that drives him forward. It is resistance. Resistance that moves on instinct, not driven by the Decay, but by something deeper. More intrinsic. Morehim.
The restraints strain under the force of it, biting deeper, drawing more blood, but he does not stop. Something inside him—buried, fractured, barely there—reaches for the object in her hand with a desperation that does not belong to the Decay.
She tears it free.
The world does not go quiet.
It goes empty.
Whatever remained—whatever thin thread tethered him to something beyond the darkness—severs cleanly. For one terrible heartbeat, Kael cannot remember why losing it matters.
He goes still. Not just calm or contained, but hollow. Devoid of…everything.
The Decay floods the space left behind, filling it completely, leaving no room for anything else.
When he lifts his head again, there is nothing left in his eyes but void and violence.
Maireth studies him for a long moment, satisfied.
“Are you ready to conquer Aevryn, little King?”
The words settle into him, not as meaning but as a direction the darkness can understand and use.
Something inside him answers. Not in language, but in hunger and ruin.
“Yes,” he says—and something in him recoils too late to stop it.
Maireth smiles faintly.
“I suspected you would be useful,” she says, already turning away. “But this… this will bode far better for me in war.”
She does not look back.
The guards close in again, shields steady, chains taut.
Behind her, something in Kael shifts. Deep. Buried. Almost gone.But there. A flicker that refuses to fully die, even as it is swallowed again and again. Not extinguished. Just waiting.
Because the Decay is not the only thing in him capable of surviving the impossible.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
The world was built for girls to fear
Rebellion is refusing to disappear
The mouthof The Perils greets Seren just as it always does—volatile, enraged, unstable beneath her boots. Whipping wind slams against her skin, slipping beneath it, as if testing her right to stand here.
Her pulse steadies as she straightens, shoulders squaring, senses already scanning.
Seren’s eyes snap up, detecting a presence.
Lara stands beyond the mouth, weapons strapped and sheathed at her thighs, hair pulled back from her face in a wild, intricate braid of iron clasps and beads. Two witches flank her, both armed, both already mid-preparation.
Seren has seen them before, of course, but never this close. Never this… personal. They do not greet her, nor are they surprised by her presence. Just ready.Expectant.
