This is what Alder and Delphara never anticipated. The ones they ignored, the ones they crushed beneath their heels, the ones they never saw coming. The women of the Kingdom of Cups, rising together.
And winning.
Behind them, the chaos swells, a chorus of steel against steel, of battle cries and bodies hitting stone. The torchlight catches his face as he advances with the women, bloodied, pale, but unmistakable—King Victor Rothmore.
He’s slower than the others but no less determined, his face set with grim resolve. His ornate doublet is torn, the intricate silver embroidery stained with crimson splotches. One hand clutches a blade, the other pressed to his ribs like something inside him is already breaking.
“Delphara!” he roars and pushes through the clashing bodies.
The machine groans. Its gears shift, grinding against decades of rust and ruin, hungry for more. The sound vibrates through me, through the Tower itself.
With the guards distracted, Alderic moves.
A sound tears from his throat—half-roar, half-battle cry—as he wrenches against the chains binding his wrists. For a heartbeat, nothing gives. Then, with a guttural snarl, he hooks the shackles around the edge of the machine and twists hard. Metal scrapes against metal,and one shackle snaps open with a sharp clang. The second follows a beat later, forced open with another burst of strength.
He surges forward, snatching a sword from the blood-slick grip of a fallen guard.
Before I can process the motion, he’s in front of me—fire in his eyes, fury in every breath. The sword flashes in the low light, and with one clean, brutal arc, he drives it down on the chain binding my cuffs to the hook suspending me off the ground.
The metal shatters with a shriek. The broken chain hits the stone floor with a clatter I barely register, lost beneath the roar of battle, and the relentless pounding in my skull.
Before I can fall, Alderic catches me. His arms slide beneath me, sure and steady, pulling me tight against him, as if letting go isn’t even an option.
My feet brush the floor, but they’re useless. My knees give out instantly. Pain screams down my arm. The place where the hook tore through my forearm is bleeding again, crimson streaking down my skin, dripping onto the stains of sacrifice and battle painting the stones. I try to straighten, try to plant my feet, but my legs won’t cooperate.
Alderic’s golden hair is dark with sweat and blood. A bruise blooms beneath his eye, and cuts slice across his chest and arms, but none of it dims the brilliance of him, the fire in his blue eyes, the reckless devotion in his gaze as he looks at me.
His tunic is torn, fabric sticking to the hard planes of his chest, the muscles beneath tense and taut, ready for battle. One hand holds the sword, still poised forviolence. The other steadies me with trembling fingers, slick with blood but achingly gentle, cradling me like I’m the only thing in this cursed kingdom worth saving.
He is fury and tenderness. Ruin and refuge. He is mine.
And in the center of the battle—the war we were fated to start, fated towin—he leans close and whispers, “Forgive me. I wanted my dream to be yours. I never stopped to see that you had your own.”
The words hit like a blade and a balm. Relief and rage. Gratitude and grief. Love so vast it hurts. My chest tightens, a storm surging inside me—everything we almost lost crashing into everything we still could be.
My throat tightens. My breath catches. My fingers splay against his chest, desperate for proof that he’s real. That I am. That we’re still here. His heartbeat thrums beneath my palm. A pulse of life, of hope, of survival.
A guard slams into us, the jolt tearing me away from Alderic.
My slippers skid across blood-slick stone. I stumble and catch myself on the machine. The world tilts. A snarl grazes my ear as the guard staggers upright and vanishes back into the chaos.
A jolt of electricity tears through my arm as I grip the corroded metal. The gears grind, shifting, sluggish but building speed. The air changes. Magick crackles, snapping against my skin.
Power hums in the walls, vibrating through the stone, echoing the frantic rhythm of my heart. Everything is moving—gears, wind, fate. And beneath it all,him. The one thing that’s been constant in the chaos.
“You asked me if I love you…” The words spillfrom my lips, unplanned and unstoppable, like I’ve been holding them for lifetimes.
Alderic’s eyes find mine, and the love I see there makes everything else fade.
“I didn’t want to let myself. I didn’t think it mattered.”
He closes the distance. His hand finds mine on the machine. Our fingers lace together, and the pulse intensifies—a golden spark pouring from our skin onto the gears beneath.
“But it does. God, it does. Because I do.” My voice shakes, but I don’t care. “Alderic, I love you.”
His mouth claims mine like a vow. Like a promise. Like the beginning of something neither of us ever expected but both of us chose. It’s a collision of souls that were always meant to find their way to each other.
A violent shudder rips through the Tower. The machine’s gears grind against one another, screeching as they pick up speed. Metal shrieks, stone splits, the earth trembles under our feet.
