Page 90 of The Nymph King

Then, her heartmate threw himself into the void. The floor vanished. The sickening rush of gravity seized them, and Imani’s heart plummeted as the wind roared in their ears—he had just jumped to his death.

But the shift struck from the inside out, violent and agonizing. Bones cracked and lengthened, joints popping and locking into monstrous new alignments. His spine bowed, tearing the flesh of his back as dark, iron-hard scales erupted and sealed over the muscle. His shoulders wrenched apart with a sickening tear as massive wings burst free, catching the rushing air in a single, thunderous snap.

Imani was a helpless passenger to the restructuring, suffocating under the pressure as the transformation cemented just before they hit the ground. She could neither resist the transformation nor influence it. Each movement belonged to Kiran, yet each sensation still reached her.

The colossal wings flared, dragging his immense, heavy bulk out of the fatal dive. He was a titan of scale and muscle. Every beat of his wings warped the air with sheer, concussive force. He wielded his raw power like a weapon, entirely driven by the storm in his blood.

In this monstrous form, his emotions hit Imani with crushing density. Fury became a relentless, driving engine. His control was gone, replaced by a territorial instinct that claimed her, narrowing the world until nothing remained but the urge to hunt, to destroy, to keep. It flooded her veins as if it belonged there, shattering her boundaries. She wanted to roar, to rage alongside him⁠—

Then, the tether snapped.

One second, the immense, violent motion suspended her, and the next, her own mortal flesh slammed her back. Imani gasped, choking on the sudden silence of her own room. Her hands clawed at her knees, trembling violently. Her pulse hammered a frantic, beastly rhythm against her ribs.

Sucking in deep breaths, Imani wondered how she could have gotten the spell so wrong that she invaded his mind. It had been intimate, wearing his rage like a second skin, with no distance to protect her.

Kiran remained an impossible answer. Imani could list a dozen reasons she should distrust him, and the spell had ignored every one of them, which disturbed her more than her obvious failure.

Divination had only been wrong before when she misunderstood what it was showing her.

And as she sat shivering in the quiet, the most unnerving truth crashed over her… the connection hadn’t faded entirely. A phantom echo of his monstrous, possessive hunger still lingered beneath her skin, refusing to let go.

Was it his? Or hers?

* * *

By the next morning, she attended the briefing as queen, moving through the palace with feigned calm and appearing outwardly unchanged. Yet, underneath her composed exterior, a sense of unease persisted. The feeling from the experience hadn’t fully gone away. Indeed, her need for Kiran was coiling under her skin like a sickness.

An advisor stood to open the meeting, wringing his hands with urgency. “There was an incident near the Riverlands border,” he reported. “A dragon briefly crossed into our territory—without a prolonged fight or attempt to hold ground—but it caused considerable damage before leaving.” He looked down at the report in his hands. “A part of the forest was obliterated, with uprooted, scorched, and flattened trees.”

Imani tapped her fingers on the armrest, thinking. The timing matched her recent experience perfectly, too exact to be mere coincidence. The destruction, its sudden appearance and vanishing, and the scale all pointed to him. Her vision had been in real-time, or close enough to feel like it.

She continued deliberating as the discussion moved around her.

“If it crossed that far in, it was testing the boundary,” one advisor said.

“Or sending a message,” another countered.

Esa’s voice interrupted. “Dragons didn’t even exist in the Mesial realm before Kiran brought the Under Horde here.”

“Then we treat it as directed action by the Niflheim monarch, not an anomaly,” Ellisar replied in a distant tone.

But none of it felt distant to Imani. They were talking about an event she had already lived through.

Imani stayed frozen at the head of the table, her face showing no sign as the discussion went on around her. She kept tapping lightly on the chair, trying to hide the terrible foreboding simmering in her blood.

Her heartmate was hatching a horrible plan for her now that he knew about Ellisar. Of this, she was certain.

Imani swallowed hard, knowing their mating ceremony would take place the next evening. It made her feel ill because while the room saw a queen in control, Kiran was secretly unraveling her.

CHAPTER 27

Greenery and florals burst into the chamber overnight, transforming it from a dark room ruled by politics into an intimate ceremonial space.

Deep green ivy and trailing silverleaf formed wreaths draped along the upper arches of the stone walls. Servants had woven pale blossoms through them. Garlands of flowers—white, blush, and dark crimson—hung in perfect lines between columns, framing the space rather than overwhelming it.

At the far edges, towering arrangements of blooms rose from carved stone basins. They were lush, layered displays of roses, night-lilies, and delicate star-shaped flowers that released a steady, heady fragrance into the air. The scent was rich, a blend of sweetness and spice.

The entire chamber had been dressed in a palette of deep green, silver, cream, blush, and dark crimson. Against the gray stone, the silverleaf and pale flowers caught the candlelight, tying the ceremony visually to the Crown of Life.