LOGINDimitriI knelt in the snow with her weight collapsed against my chest. My hands pressed hard against the wound that refused to stop bleeding despite the golden light still fading slowly from beneath my fingers."Valerie."She did not answer."Valerie, say something."Her chest still moved. Barely. Each breath shallower than the last. I bent my head low until my ear rested just above her heart, listening for the rhythm that had always, somehow, anchored me more firmly than anything else in my entire life.It was there. Thin. Uneven. A thread stretched so fine I was certain it would snap if I breathed too hard."Stay with me," I said. My voice broke entirely now. All the composure I had carried through council chambers and battles and months of grief finally collapsed into something raw and unguarded. "Please. Stay with me."Around us, the fighting had mostly stopped. The last of the rogues had either fallen or fled into the dark. Elara was nowhere in sight. I had no attention left to
ValerieSomewhere beneath the pain, something else was happening. Something I had spent months refusing to let myself feel.The bond.I had starved it on purpose. I had told myself, every single day since I ran through the Silver-Mist Mountains, that the mark on my neck meant nothing. That whatever connected me to Dimitri was a wound I had already closed. A door I had already locked.It had never been locked. It had only been waiting.I felt something of myself leaving my body and pouring into him. Fast. Unstoppable. Like water finding the lowest point in a valley."Valerie, stay with me," Dimitri said again. His voice was far away now, though I could feel the warmth of him close against my cheek.I wanted to answer him. I wanted to tell him that I was still here. That I could hear him. That whatever this was did not feel like dying, not exactly, though it did not feel entirely like living either."Dimitri," I said. The word came out smaller than I meant it to."I'm here.""The childr
DimitriHer weight settled against my chest, far lighter than it should have felt. Her body was already losing the tension that should have kept her upright. That should have kept her fighting."Valerie, stay awake," I said. My hand pressed hard against the wound in her side, trying desperately to slow the bleeding despite the golden light still radiating outward from beneath my fingers.The moment her blood touched my skin, something shifted.I felt it before I understood it. A sudden, searing heat spreading through my own chest. It raced up through my neck and jaw, following the exact path the black veins had carved there over the past weeks.I looked down at my own arm and watched the darkness begin to crack.Thin lines of black, the Silver-Vein Curse that had plagued me my entire adult life, split open along my skin like shattered glass. Golden light bled through each fracture. Then, in a sudden, consuming wave, the darkness dissolved entirely into fine, glowing dust that scattere
ValerieThe pain had settled into something strange, distant from me now, as though it belonged to someone else's body instead of my own.I understood, somewhere in the fading clarity of my own thoughts, exactly what was happening. And exactly what was not happening.This was not the ritual Rogers had planned. There was no altar beneath me. No circle of elders chanting ancient words. No ceremonial blade wielded with careful, practiced precision according to some prophecy written a thousand years before my birth.There was only a cold stone beneath my back. Rain mixing with blood. And a dagger that had never been meant for me at all, buried deep in my side by a woman who had aimed for someone else entirely.No heart-blood ceremony. No willing sacrifice offered with raised hands and solemn words.Just my body, moving faster than thought, placing itself exactly where it needed to be."Valerie." Dimitri's voice reached me from somewhere close. It sounded strange now, muffled, as though I
Valerie I saw the shape falling before I understood what it was. A dark shadow dropping fast through the eclipsed light, aimed directly at Dimitri's back.There was no time to shout a warning. No time to think through what I was about to do. No careful calculation. No deliberate sacrifice offered with raised hands and practiced words the way I had offered myself for Maya months before.My body simply moved.Something deep inside me, some current I did not control, some pull that felt older than thought itself, dragged me forward across the broken rock. It closed the distance between where I stood and where Dimitri fought, faster than I believed myself capable of moving.I did not think about what would happen. I did not weigh the cost. I simply threw myself into the space between the falling blade and the man I could not lose.The dagger meant for Dimitri's back found me instead.The impact drove the breath from my lungs entirely. A sharp, consuming pain tore through my side as the b
Elara The child had never mattered.I understood that fully now, in the space of a single breath, airborne above the shelf of rock with the dagger gripped tight in my hand. The ritual, the blood, the heart cut from the Sun-Luna's chest, all of it had been Rogers's obsession. A careful plan built on prophecy and politics and the slow accumulation of power.I had never needed any of that.I only needed Dimitri dead.If the King died by the soul-dagger, the bloodline that mattered would die with him. Not through some elaborate ritual requiring years of preparation, but through a single blade forged specifically to end exactly what he was.The curse would not matter anymore. The prophecy would not matter. Nadia's scrolls, the council's debates, Valerie's bloodline and her three precious heirs, none of it would matter once Dimitri was gone. Once the throne sat empty and ready for whoever moved quickly enough to claim it.I had moved quickly enough.Below me, his back was fully exposed. Bl







