Page 99 of Severed Heir

His hazel eyes narrowed, then widened. “Do you think I want this?”

“I thought you were dead.” My voice cracked. “You spoke to me through the bond for weeks. And now Malachi’s gone and no one even cares.”

He crouched beside me, one hand hesitating near my back. “She fought hard.”

“How?” I asked, voice barely a breath.

“She tried to win. She didn’t give up, not once.”

I wanted to scream. But there was only silence pressing on my lungs.

He said in quiet voice, “I know what I did was wrong—”

“What you did was cruel,” I said, turning away from him.

“This is happening, Sev. It’s a Serpent barter. We’re heirs, not just people. Our lives were traded between our fathers long ago. All we have to do is pretend.”

“I will not pretend to love you.”

“Most Serpents don’t love the ones they wed. You wanted this once. You wanted me. Your father gets his sun, and an alliance is forged between three realms.”

“You said I had a choice if I let you explain.” I looked at him, tears glassing my vision. “Well, I choose. I never want to see you again.”

He lingered. Of course he did. Like a shadow in fog, he stayed even after I turned away. “What can I do,” he asked, quiet now, “to make you forgive me?”

I shook my head. “I wish it were you instead of her.”

He nodded once. “I understand.”

“If only you did.”

Damien could read my mind, but he would never understand me. And he hated that. I wasn’t a book he could read, not a story waiting for him to finish. I would never let him write my ending.

I let my thoughts slip, just enough for him to understand one truth.“I hate you,”I said, voice raw.“With every fiber of my being, Damien Lynch. I wish you were dead.”

Chapter Nineteen

I’d always believed in fables. Cully used to read them to me in the dead of night, his voice the only sound above the snowfall outside our estate. Tales of princes and princesses, of true loves and daring rescues. Stories where the damsel is always saved.

But this time, I didn’t want saving.

I wanted to stand on my own.

I would not wilt like the beetroot in Father’s garden. No, I would flourish like a purple hellebore, the only bloom stubborn enough to survive a world gone gray.

First, Demetria needed shielding.

I warded the outskirts with ash and flame, tracing protections where Archer’s had once held. His magic still clung faintly to the stones, but the strength of it was fading. And I was still a stranger to this land.

At the village center, Amria stood beside me as the people gathered in silence, their eyes flicking between us. They had endured months without a leader, and now they stared at me like I was a spark they didn’t trust not to burn.

Because when flame devours shadow, people whisper.

They fear. Especially when that flame belongs to a girl crowned without a drop of Night blood. But they didn’t come for the dark. They came for the glow.

“The rumors are true,” I said, voice steady. “Archer Lynch has been imprisoned.”

Murmurs stirred, dry and restless. I raised my hand, not to silence them, but to shield them. From everything that had failed them. From everything that might become.

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