No!
Not on my watch.
I refused to let this man die—especially when I hadn’t even finished my seduction plan yet.
I shoved my panic aside and dove into my knowledge of poisons. Nightshade. Symptoms include nausea, muscle weakness, difficulty breathing…
I needed something to counteract it. Fast.
Think.
Then it clicked.
I leapt up, racing to the shelves in his chamber. He had to have something.
“Zagan, listen to me,” I said as I frantically rummaged through jars and bottles. “Nightshade attacks the nervous system. You need something that slows the absorption—charcoal, if you have it, to bind the toxins.”
His fingers twitched. “Bottom shelf. Black jar.”
I found it. Snatching the jar, I brought it to him, mixing a quick slurry with water from the basin nearby. I huffed, adjusting my grip on his arm as I hoisted him onto the bed. His body was tense, muscles straining even as his strength wavered.
He gritted his teeth. “I’m not dying.”
"You’ve been poisoned—have you taken complete leave of your senses?"
His gaze was sharp despite his exhaustion. “I’ve endured worse.”
I almost growled in frustration.
“Oh, I’m sorry—should I just let you rot in your stubbornness then?” I shoved him onto his back, my hands pressing against his chest to keep him from getting up. Firm. Solid. Way too distracting.
He glared at me.
I glared back.
His skin was warmer than it should be, the fever taking its toll. And his heartbeat—steady, strong—thumped beneath my palm, a stark contrast to his paling lips.
This was bad.
“Stay still,” I ordered, reaching for his hand.
His fingers twitched beneath mine. I frowned—his hands were normally cold, calloused, the hands of a warrior. But now… hot. Too hot.
I squeezed gently. “Zagan.”
His jaw clenched. Still resisting.
“Zagan,” I repeated, softer this time. “I know you think you can power through this, but if you don’t let me help you, you will lose.”
He exhaled, slow and reluctant. His fingers relaxed in mine.
I took it as permission.
Ignoring the strange warmth spreading from where our skin touched, I focused on mixing the antidote. Every so often, my fingers brushed his—on his wrist, the back of his hand, the ridge of his knuckles. His skin was scorching, the heat sending an unfamiliar thrill through my body.
Why was he so damn attractive?
It was annoying.
My gaze flickered to his face. Even in this state, even when he was struggling to breathe, his features remained absurdly perfect. The sharp jawline, the furrowed brows, the way his raven hair fell messily over his forehead.
A man like him… cold, emotionless. And yet—
Stop it.
Shoving those thoughts aside, I finished the concoction and forced it into his hands. “Drink.”
His fingers curled around the cup, but he didn’t move.
He stared at me.
I raised a brow. “What?”
He exhaled slowly. “You’re persistent.”
“You’re dying.”
“I’m fine.”
I swore under my breath. “Drink it before I make you.”
He gave me a slow, measured look. Then, finally, finally, he lifted the cup to his lips.
The second the concoction hit his tongue, he froze.
I braced myself.
“This,” he rasped, “is disgusting.”
“Good,” I said sweetly. “It means it’s working.”
I rushed back to the shelves. “I need something to force the poison out of your system—an emetic.”
There. A small vial of crushed ipecac root. It would make him vomit, but at least it’d purge some of the poison.
I grabbed it and turned back to him. “This will—”
He was already lying back, eyes half-closed, breath shallower than before.
Nope. No dying. Not today.
I climbed onto the bed and straddled his waist, forcing him upright. “No sleeping! You’re not allowed to die yet!”
His eyes cracked open, staring at me. Even in his poisoned state, he still managed to look unimpressed.
“This is hardly necessary.”
“It is if I have to keep you conscious,” I shot back. “Now open your mouth.”
“Thalia—”
I pinched his nose. “Open.”
With a glare, he relented. I tipped the ipecac solution into his mouth, making sure he swallowed.
Moments later, he lurched forward, coughing violently. I barely managed to move the basin in time before he heaved, purging the poison.
I rubbed his back, fingers lingering over his feverish skin. Heat radiated from him, and I swallowed hard.
Why was he so hot—in every possible sense? Even poisoned and half-delirious, he was unfairly, infuriatingly attractive.
Minutes passed before the retching slowed. Zagan sagged back against the bed, his breathing still labored, but no longer fading. His forehead glistened with sweat.
I sat back on my heels, exhaling shakily. My fingers absently brushed his arm, feeling the hard muscles beneath. Why did he have to be so—
Focus, Thalia!
He was watching me now, violet eyes heavy-lidded, but still piercing.
I swallowed. “See? This is why you don’t just casually ingest deadly substances.”
His lips twitched. “Not intentional.”
I frowned. “Then who—”
A realization dawned on me. Someone had poisoned him. On purpose.
And I had a feeling this was just the beginning.
As exhaustion finally pulled him under, I leaned in closer, studying his face, tracing the sharp lines of his jaw with my eyes. Why?
Why was he so handsome?
Yet a man like him—so cold, so emotionless…
I watched him closely as the antidote began to take effect. His breathing evened out slightly, though his exhaustion remained. His body relaxed into the mattress, tension slowly draining from his frame.
For the first time tonight, I let out a relieved sigh.
It was only then that I realized—I was still on top of him.
Oh.
My knees were planted on either side of his waist, my hands resting on his chest, our proximity entirely too close.
But before I could move—
His eyes fluttered open.
A lazy, unfocused gaze met mine. And then—his left hand lifted.
Fingers, warm and slow, traced along my cheek.
I froze.
Zagan would never touched me like this...
My heart stuttered.
I couldn’t breathe.
His fingertips skimmed my skin, a barely-there caress, yet it sent shivers down my spine. My pulse pounded, heat creeping up my neck, blooming across my cheeks.
Why does he have to be so—
He blinked at me, as if seeing me for the first time. “Thalia.”
His voice was quieter now, almost a whisper.
“You should go…”
I swallowed hard.
The air between us felt thick, charged. My thoughts screamed at me to move—to listen.
But I didn’t want to.
“I don’t want to,” I whispered back.
A slow exhale left his lips.
And then, just before his eyes closed again—
A short-lived smile.
Barely there.
But there.
“Stubborn girl,” he murmured.
And just like that, he was asleep.
ZAGAN'S DREAM (Zagan's POV)
Darkness coils around me like a suffocating shroud, pressing against my skin, my bones, my very soul. I can’t breathe. I can’t move. I hear the whispers—voices of the past, the dead, the forsaken. They call my name, again and again.
That’s how it always begins.
A place where no light exists, where the echoes of the past claw their way into the present. I recognize it immediately. The cold, suffocating weight pressing down on me, the whisper of voices long since silenced.
This is where the nightmare always starts.
I am a child again, small and helpless, standing before a woman lying weakly in her bed. My mother. The Queen. Her once vibrant form now pale and frail, barely able to lift a hand to touch my cheek.
“My beautiful boy…” she whispers, her voice thinner than air.
I don’t understand then. I don’t understand why she keeps getting weaker, why the palace physicians look at me with pity.
I don’t understand that my birth was the beginning of her end.
I don’t understand why my father never smiles at me.
Then the scene shifts, twisting, warping.
The King stands before me, his expression unreadable, his judgment final.
“She can no longer bear children.”
With those words, I lose my place in the world.
He takes another woman to bear him more heirs. Two children—Lysander and Circe. A mender and a healer. He calls them blessings. A future for the kingdom.
And I—what am I?
The nightmare pulls me deeper, dragging me forward through time.
Ten years old.
Pain, unbearable, searing. The first time my magic awakens. I don’t know how it happens, but suddenly the air thickens, the shadows lengthen, and the guards surrounding me scream. Their bodies turn to stone, their expressions frozen in terror.
My hands. My cursed hands. I cannot touch without destroying.
The whispers start then.
A curse.
A monster.
A weapon.
The palace erupts in fear. The Lords demand my execution. My father… he does nothing. He mourns my mother, the only person who might have fought for me. In his grief, he turns his back, as if I, too, had died with her.
And when the decision is made—to end me before I can bring more ruin—it is she who saves me.
Thalia’s mother.
The Queen’s lady-in-waiting, my mother’s most trusted friend. The only one who looks at me and does not flinch. The last of Reinilda’s hope. That’s what they called her. The only one who could repel magic like Thalia. No one left now. Their kind was wiped out, their power buried—kept from history, kept from the world.
For good reason. Celestians were made, not born. They’re nothing more than remnants of dark magic—shapeless, soulless things masquerading as human. But her mother’s kind? They were the only ones who could see through them. The only ones who could rip the disguise away. And that made them dangerous. So they were hunted. Erased. Now, no one even remembers they existed. No one but the Celestians who made sure of it. And Thalia... That’s why they’ll come for Thalia. Because if she live long enough to uncover the truth, their whole world falls apart.
I see her mother now, in the nightmare, as she was back then—gathering me in her arms, shielding me from the soldiers meant to drag me to my execution. She does not hesitate. She does not waver. She runs.
And I run with her.
She took me away, far from the kingdom that rejected me, from the father who abandoned me. We ran, never stopping, never looking back. She shielded me, protected me, even as the world shunned me. And for what? To live in exile? To be cursed to a life of solitude where even those I wished to protect feared my very existence?
The nightmare twists again. Villages, endless and unwelcoming. Every place we stop, I try. Try to earn their trust. Try to protect them from raiders, from beasts, from the remnants of war that still plague the lands.
But it never matters.
Because when they see what I am, what I can do, their fear outweighs their gratitude.
They drive me away.
They curse me.
They remind me, over and over again—I do not belong.
And then, the final betrayal.
The King’s soldiers find me. The time for running is over.
So I make a choice.
I return, but not as a prince. Never again. I make my demands clear. I will take no part in the throne. I will be nothing but a weapon, a barrier, a shield between the kingdom and the Celestians. If I am to die, let it be in battle, not by the hands of those who claim to rule over me.
Let me be forgotten.
Let me be nothing.
And for years, it worked. I built my own walls, my own people, my own exile. A small village of those who had nowhere else to go, those who chose to stand beside a monster.
But then she came.
Thalia.
The nightmare wrenches violently, memories blurring together.
Golden sunlight filtering through the trees. The rustle of leaves in the magical forest where we once played as children. The sound of her laughter, distant but clear.
No.
No, she shouldn’t be here.
I hear myself whisper it, over and over again, as the dream fractures.
She shouldn’t be here.
She can’t be here.
Not her. Not Thalia.
I do not want her to share the same fate as her mother.
The last of the Reinildas. The last of her kind.
If they knew—if anyone knew what she was, what she could become—the Celestians would tear the world apart to see her dead.
The war may have ended, but the hatred remains. They slaughtered her people, blade and steel against flesh and bone, leaving nothing behind but ashes and whispers. The Reinilda name is but a relic now, a forgotten lineage of those who could repel magic itself.
And she is the last.
She should not exist.
The gods have been cruel to let her survive.
And yet, here she stands. At my borders. In my world. In my path.
No one should suffer anymore.
The nightmare begins to fade, but the weight of it lingers. Even as the darkness recedes, even as my mind stirs toward wakefulness, I know—
This is not a warning.
This is a promise.
I will not let history repeat itself.
I will not let her die.
Even if it means keeping her away from me forever.
Her presence shatters the isolation I’ve long resigned myself to. She stands on my borders, within the walls I built to keep everyone out. But she’s different—unafraid. Defiant. And now… she’s here, in my chambers, lying next to me, breathing softly in her sleep.
I have to scare her away. I have to push her back before it’s too late.
But why? Why does she want revenge? Why did she come here? And now… she’s trying to seduce her way into my world, into my mind, into me—and it’s working.
She’s beautiful. Gods, she’s beautiful.
And I want her.
Her presence, her scent, the way she looks at me with something other than fear—she’s intoxicating. But I cannot show interest. Not when I need to drive her away. Not when I know the fate that awaits her if she stays.
Then, my nightmare shifts into reality.
Her touch—soft, warm, so painfully human.
She repels my magic. Just like her mother. She touches me, and I feel… normal. No weight of the curse, no lingering dread of turning her to stone. Her fingertips graze my skin, and for the first time in my existence, I feel human.
As much as I want to deny it, I need her. I want her. She’s the only person who has ever made me feel like my life could have meaning—like I have a reason to live. And now, for the first time, I want to live.
Her touch. Her care. Her gaze. It’s all I’ve ever longed for. I didn’t even realize I had such desires until she came into my world.
But she’s in danger. If the Celestians discover her magic, they will hunt her. They will kill her. No—she can’t be here.
I wake abruptly, heart pounding, breath unsteady. The room is dim, the fire in the hearth reduced to embers. And there she is—beside my bed, sleeping peacefully, her lashes damp with unshed tears.
Why is she crying? What is she seeing in her dreams? Is it vengeance? Regret? I never asked. Never cared to.
But now… Should I help her?
My fingers twitch, an unfamiliar urge rising—to reach out, to erase the sorrow carved into her face. She said she wanted to be my queen.
Did she really?
My fingers curl into a fist. I shouldn’t care. But the way her brows knit together, the way her breath hitches like she’s pleading for something she’ll never get—damn it.
“No, your highness, please, you have to trust me,” she murmurs.
My chest tightens. Lysander.
Right. That was supposed to be him. Her prince. Her future. But instead, he’s marrying her sister.
I shouldn't wonder about anything...But my eyes drift to the invitation on my bedside. Lysander and Yvonne.
A bitter smirk tugs at my lips.
Is this what haunts her?
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