Page 165 of Savage Crown

It is a call.

A reminder.

I release the soldier.

He crumples, gasping, coughing, scrambling away like a wounded animal before fleeing into the night.

Silence.

Rylan steps forward, his gaze dark, sharp, filled with something I can’t describe.

I swallow hard. I feel the way the bones broke under my hands and the weightlessness of my own body, the effortless speed, the unnatural strength.

I don’t look at him. I don’t want to see what’s in his eyes. I already see it in my reflection. I’ve changed and I’m clueless as to who I am.

Can I go back to the person I was?

Power is a heady drug.

If this can help Rylan… I’ll willingly become more than a human.

56

SERAPHINA

Three months have passed.

Three months since we crawled from the ruins of that cursed cave, clutching Rylan’s inheritance in bloodstained hands.

Three months since I died. Since I was reborn.

And now, we stand at the top.

Rylan is no longer a man hiding in the underbelly of the dark elf city. He is the underbelly.

No longer hunted. No longer a whisper in the dark.

Now, he rules. Without Lartina and Nhilian constantly thwarting his every move, nothing can stand in his way.

And I stand beside him.

The estate is vast.

An ancient fortress built into the towering cliffs, overlooking the territory like a god watching over its domain. It once belonged to another noble house—one that no longer exists.

Rylan has reclaimed his legacy, rebuilt his name. Carved his place into the bones of this empire. This clan.

And I?—

I have become something else. I rose from the dead, someone who is not entirely human.

Tales about me have spread, some call me a Vrakken. I can be if needed. But I can be anything I want to be—a creature breed by magic.

I feel the power inside me, coiling beneath my skin like a serpent waiting to strike.

It is alive. I feed on the other side. I’m not entire sure what am I, but all I know is I control myself. I am powerful.

It hums in my blood, in the marrow of my bones, in the way my breath never catches, the way my muscles never tire.

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