Page 135 of Rise of the Siren Queen
I need to fix this.
I couldn’t give it back.
But I could take something. I couldtake.
The rage came quietly at first. A whisper beneath the weight. Then it built—feral, wild, and cold. Not the kind that burns hot and dies out. No, this was the kind that froze over your soul and made you carve names into vengeance with your bare hands.
Someone had done this.
Someone had torn her apart.
And they wouldbleedfor it.
Every. Single. One. Of them.
They would learn that the man who’d walked into this hall moments ago was dead.
This was no longer just about us. This was about retribution.
A laugh cut through the grief like a blade dragged over raw nerves, sharp, mocking, and wrong.
My head snapped toward the sound, instinct and rage flaring before thought could catch up. It dragged me out of the gravity of Iryen’s collapse, if only for a moment, and anchored me in something colder. Meaner.
There he was.
The laugh belonged to a Triton I’d only seen through the fractured lens of her memories, faint flashes she tried to bury, but I’d seen enough. Heard enough.
His voice slithered through the room like poison. Cold. Ridiculing. Like he had nothing better to do than stand in the ruins of her grief andsmile.
My eyes locked on him, and something deep inside me pulled taut, like a bowstring ready to snap.
He was young—my age, maybe younger—but there was a stillness in him I didn’t like. A predator’s calm. He thought he was safe. Like he believed none of this would touch him.
Curly blond hair, those glacial blue eyes, and that sickly pale skin that caught the light like bone. He looked like something that had crawled out of the deep and learned to smirk.
He was leaner than I, built like someone who knew how to slip a knife in just under the ribs—and enjoy it. His stance reeked of confidence, but not the earned kind. This was the smug, hollow kind. The kind that came from never being punished hard enough.
My muscles coiled. Breath shallow. Wrath thick in my throat.
He was thefuckingex.
He hadtouchedher.
He had the audacity to breathe the same air while she bled on the floor.
A cold, electric fury lit my veins, sharp enough to drown out grief. It crackled under my skin, begging for release. I didn’t move, not yet, but every cell in my body screamed to lunge, to tear, toendhim.
He smiled again, gaze flickering through the sirens in front of him.
Elora lay crumpled beside Iryen, her body limp, bruised, bloodied, and still. But it wasn’t she who stole the breath from my lungs.
It was Ronan.
Folded in on himself, clutching his chest like his ribs were breaking from the inside. Gasping for air that wouldn’t come. The way I was. My brain roared with questions, screamed for clarity, but nothing made it through. Just noise. Static. Shock.
Kieran stood like a ghost, frozen, eyes wide, too stunned to move. Sienna struggled in the grip of a Triton whose resemblance toIryen’s bastard ex was so pathetic it twisted my lip in disgust. Older. Softer. But the same cowardice in the eyes.
But none of it—noneof it—compared to the thing that dragged me straight to the edge of my sanity.
