Page 136 of Rise of the Siren Queen
She was there.
Standing beyond the broken hall like a shadow cut from rot and spite.
Ithra.
The siren who’d tried to kill me.
The one Iryen swore was dead.
Yet here she stood. Whole. Watching. Breathing.
I felt my pulse stutter and then detonate. My body tensed, fists clenching so hard my knuckles cracked. Rage surged like wildfire, burning too hot to contain. The world shrank to that single silhouette, the one thing in this ruin Iwantedto break.
How the fuck was she still alive?
Every nerve in me screamed to end her. Right here. Right now. Rip through the space between us and silence her forever. She was a threat. A ghost dragged back from the grave to taunt us. To taunther.
And I couldn’t let her keep breathing.
I wasn’t just angry. I was gone.
Fury flooded every part of me, black and wild and loud.
But before I could act—before I could rip the damn room apart—shemoved.
Iryen.
She rose from the blood-slick stone, slow, deliberate, her body trembling but her presence… gods. There was fire in her eyes. Not rage. Not grief.
Power.
She stood like a queen reclaiming her throne. And in that heartbeat,when our eyes met, everything inside meignited. The bond between us flared, hot and blinding, molten in my chest.
She was mine.
And nothing—no ex, no ghost, no god-damned siren—would ever touch her again.
I stayed hidden just beyond the ruined threshold, half-shadowed by what looked like a shattered dining hall—tables overturned, broken cutlery strewn like remnants of some perverse feast.
And I saw it.
The ex.
That smug bastard’s smirk faltered. Just for a second. But I saw it.
And I smiled.
Because he should be afraid.
Theyallshould.
“You took everything from me, Draven.”
Iryen’s voice wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be. Slipped through the silence like a blade, soft but deadly, a whisper that steals breath and freezes blood.
Each word that left her lips dragged the temperature lower. The very air seemed to tighten, brittle, as she stepped toward him. Her pain walked beside her, but beneath it—beneath the years of grief and betrayal—there was something older. Sharper.
Rage. Cold, timeworn, patient rage.
