Page 145 of Rise of the Siren Queen
His words sliced through the fog, clean and precise, parting the storm that thundered inside me.
I blinked.
My gaze drifted from Ithra’s shattered form to the churning void inside my chest. That endless, insatiable rage. Adrian was right. Of course he was. He always was.
He saw the cracks even I refused to acknowledge. And he stayed.
But the fire refused to die. It coiled around my ribs, snarling, seething, whispering that this wasn’t enough. Their screams had only scratched the surface of what they owed.
“I’m not giving him my soul,” I said, voice low and frigid as the abyss. My stare remained locked on Ithra, her sobs unraveling in the air like a broken hymn. “But death is far too kind.”
“Good,” he murmured, tightening his grip around my waist like he could anchor me with sheer will. I felt his heat behind me, burning where I remained frozen, grounding where I was unraveling. “Because you’re mine. And while death might be easy for them, I won’t lose you to the darkness. I can feel it creeping into your mind, Princess… whispering, hungry. Don’t let it take more.”
His voice wasn’t a plea. It was a warning wrapped in devotion. Not fear. Not judgment. Just truth. And, gods, it dug deep.
I clenched my jaw, fury colliding with clarity.
If I let the darkness hollow me out—if I let itconsume every soft, bright thing left inside me—then Draven would win. Not because he lived. But because he would have turned me into something else. Something less. Something ruined.
He wouldn’t just take my family.
He would takeme.
And that… that I would never allow.
My hands slowly unfurled at my sides. Not in surrender. But in control.
He wasn’t worth the last of my light.
They had already stolen too much.
They would take nothing more.
My power surged—cold, merciless, and exacting—as I drove deeper into Ithra’s mind.
There were no screams. No last pleas. Only the broken glass.
Layer by layer, I peeled her thoughts apart, scraping memory from marrow, severing every thread of self until the tapestry of who she was ceasing to exist.
Her pride.
Her malice.
Her cruelty. All of it is gone.
I didn’t destroy just her thoughts. I erased the architecture that held them, imploded her mind from the inside out until what remained was not a woman, not even a ghost, but a shell. A vacant husk, blank and hollow, robbed of every shred of sentience.
Draven watched.
The flicker of his mother’s soul died in her eyes. Her spine went rigid. Then slack.
Dead.
His jaw clenched, veins bulging in his neck as he strained against the invisible grip I held him with. Rage warred with helplessness in his expression. And underneath it, raw, undeniable grief.
He had already lost.
Just like I had four years ago.
