[Kira’s POV]
The throne room was burning.
I stood at the center of it, barefoot on stone that radiated heat like a furnace, and watched both thrones consume themselves in smoke.
The flames moved wrong—too deliberate, too purposeful, eating through ancient stone with the patience of something sentient.
Damon lay at my feet.
His eyes were open, staring at nothing, and the silver light of the twin bond was gone. Not dimmed. Not muted. Just gone.
Then I saw Malik.
His body was broken against the far wall, crumpled at an angle that told me bones had shattered on impact.
His dark eyes were closed. Blood traced a path from his temple to his jaw, and his chest didn't move. Didn't rise. Didn't fall.
I looked down at my hands.
They were covered in blood. Not red—silver, luminous, dripping with magic that destroyed everything it touched. Where the drops hit stone, the floor cracked and blackened.
The magic wasn't leaking from me—it was hemorrhaging, and as I watched my own hands destroy the throne room, I understood with a clarity that felt like a blade between my ribs—I did this. I killed them.
I screamed—
And woke to darkness and the sound of my own voice tearing through the chamber like something wounded.
Malik's arms were already around me, his voice in my ear—low, steady. It's not real. You're safe. I'm here. Breathe, Kira. Just breathe.
I couldn't breathe. My body was shaking so violently my teeth chattered. Then I saw the room.
Every candle in the chamber had melted. Not burned down—melted, reduced to pools of liquid wax pooling on the stone floor like spilled blood.
The curtains around the bed were singed, smoke still rising in thin, ghostly threads. I did this. In my sleep.
Through the bond—faint, three corridors away, pulled from his own sleep by the shockwave of my terror—Damon reached for me.
Sister?
The word arrived wrapped in alarm so sharp it cut through the haze of my panic. I could feel him already moving, already throwing off his covers, his feet hitting cold stone.
I'm fine. I pushed the words back through the bond with every scrap of composure I could scrape together, which wasn't much. Go back to sleep, Damon. It was just a nightmare.
A pause. Through the connection, I felt him stop mid-stride. Felt him reading what I was sending against what he'd actually felt rip through the bond seconds ago—the raw, screaming terror, the magic detonating outward, the smell of smoke that wasn't just in my room but in his mind too.
That wasn't just a nightmare, Kira.
Please. My throat was too tight to speak aloud and too tight to think straight, but I pushed the word at him anyway, brittle and desperate. Malik is here. I'm safe. Please just—I can't have you see this right now. I can't.
Another pause. Longer this time, heavy with everything he wanted to say and the restraint it cost him not to say it. I felt his feet still on the cold corridor floor. Felt the war between the brother who needed to come and the twin who understood that sometimes dignity was the only thing left to hold.
I'm here if you need me. Three corridors. I'm not going back to sleep.
Then the bond quieted—not closed, never closed, just drawn back to give me the space I'd asked for. But I could feel him there, a steady presence in the dark, standing sentinel from a distance because I'd asked him to and he loved me enough to listen even when listening was harder than running.
I wrenched out of Malik's arms to stare at him, my eyes racing over his body, searching for damage.
"Kira. Look at me. You're—"
"Your shirt." The words came out in a whisper that sounded nothing like my voice. His sleeping shirt was singed along the left side.
The fabric had blackened and curled, eaten away in patches that exposed skin pink and raw beneath.
"Oh god, Malik. Oh god, I did that. I burned you. You were sleeping right next to me and I—" My hands flew to my mouth, silver sparks dancing at my fingertips. "Does it hurt? Please tell me it doesn't hurt. Please tell me I didn't—"
I nearly killed him. The magic had erupted from me while I was unconscious, and it had reached for the person closest to me with the blind hunger of a force that didn't know the difference between enemy and beloved.
"It's getting worse." My voice was barely audible, scraped raw from screaming. "The power is beyond me, Malik. It's too much, too strong, and it's growing. Every day it's growing, and I can't—I don't know how to—"
I couldn't finish. The words dissolved into a sound that was half sob, half gasp, and I curled in on myself, arms wrapped around my ribs.
Malik's hands found mine and held them firmly. "Then we find someone who can teach you. Someone who understands royal magic, who knows how this power works and how to train it."
The warmth he gave began to calm me. "You didn't learn to fight alone, Kira. You had me. You didn't survive the blood trials alone—you had Damon. This is no different. We find the right person, and you learn to control it the same way you've learned everything else—by refusing to quit until you've mastered it."
"Who?" The question came out sharp, desperate.
"The witch Morgath created the false bond that stole my magic in the first place. She's the reason I never learned to use it, the reason it was locked away for twenty-three years, and now it's been released all at once into a body that has no idea how to contain it."
"Who exactly am I supposed to trust with this? Who in this realm understands power they've never seen before, power that predates the current magical traditions, power that—"
My voice broke again, and silver light flickered between my fingers, uncontrolled, uninvited. "Power that destroys everything it touches while I stand there and watch?"
Malik pulled my hands away from my face gently, firmly.
His dark eyes were steady, and behind the composure I could see the fear he was working to keep from me—not fear of me, but fear for me.
"The High Priestess. The royal scholars. The archives that haven't been opened in decades. There are people in this realm who've spent their lives studying the old magic, Kira."
He kissed my forehead before continuing. "And if none of them have the answers, then we go further—other territories, other traditions, other sources. Someone, somewhere, knows how this works. There has to be someone."
I wanted to believe him. But the scorch marks on the walls stared back at me in the moonlight.
The magic wasn't waiting for me to find a teacher. It was escalating on its own schedule, fed by emotions I couldn't suppress and triggered by dreams I couldn't control.
"Maybe you shouldn't sleep here anymore," I said, and the words tasted like broken glass.
"Maybe you shouldn't be anywhere near me until I figure this out. Tonight it was a ripped shirt, Malik. Tomorrow it could be—"
I swallowed hard. "I can't be the thing that kills you. I won't survive that. I'd rather lose you to distance than lose you to a nightmare I can't wake up from."
He didn't say anything, but told me everything I needed to know through actions.
His grip on me tightened, telling me he wasn't going anywhere. Not now, not ever. I curled against his chest, pressing my ear to his heartbeat.
His arms came around me as he held me in the wreckage of a room my own power had nearly destroyed.
I'd reclaimed what was stolen. But I'd never learned to wield it. Never been taught the foundations, the discipline, the framework that turns raw power into controlled force.
What happens when I lose control completely?
What happens when the nightmare becomes real, and the people I love become the casualties of a power I never asked for and can't put down?
The magic pulsed beneath my skin, restless and hungry, and I held onto Malik and had no answer at all.