The argument lasted less than five minutes before I ended it. After I agreed to the ritual, both, Malik and Damon pulled me away, stopping me.
"Absolutely not." Damon's voice carried the sharpness of a king who'd already decided.
"You're carrying twins, Kira. An ancient ritual performed by a witch who created the false bond that destroyed your life—a ritual that by her own admission involves pain and danger and outcomes she can't predict—is not something I'm willing to risk. Not with you. Not with the children."
Malik stood beside him. The sight of these two men—my brother and my mate, who agreed on almost nothing—presenting a unified front would have been touching if it hadn't been so infuriating.
"Damon is right. The danger is too high and the variables too unknown. We'll find another way—scholarly testimony, the High Priestess's analysis, political pressure. Something that doesn't require you to put your body and our children inside a magical circle with a woman whose track record includes twenty-three years of stolen identity."
I let them finish. I owed them that much.
But beneath the spoken argument, the real one was happening where Malik couldn't hear it.
Don't do this, Kira. Damon's voice in the bond was stripped of the king's authority he wore for the room. What came through was raw—the voice of a brother who'd only had his sister for months after spending twenty-three years without her. I can't lose you too. I already lost a mother I never knew and a mother who was never real. I cannot stand in another room and watch someone I love be taken from me by magic I don't understand.
You won't lose me.
You don't know that. Morgath doesn't know that. No one has performed this ritual in living memory, and you want to step into that circle carrying two lives that can't consent to the risk you're taking with them. A pause, and the fear beneath it was so vast I felt it press against my own chest like a hand. I'm asking you as your brother. Not commanding you as your king. Please.
The please nearly broke me. Damon didn't beg. The Dark King didn't beg. But the boy who'd grown up with a manufactured mother and no sister—the boy who'd only just learned what it felt like to have family that was real—that boy was begging, and I could feel every year of loneliness he'd carried pressing behind that single word.
I'm not doing this to be brave, Damon. I'm doing this because I'm terrified. Because every night I lie awake with my hands on my stomach and imagine a blade getting through, and I know—I know—that the only way to take that weapon out of their hands permanently is to prove the Covenant is satisfied. Not politically. Magically. Undeniably.
And if the ritual kills you? If it kills the children?
Then you'll know I died trying to protect them. Not hiding from the fight. Not waiting for the next assassin to get lucky. I pushed everything I had through the bond—love and fear and the fierce, desperate certainty of a mother who would walk through fire for the heartbeats beneath her palm. But it won't kill me. Because you'll be in that circle with me, and we are stronger together than any magic that came before us. You know that. You felt it during the blood rite. Trust it again.
Silence in the bond. Then, so quiet it was barely a whisper between our minds: I'm terrified, sister.
So am I. Be terrified with me. Just don't make me do it alone.
Then I spoke, and I didn't soften it.
"If this doesn't happen—if we cannot prove, definitively, that the prophecy was fulfilled the moment Damon and I merged our magic—then the threats will never stop. The Order will recruit, and grow, and send more assassins, and eventually one will succeed."
My hand pressed against my stomach.
"My magic protects these children instinctively, which means it's not fully available to protect me. Every month this pregnancy progresses, the gap between what I can defend against and what the Order is willing to throw at me grows wider."
I looked at Malik. The fear in his eyes nearly broke my resolve. Nearly.
"This ritual is the only option that's safe—not safe for me, safe for the realm. Safe for our children's future. Because if I survive nine months of assassination attempts and deliver these babies into a world where the Order still has a legitimate argument for killing them, then I haven't protected them at all. I've just delayed the danger."
Malik crossed the room and took my face in his hands. His forehead pressed against mine.
"I can't lose you, Kira. The thought of you in pain, of something going wrong in that circle, of ancient magic doing to you what it's done to a thousand years of twins before you—I can't breathe through it. Tell me you understand what you're asking me to accept."
I covered his hands with mine.
"I know exactly what I'm asking. And I can't lose you either, or these children, or the future we've been fighting for since the night you found me at the border. But we need to do this, Malik."
My voice hardened.
"Every day we delay is a day the Order uses to plan the next attack, and I refuse to spend this pregnancy hiding behind walls while our enemies build a case for murdering our children."
Damon's voice cut through the silence. "If this goes wrong—if the ritual hurts you or the children—I will never forgive myself for agreeing to it. You understand that?"
"And if we do nothing and the next assassin's blade finds my belly?" I held his gaze. "Could you forgive yourself for that?"
He flinched. The twin bond cracked with his pain.
"That's not fair, Kira."
"None of this is fair, Damon. But it's real. And I need you beside me in that circle, not standing outside it wishing you'd been brave enough to try."
Silence. The loudest thing in the room.
They agreed. Not with words—Damon nodded once, jaw tight.
Malik kissed my forehead and stepped back with the controlled stillness of someone who'd just made the hardest decision of his life.
The ritual took place at midnight in the palace's deepest chamber.
Runes covered every surface—angular, alien, belonging to a language dead for centuries. Morgath prepared the circle.
Salt first, poured in an unbroken ring. Then blood—mine and Damon's, mixed and dripped along the salt line in patterns matching the runes.
Damon and I stepped into the circle and took each other's hands. Through the bond I felt his fear and trust braided so tightly they'd become the same thing.
Together, I sent.
Together, he answered. And his grip tightened.
Morgath began to chant. The air inside the circle thickened, pressing against our skin like physical weight.
The pain hit us simultaneously.
White-hot, blinding, a fire that burned from the inside out. I screamed. Damon screamed. Our hands locked together, and the bond between us flared brighter than it had ever been—a column of silver light erupting from our joined hands and piercing the ceiling.
Visions flooded our minds.
The first twins. A thousand years ago. Standing in this exact circle, faces young and terrified. One raising a blade. The other accepting it. Blood on ancient stone.
Generations cascading forward—twins taught that murder was mercy. Centuries of children raised to be killers.
Then our mother. Weeping over two babies, desperate for another way.
Then us. Our magic merging—silver and shadow, choosing unity over destruction. The Covenant responding. Accepting.
Then clarity, bright and absolute. The Covenant was satisfied. The balance was restored.
The visions faded. The pain released us. We collapsed onto the circle, gasping, shaking, alive.
The runes pulsed with soft gold light—warm, steady, unmistakable.
Acceptance. Confirmation.
"It's done." Morgath's voice reached us from beyond the circle. "The Covenant recognizes you both. The prophecy is complete."
Relief crashed through the twin bond. I couldn't tell whether I was laughing or crying until I realized I was doing both.
Damon pulled me into his arms.
"We can prove it now," he said against my hair, voice rough and breaking. "Show the Order, show the realm—the Covenant itself confirmed us. They can't argue with this."
"Some won't believe." I pulled back to look at him, tears tracking down my face. "Some will call it fabricated, manipulated, a witch's trick."
"Let them." Damon wiped my tears with his thumb. "We'll invite every doubter into this chamber and let the runes speak for themselves. The stones don't lie, Kira. They've been waiting a thousand years to tell the truth."
"Some might believe," he continued, and the hope in his eyes was fierce enough to light fires. "And that's our weapon—truth instead of propaganda, proof instead of fear. We show them what the Covenant showed us, and we let the truth do what violence never could."
We had our answer. Now we needed to spread it.