Chapter 131
Chapter 131
*Jiselle‘
The moment the cage disappeared, I thought it was over.
I thought finding my wolf, merging with her, reclaiming that fractured piece of myself that would be the end of it.
But I was wrong.
Because Eira didn’t vanish.
She waited.
And as I turned, whole again but breathless, she stood exactly where she had always been–at the edge of the broken throne room, in the place where so many of my pieces had come to die. The silver–white light of her flame flickered, uncertain now. Thinner, Dimming. But her posture hadn’t faltered. Her chin remained high. Her arms hung at her sides as if she’d been expecting this moment from the very beginning.
Her gaze met mine.
And for the first time, I saw not a goddess.
Not a monster.
Just a woman.
Tired.
And terrified of being forgotten.
“You chose,” she said quietly. “And it wasn’t me.”
Her voice didn’t cut. It didn’t taunt. It trembled.
I didn’t respond right away. My pulse was still syncing with the rhythm of my wolf’s. My senses were sharper now, my instincts louder. But something inside me warned against rushing. This wasn’t a battle of speed. It never had been.
“It’s not that simple,” I said at last. “I didn’t choose you, but I didn’t choose to become you
either.”
“You already have,” she whispered. “We share the same fire. The same blood. The same rage.”
I took a step forward, watching the way her flame recoiled, flaring briefly before curling protectively around her shoulders like a cloak.
“We don’t share the same heart,” I said.
Her lips tightened. “Hearts don’t survive in this world. You know that.”
The air crackled with her pain, I could feel it now–not just beneath her skin, but inside her memories. The places where her soul had torn and fused back wrong. Where the world had molded her into something brutal just so she could keep breathing.
“I was built to last,” she said. “You were built to break.”
“No,” I said quietly. “I was built to burn. But not like you.”
She moved then, not fast–but with purpose/Her feet stepped lightly across the cracked marble. Her presence shimmered with all the memories I’d tried to bury–Kael’s eyes on me in the arena, Ethan bleeding beneath my flame, Max’s betrayal, Nate walking away too early and coming back too late. She was everything I had survived. Every time had silenced the scream, bit down on the pain, hidden the fracture.
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Chapter 131
“I carried the parts of you no one else would touch,” she said. “I bled so you could pretend. I was strength when you were soft. Flame when you couldn‘ speak. I stood for you when you cowered.”
“I didn’t cower,” I said, my voice harder now. “I survived. There’s a difference.”
“And what did survival make you?” she asked, her voice low, wounded. “A girl lying in a forest, afraid of her own hands? A wolf who couldn’t howl? A Sovereign who begged for someone to save her?”
I clenched my fists. The weight of her words coiled around my spine, threatening to bend me again. But I didn’t flinch.
“I didn’t come here to fight you,” I said.
Eira stilled. “Then you came to end me.”
“No,” I said softly. “I came to reclaim me.”
Her brows pulled together.
I stepped closer. “I’m not going to destroy you. You were part of me. Maybe the part I hated, maybe the part I feared–but you kept me breathing when 1 wanted to disappear. You kept me moving when all I saw was ash.”
Her mouth opened. Then closed.
“And now?” she asked, a breath of a whisper.
“Now,” I said, “you rest.”
She stepped back.
One pace.
Two.
Then she shook her head.
“I don’t know how,” she said. “I don’t remember how to be anything but this.”
“Then I’ll remind you.”
The bond pulsed inside me.
My wolf howled.
And I reached for her.
She jerked once, startled, flame sparking around her fingers as if expecting violence. But I didn’t strike.
I wrapped my arms around her.
Her body was hot–nearly untouchable–but I held on.
And in that embrace, I felt the truth of her collapse.
The exhaustion.
The anger.
The guilt.
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Chapter 131
The deep, deep ache of never being enough, of being too much, of being a weapon that no one ever intended to sharpen,
She trembled once.
And then broke.
Not shattered.
Not into pieces.
But into light.
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Her fire didn’t explode–it melted. Folded into mine. Her voice didn’t scream–it sighed. Her edges softened, then slipped into my ribs like smoke curling into bone.
She didn’t die.
She became part of me.
Not a ghost.
Not a threat.
A memory. Rewritten. Reclaimed.
The throne behind us shifted. The cracks sealed. The flame markings disappeared. Chains that had once curled around its legs vanished like they’d never
existed.
In their place, there was no crown. No torch. No chain.
Just simplicity.
The throne that had once pulsed with volatile flame, that had echoed with screams and whispered with prophecy, now stood as nothing more than stone. Clean lines. Cool surface. Solid in a way nothing in my life had been for a long time. The scorch marks had faded. The bindings once forged in fire
were gone.
There was no need for drama. No need for dominance.
Just breath.
Just being.
Just freedom.
stepped forward slowly, my bare feet steady on the marble that no longer cracked beneath me. The room held its breath with me.
My fingers brushed the side of the throne–not with the reverence of someone reaching for a title, but with the quiet ownership of someone finally returning to a place she had always belonged.
And then I sat.
Not as the broken girl who had once knelt at Kael’s feet, terrified of her own power.
Not as the Sovereign they tried to force me to become.
Not as Eira, forged in fury and silence and survival.
But as Jiselle.
Chapter 131
Whole.
Scarred.
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Enough.
Somewhere far away, in the world of waking, my body jolted.
A breath. A tremor. The smallest shift–but it rippled through the room like a stormfront.
Eva gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. “She’s stabilizing.”
Ethan was already at my side, eyes wide, his shoulders tense with that familiar mix of fear and hope. He reached toward me, hesitating only inches from my arm–like touching me too soon might undo whatever was happening, might shatter the fragile bridge I’d just rebuilt inside myself.
Max said nothing.
But he stepped forward anyway. One slow pace.
And he didn’t take his eyes off me–not for a second.
Not even when I hadn’t yet opened mine.
linhaled.
Deep. Full. Like it was the first breath I’d taken in years.
My lips parted.
And I whispered–soft, certain, and whole:
“I remember who I am.”
Silence followed. Not the fearful kind. The reverent kind.
Then-
My eyes opened.
And the room changed.
Not from the sound. Not from the magic.
From the color.
Not gold.
Not white.
Violet.
The flame had evolved.
And something new had awakened.
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Chapter 132
