Reject me twice (Kira and Theron) novel Chapter 38

It started with a goblet.

I was reviewing trade proposals at my desk the next morning. The aftereffects of last night still made my knees crumble as I made my way into the room.

The provision was designed to look routine, but I’d learned enough about court maneuvering to recognize a power grab dressed in bureaucratic language. Lord Ashworth’s fingerprints were all over it.

My fingers tightened around the silver goblet beside my papers. I didn’t even feel the magic surge—just heard the sharp, crystalline crack as the metal split along its seam and wine flooded across the documents.

I stared at the ruined goblet, its sides crumpled inward like something had squeezed it from the inside out.

I cleaned the mess myself. Told no one.

That afternoon, a servant dropped a tray behind me in the corridor and the sound made every candle in the wall sconces flare to three times their height.

The flames licked at the stone ceiling before I even registered the magic leaving my body. The servant stumbled backward with wide eyes while I forced a calm I didn’t feel and told her it was nothing, just a draft.

She nodded and hurried away, but I saw the way she looked back over her shoulder.

The surges were different now. Sharper. Less predictable. As though the power had grown restless inside me and was testing the boundaries of my control the way a wolf tests the walls of a cage.

I should have told someone. I didn’t. Because admitting I couldn’t control my own magic meant admitting the lords who questioned my fitness for the throne might have a point.

The council session the following day was tense before it began. I sat in my throne beside Damon, my hands folded in my lap where no one could see the faint silver glow pulsing beneath my skin.

Then Lord Mercer leaned forward with a smile that was all condescension. “With all due respect, Your Majesty, military strategy requires experience that cannot be acquired through reading reports in one’s chambers.”

His eyes told me more than his mouth dared to, until he spoke the truth he believed. “Perhaps the Queen would be better served by deferring to those who have actually commanded troops in the field, rather than offering theoretical suggestions born of—”

He paused, his gaze sweeping the room. “—inexperience. And, if I may speak plainly, a perspective that lacks the particular understanding that military command has traditionally required.”

Too inexperienced. Too recently elevated. Too female. He didn’t say the words outright—he didn’t need to.

The anger hit me like a physical force. Something primal, volcanic, erupting from the same deep place where my magic lived. I felt it surge through my veins with a speed that left no room for control—

Every window in the council chamber exploded.

Dozens of panes of ancient glass detonating simultaneously, shards erupting inward in a glittering, lethal rain. Screams tore through the chamber.

Lords dove beneath the table. Papers scattered in the violent rush of wind that poured through the empty frames.

I stood frozen at the center of it all. Silver magic crackled around my hands like living lightning, and I couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t pull it back.

Through the twin bond, I felt Damon’s shock—then his concern. He was on his feet beside me, his body angled to shield me from the room.

Kira. Breathe.

His voice cut through the roar in my head like a blade through smoke—not spoken, not heard, just there, pressed into the space between our minds with an urgency that bypassed every sense except the one we shared.

I can’t stop it, Damon. I can’t—

You don’t have to stop it. Just breathe. I’m right here. Look at me.

They’re going to use this against me.

A pause. Then, quieter, steadier—the voice of the only person who understood exactly what it felt like to carry too much power in a body that hadn’t been built for it: Then we’ll deal with that too. But right now—breathe, sister. Just breathe.

“I can’t control it.” The words came out in a whisper, fractured and small.

“The magic is too much, Malik. Too strong. It’s growing, it’s responding to everything I feel, and I can’t—” My voice broke.

“I’m terrified of hurting someone. I’m terrified of hurting you. You saw what happened there, and that was anger—just anger. What happens when it’s fear, or grief, or something worse? What happens when I lose control and it’s not windows that break but people?”

He crossed the room and took my face in his hands, his dark eyes holding mine with a ferocity that left no room for doubt.

“Then we deal with it together. You learned to shift when everyone told you it was impossible. You learned to fight when no one would teach you. You survived the blood trials, reclaimed your magic, and took a throne that half the realm said you didn’t deserve. You will learn this too, Kira. I don’t have a single doubt about that.”

“What if I hurt someone I love?” I whispered.

He pressed his forehead to mine. “Then we deal with it. Together. That’s what together means—not just the easy parts, not just the nights on training mats and stolen mornings in silk sheets. All of it. Every broken window and every terrified moment and every fight we haven’t seen coming yet. You don’t carry this alone anymore. I won’t let you.”

I closed my eyes and leaned into him, letting his steadiness hold me upright while the magic pulsed and retreated beneath my skin like a tide that hadn’t decided whether to drown me or recede.

But beyond these walls, in a council chamber still glittering with broken glass, the lords were already gathering their evidence. The Silver Queen had lost control, and the court had seen it.

They would not forget.