Chapter 395: Dravenna and Melissa...: "You can Die Now"

"

ABSOLUTELY NOT!

"

Melissa’s voice hit the walls of the private VIP booth like a cannon shot. Glasses rattled on the table. Ice shifted in the champagne bucket with a brittle clink.

Two of Victoria’s college friends—who’d been lingering near the door like they still had a right to be there—flinched hard and decided elsewhere was suddenly very appealing.

She was

shivering.

Not like Phei’s shiver. His had been clean

terror—the

bright, animal panic of a boy who knew his limits and had just been told they were about to be exceeded.

Melissa’s shiver was

colder. Deeper.

Laced with something that tasted like rust in the back of her throat and smelled like old fires that had never properly gone out.

Hatred.

"

ABSOLUTELY YES,

" Dravenna said back.

Her voice was calm. The infuriating, measured, Dravenna sort—warm on the surface, steel underneath.

She sat opposite in the booth, legs crossed, posture

flawless.

The Dragoness of Paradise. Dean of Ashford Elite. The woman who could make Legacy patriarchs soil themselves with a single glance and was currently using that same presence to deliver news she clearly found darkly amusing.

"I’m just the messenger,"

Dravenna added, examining a nail with detached interest. "

’Don’t shoot the

messenger’.

Isn’t that the saying?"

Melissa turned on her.

Full rotation. Eyes blazing. Fists white-knuckled on the edge of the booth table.

"You have no right to say anything about any of this. And don’t you

dare

act innocent."

Dravenna tilted her head. "What have I done ag—"

"You have the

audacity

to

ask that?"

The words came out serrated. Each one drawing blood.

"Where have you been, Dravenna? The past

seven years?

Where were you?"

Dravenna’s hand paused on her nail.

"Playing Dean."

Melissa spat the title like it was acid. "Being a

puppet

for the

Angels.

Serving their little prince.

Cutting off every form of communication

—every connection, every line, every thread that tied

you to me

and to your

so-called

mate

."

The word cracked in her mouth like dry bone. "

While I raised him

. Alone. While I endured everything. Alone. While I watched your

’prophecy’

mate get beaten and broken and starved and I held him through his nightmares by myself for ten years—"

Her voice cracked.

Rebuilt itself. Harder.

"And now you reappear.

Now

. Tonight. To deliver the news that

Madam’s

on her way like the past seven years were yesterday. Like you can just waltz back in with your heels and your composure and your

’just the messenger’

bullshit and everything’s fine."

Silence.

The bass from the club pulsed through the walls. Distant. Irrelevant.

Dravenna looked at Melissa.

At the pain in her eyes. The fury. The exhaustion of a woman who’d carried a weight built for two and had done it alone so long her spine had fused around the burden.

"

Are you done whining?

" Dravenna asked quietly. "Because I thought that was

past your age

."

Melissa’s laugh was short, ugly, the sound of someone who’d just remembered the universe keeps a particularly vicious sense of humour on file.

She leaned forward across the table.

"You think this is whining?" Her voice dropped to something low and lethal. "This is me trying very hard not to reach across this table and remind you what it feels like when someone you love finally stops pretending

they’re human

."

Dravenna didn’t flinch.

Melissa stared at her.

The helplessness arrived like cold water poured down the spine—sudden, complete, the precise impotence of screaming at a wall that had long ago learned to smile while you bled.

She could rage. Could empty the full

ledger of seven years’ grievances

across this table like spilled blood: the nights she’d spent alone with a boy who woke screaming from nightmares no child should know, the secrets she’d buried so deep they’d

calcified

in her chest, the way she’d held him together with bare hands while the world tried to tear him apart piece by piece while he hated her.

And still Dravenna would sit there. Legs crossed. Nails perfect. Untouched.

This bitch.

Melissa exhaled through her nose. Closed her eyes for one deliberate second.

This is who she’s always been. I forgot. That’s on me.

Dravenna laughed.

Low. Warm. The laugh of a woman who’d watched Melissa cycle through fury, helplessness, resignation in under thirty seconds and found the sequence almost nostalgic.

Then the amusement leached out of her face. Replaced by something harder. More deliberate.

"For the

record,"

Dravenna said, casual as Tuesday weather. "Just so you know."

She uncrossed her legs. Recrossed them the other way.

"Phei and I fulfilled the

fourteen-year prophecy

."

Pause.

"We’ll be consummating soon.

He’ll take my virginity.

"

The room achieved a stillness so absolute it felt like someone had sucked the air out and replaced it with glass.

Melissa didn’t move.

Didn’t breathe.

One perfect, suspended heartbeat—her body registering the information the way a high-rise registers seismic shock: every beam absorbing the hit at once, hairline fractures

spiderwebbing

through places that wouldn’t show until the aftershocks.

"Of course you did,"

she whispered.

Dravenna smiled.

Melissa’s hand closed around the neck of the Château Margaux.

"Now you can die."

Dravenna’s smile flickered.

"Melissa—"

"And after you die—"

Melissa came closer, bottle already in hand, the weight of it settling into her palm like an old, trusted friend. She’d considered wine as improvised weaponry before; tonight the universe had finally provided sufficient cause. "

—don’t worry. Your Madam will follow suit.

"

Dravenna was already standing.

"Melissa, let’s be reasonable—"

"I

AM

BEING REASONABLE. REASONABLE WOULD BE THIS SMALLER BOTTLE."

Dravenna

backed

toward the door. Quickly. The Dragoness of Paradise—

the woman who’d made grown patriarchs weep in boardrooms, who’d held two thousand Legacy children in velvet-gloved terror for decades

—

was retreating from a woman

with a

fifteen-thousand-dollar

vintage and the specific fury that turns wine into a blunt instrument.

"Melissa, put the Château Margaux down it’s expen—"

"YOUR

FUNERAL

WILL COST MORE."

Dravenna ran.

Actually ran. Heels striking panicked staccato against marble, the Dean of Ashford Elite fleeing down into the VIP corridor with the velocity of someone who knew—from long, bitter experience—that Melissa Maxton did not bluff when violence was on the menu and the bottle was already airborne.

The door slammed.

Melissa stood alone in the booth.

Breathing hard. Bottle still raised. Chest heaving.

She set it down.

Slowly.

Sat.

How could things get worse?

She already knew.

Because if Dravenna had come in person—bypassing seven years of encrypted silence and broken oaths—then Phei must’ve received the same message too either from Dravenna herself or straight from the source.

Which meant he knew. Which meant the shiver that had rolled through the club five minutes earlier—

the one that wasn’t Void-Ice cold but something rawer, more human

—had been him.

Processing.

Unravelling.

Being seventeen about it in the only way certain threats could force him to be.

The Madam was coming. Dravenna was back. The

fourteen-year

prophecy was fulfilled, which meant the timeline Melissa had been clinging to—the years she’d counted on to prepare him, to reveal the truths about his bloodline without breaking him, to forge him strong enough to carry what he really was—had just

imploded.

Everything was accelerating.

"Where are you,

big sister?

"

She whispered it to the empty booth. To the rattling glasses. To the muffled bass throbbing through the walls like a distant, indifferent heartbeat. To the faint red stain on the table where the Château Margaux had stood.

Because only her sister could stand between them and what was coming.

The Madam.

And old monster too that had already arrived.