Kael POV
The prison chains bite into my wrists, but I barely feel them.
I'm too focused on Celeste through our bond. She's walking away from the dungeon, her feelings a storm of rage and determination and something else.
Planning. She's planning something.
"Smart mate," I mutter to the darkness.
"Talking to yourself already?" a voice says. "The curse works fast."
I look up. A guard stands outside my cell, smiling. "They say everyone who bonds with you goes mad within a year. Guess we'll see if the girl lasts a month."
"She'll last forever," I say quietly. "Because she's not like the others."
The guard laughs and walks away.
He doesn't understand. None of them do. The seven people who picked me before weren't my mates. The curse refused them, killed them, because they were wrong.
But Celeste? The bond recognized her instantly. My mate. My queen. Reborn after three hundred years.
She can't die from the curse. She IS the cure.
I close my eyes and let my mind drift back through our bond, watching Celeste's memories like a movie.
A backyard party. Weeks ago, before the Selection Ceremony.
I see through Celeste's eyes as a servant brings her tea. She's sitting alone, reading, when the helper approaches.
"Your tea, my lady," the helper says, setting down the cup.
Celeste reaches for it, but something makes her stop. In this memory, she's warier, more careful than she should be.
Like she already knows to expect poison.
She waits until the servant goes, then dumps the tea into a plant pot when no one's looking.
The plant wilts and dies within seconds.
My eyes snap open in the present. That memory—it's from BEFORE the Selection Ceremony. Before we bonded. Before I could see her memories through our link.
Which means she was already avoiding harm before she met me.
How did she know?
I dig deeper into her memories, looking, and find something impossible.
A prison. Dark and cold. Celeste is older—maybe twenty-three—dying on the floor.
"Please," she asks someone standing in shadows. "I loved you."
"Love doesn't pay for castles," Damian's voice says. "Your fortune does."
Then Vivienne appears, holding a cup of poison. "Drink it, sister. Make this easy on everyone."
They force it down her throat. Celeste chokes, convulses, dies.
And then— She wakes up screaming in her childhood bed, six months before her eighteenth birthday.
My heart stops.
She died. She actually died.
And then she came back.
Reincarnation. But not the normal kind where you forget your past life. She remembers EVERYTHING.
"Impossible," I breathe. But the memories don't lie.
Celeste has lived this timeline before. She knows what Damian and Vivienne will do because they already did it. She knows about the poison, the deception, the murder.
That's why she picked me. Not randomly. Not out of anger.
She chose me because in her first life, she picked Damian and it killed her.
This time, she picked the monster instead of the liar.
A slow smile spreads across my face. My mate is even more amazing than I thought.
The prison door opens. Two guards enter, followed by a man in expensive robes—a judge.
"Kael the Serpent," he announces. "You're charged with the death of Lord Victor Ashford. How do you plead?"
"Not guilty," I say simply.
"Do you have proof of your innocence?"
"I was with Lady Celeste all night. She's my excuse."
The magistrate's face is pitying. " Lady Celeste testified that she fell asleep. She cannot confirm your whereabouts between midnight and dawn."
Of course she can't. Helena made sure of that.
"Then I suppose we're at an impasse," I say calmly.
"Not quite." The judge pulls out a scroll. "Lady Helena has called the Blood Trial. If you're truly innocent, the gods will show it."
A Blood Trial. Ancient magic where the accused is tried with increasingly dangerous challenges. Survive them all, and you're innocent. Die, and you're guilty.
It's meant to kill shifters.
"When?" I ask.
"Tomorrow at dawn." The judge rolls up the scroll. "Prepare yourself, snake. Very few escape Blood Trials."
He leaves. The guards follow.
I'm alone again, but I'm not scared.
Blood Trials can't kill me. I'm a Serpent King—I've survived three hundred years of curses, poison, and assassination attempts.
What worries me is what Celeste will do when she finds out.
Through our link, I feel her discover the news. Her feelings spike—fear, rage, determination.
Then she does something unexpected.
She cuts off the link. Not completely—I can still feel her faintly—but she's blocking me from reading her thoughts and feelings.
"Celeste?" I call through our link. "What are you doing?"
No answer.
She's planning something. Something she doesn't want me to know about.
Hours pass. It's nearly midnight when I finally feel her nearing the dungeon.
The door opens. Celeste slips inside, dressed in dark clothes, a cap covering her hair.
"What are you doing here?" I demand.
"Breaking you out," she says simply, pulling lock picks from her pocket.
"Celeste, no. If they catch you—"
"They won't." She kneels by my cell door, working on the lock. "I'm not losing you to Helena's fake trial."
"It's not fake. Blood Trials are real magic."
"I don't care." The lock clicks open. "I refuse to let them kill you for a murder you didn't commit."
She moves to my chains next, picking those locks too. Her hands are steady, practiced.
"Where did you learn to pick locks?" I ask.
She freezes for just a second. "I... taught myself."
Lie. She learned in her first life. When Damian locked her in rooms.
"Celeste," I say carefully, "what aren't you telling me?"
She gets the chains off and meets my eyes. "A lot of things. But right now, we need to run."
"I'm not running. I'm going to fight the Blood Trial and win."
"You can't win! Helena rigged it! I saw the documents—she paid the judge to make the trial impossible. You'll die!"
"I won't die. I can't. I'm—"
"The Serpent King. I know." Celeste grabs my hand. "But even kings can be killed if the trap is smart enough. And Helena is very smart."
She's right. I can survive regular trials. But if Helena's rigged this one with specific magic meant to kill ancient serpents...
"Then we run together," I say.
"No. You run. I stay and buy you time."
"Absolutely not—" "Kael." She touches my face gently. "In my first life, I was weak. I let people protect me until everyone who cared about me died. This time, I'm strong enough to protect myself. Trust me."
There it is. She almost said it. Almost spilled her secret.
I catch her wrist. "Your first life?"
Her eyes widen. She realizes her mistake.
"You know," she breathes. "You saw my memories through the bond."
"Every single one." I pull her closer. "You died. You came back. You remember everything."
"Are you afraid?" she whispers. "Afraid I'm not... normal?"
I laugh—actually laugh. "My mate died and was reborn to find me again across three hundred years. That's not scary. That's fate."
Relief fills her face.
"But Celeste," I say seriously, "if Helena knows about your rebirth—" "She doesn't. She can't. No one knows except—"
Footsteps echo in the hallway. Multiple guards. Moving fast.
"Someone betrayed us," Celeste hisses.
The guards burst in, guns drawn. And standing behind them, smiling triumphantly— Damian.
"Going somewhere?" he asks politely.