Joxi_Jash

When fiery, ambitious Isabella Carter clashes with arrogant yet brilliant Alexander Blackwood, sparks fly—but not in a good way. As rivals in the corporate world, they stop at nothing to sabotage each other. But when fate forces them into an unexpected partnership, the line between hate and love begins to blur.
Will their hatred burn into something deeper, or will their pride keep them apart forever?

From Nemises To Lovers

The hall of shattered glass echoed with silence, save for the steady drip of melted ice pooling at the marble floor's edge. The once-regal throne room was now a graveyard of fractured mirrors, torn banners, and crumbling power.

Alexander stood at the heart of it, blood staining his gloves, shoulders heaving. His blade hung at his side, its silver edge catching the glow of dying magic. His eyes, storm-dark, never left the frozen dais where moments ago the usurper's voice had echoed—arrogant, cruel, and now forever silenced.

Behind him, Isabella moved with practiced stillness. She passed the corpses of kings and traitors, past soldiers who had knelt for one crown and died under another. Her fingertips glowed faintly, drawing lines of healing across the wounded who still gasped for breath. But her gaze, too, remained on Alexander.

He had done it. The tyrant had fallen.

But something inside him had shifted.

> "Isabella," he said quietly, not turning. "How many more must I become before this ends?"

She didn't answer right away. Instead, she crossed the distance between them, the faint echo of her boots swallowed by ash and snow. When she reached him, she touched the side of his face—warm skin beneath smears of ash and blood.

> "You are still you," she said softly. "Not the crown. Not the blade. Just you."

Alexander exhaled. "Then why does it feel like I'm losing him, piece by piece?"

Isabella didn't flinch. "Because every king is forged in loss. But you—you're not just made to rule. You were made to endure."

From the ruined windows, the howls of the wind shifted. Not natural. Not weather.

Isabella's head tilted sharply. Her hand dropped to her belt where runes pulsed dimly, reacting to a shift in the Veil.

Alexander's grip tightened. "Yes. And it wasn't from this world."

They both moved as one—toward the edge of the dais, where an ornate obsidian mirror now cracked down its center, a fine web of gold splintering across its surface like veins.

Isabella's lips parted in realization. "This mirror—it's not just enchanted. It's a gate."

Alexander narrowed his eyes. "To where?"

> "Not where," she whispered, "but what. Something we locked away long before thrones ever mattered."

As guards arrived and healers poured in to tend to the injured, Isabella and Alexander remained in that crumbling chamber—no longer just warriors or lovers or rulers.

And something had just begun to wake on the other side of the mirror.

Chapter 135: The Weight of Fire and Frost