Chapter 32 #2
Ryneth didn’t answer. His body was on fire.
He circled Bekn slowly. His shoulders felt tight, his hands flexing at his sides while pale static jumped from fingertip to fingertip. His gaze never left Bekn.
Bekn pushed himself upright, chains dragging, chest heaving. “What? You need your prince to tell you where to bite?”
Ryneth struck low and fast, catching Bekn across the ribs with enough force to send him skidding sideways through the sand. Bekn hit hard, rolled, came up choking on dust.
The crowd screamed—not for him, but for more.
Ryneth heard it. So did Bekn.
And for the first time, something changed in his face.
Just the smallest break in the smile.
He spat sand and laughed again, but it was forced. “I’m not afraid to die.”
Ryneth kept coming.
Bekn backed up another step. Then another. “You hear me?” he shouted, louder now, like he needed the whole arena to hear it. “I’ve got nothing left. Nothing. You think this scares me?”
Ryneth tilted his head. His teeth ached harder. His hands twitched once at his sides. The static around him flared bright enough to light the sand blue under his boots.
He barely felt human now. Just rage and power and the whole arena waiting for him to use it.
Bekn saw it. His grin slipped.
The crowd saw it too, and they got louder. Crueler. Thousands of voices crashing together in a single brutal demand.
Kill him. Kill him. Kill him.
Bekn looked up into the stands. For the first time, the grin was gone. His eyes moved over the rows of faces, over the mouths shouting, over the hands raised high in the air.
They weren’t cheering for him. They were chanting for an ending.
“Wait,” Bekn snapped, too fast now. “Wait. Light, no, don’t—”
Ryneth lunged. He hit him hard enough to drive him flat onto his back.
Sand burst up around them. Chains snapped tight. Bekn twisted under him with a strangled sound, heels digging trenches into the arena floor as he tried to wrench free.
Ryneth barely felt the impact. He caught Bekn by the throat with one hand and slammed him back into the sand. Static exploded out of him on contact.
The sound that tore out of Bekn wasn’t human.
Blue-white light burst over his body in violent waves, racing across the purple prison fabric and jumping from chain to chain, bright enough to burn spots into Ryneth’s vision.
Bekn arched under him so hard his spine nearly bowed off the ground.
His mouth opened in a scream that vanished into the crackling surge.
The crowd became one long, deafening roar.
Ryneth couldn’t hear it. Couldn’t hear anything except the power.
It tore through him in hot pulses, savage and endless, pouring out through his palm and up into his clenched jaw and aching teeth. His whole body locked around it. The smell hit next. Burned fabric. Burned skin. Burned hair.
Bekn thrashed once. Then again, weaker.
Ryneth pressed harder. The chains shook against the sand, and Bekn’s body convulsed under him in broken, violent spasms. His scream cut off. Started again. Cut off.
Ryneth saw his face.
The blood. The sweat. The panic finally there. The mouth opening on words that never made it out.
And still he didn’t stop.
Some part of him was screaming now. Not in rage, but in horror. In the sick, distant understanding that he had gone too far and still couldn’t make his hand open.
Not when Bekn’s hands stopped clawing at his wrist. Not when the spasms turned smaller. Not when the body under him went slack.
Somewhere far away, someone was shouting his name.
Ryneth didn’t hear it.
He held on until Bekn’s head fell sideways in the sand and stayed there. Until the body stopped moving. Until the static had nothing left to answer.
Then silence hit him all at once.
It wasn’t true silence. Around him, the crowd was still screaming. The drums were still pounding. But inside him, something dropped out, like the current had finally cut.
Ryneth’s hand slipped from Bekn’s throat.
The body didn’t move. Smoke curled up from the purple fabric. From the skin beneath it.
Ryneth stared. His chest was still heaving, his palm still crackling.
Then a scream cut across the arena, and Theo broke from the gate line where Aviel had left him standing, the loose gold at his throat no real leash at all as he tore onto the sand.
Ryneth’s head snapped up.
Theo was sobbing before he reached them, stumbling, barely breathing. Luminary guards shouted behind him, but he tore free anyway, dropping to his knees beside Bekn’s body so hard the impact threw sand over all three of them.
“Bekn!” Theo’s hands shook as he grabbed at his brother’s shoulders, his face, his prison shirt, as if he could pull him back by force. “Brother, no, no, no—”
Ryneth didn’t move. Couldn’t move.
Theo looked up at him then, and the sound in the arena changed. The last pale threads of static died across Bekn’s prison shirt. Some people in the crowd were still shouting. Others had gone silent.
Theo made a sound Ryneth would hear later in his sleep. Then he bent over Bekn, one hand shaking against his brother’s jaw, the other fisted in the scorched fabric. “No. No, get up. Brother, get up.”
Theo looked too young, kneeling there in the sand.
Ryneth’s fingers twitched. A weak crackle snapped from his palm and died. He stared at it like it belonged to someone else.
Somewhere beyond the blur of the arena, boots hit the sand. Voices cut through the noise. Orders. Shouts. Someone calling Theo’s name. Someone calling his.
Ryneth still couldn’t move. His own hand was still trembling.
He had wanted Bekn dead. He had wanted this over. But standing above the body, with Theo breaking apart at his brother’s side, it didn’t look like justice. It looked like grief.
Luminary guards closed in fast. Two dropped beside Theo, trying to pull him back, but he fought them with a broken sound, clinging to Bekn’s body like he could still stop any of it. Another pair moved for Ryneth more carefully.
“Baby.”
Daven was there before they could touch him, one arm locking around Ryneth’s waist, the other hand sliding to the back of his neck.
And that was it.
Ryneth broke. He turned into Daven with a rough, helpless sound, fists twisting in Daven’s shirt as if he’d drown if he let go.
“You did so good,” Daven murmured, mouth at his temple. “I’ve got you now.”
Ryneth made a broken sound and clung tighter. “Don’t let go.”
Don’t ever let go.
Somewhere beyond them, a voice rang out across the arena.
“All rise for the Aureate.”
Daven’s arms locked tighter around him.
The world moved anyway.
The drums changed. Slower now. Heavier. Ritual instead of blood.
When Ryneth finally lifted his head, the arena gates were opening. Milanov stepped out first in white and gold, the rest of the Imperial line following behind him in ceremonial color, bright enough under the floodlights to turn the whole arena feverish all over again.
The roar rose harder this time. Not for the killing, but for what came after.
Daven never let Ryneth go completely. One hand stayed locked at the back of his neck as Milanov’s voice rolled out across the dome.
“Helion,” the Imperial called, his voice amplified clean and cold across the glass. “Witness what stands before you. Witness what this city keeps.”
Ryneth’s breath caught.
Daven took his hand and lifted it between them.
“Before the Aureate, before the Luminary, before Helion itself,” Milanov said, “Ryneth Solan stands claimed and chosen. Bonded to Prince Daven Caelith of the Imperial line.”
The crowd broke apart into something almost violent.
Daven slid the ring fully into place under all that noise, his gaze never leaving Ryneth’s face.
“And Helion will know him,” Milanov finished, “as its newest prince.”
All Ryneth could do was stare while the whole city screamed around them.
“Don’t touch that one.”
Ryneth glanced over his shoulder, bottle in hand. “Why?”
“Because that’s Helianth’s.” Daven came up behind him, took the bottle from his hand, and set it back on the counter before replacing it with another.
The easy way he did it, like Ryneth was still too wrung out to be trusted with his own hands, should’ve annoyed him more than it did.
“And if you drink his expensive shit after a night like this, he’ll sulk for a week. ”
Ryneth snorted.
The kitchen island was cluttered with open bottles, glasses, and whatever Yure had dragged out of the cupboards in a rare moment of usefulness. Someone had cut bread. Someone else had left fruit untouched on a plate.
Ryneth reached for a glass.
Daven caught his wrist. Heat closed around his pulse. “You’re shaking.”
“I’m fine.”
“You nearly electrocuted half the arena.”
“I electrocuted one man.”
Daven’s mouth twitched. “You killed one man in front of thousands and then you claimed one for life. That’s enough for one night.”
Ryneth gave him a look, but it didn’t hold. Not with Daven standing close enough that their hips brushed every time one of them moved, not with his hand still wrapped warm around Ryneth’s wrist.
The static in him had quieted. Not gone, just… settled. A low hum under the skin instead of a storm.
Besides, Daven was right. They had officially claimed each other for the entire nation to see. And it had been beautiful. It had been everything Ryneth had ever longed for.
Especially knowing Mara and Tavi and the other boys had watched the live feed, a gift from his bonded, as Daven had called it.
He looked down at their hands, then turned Daven’s palm upward and pressed his own against it. Skin to skin. A faint blue thread sparked between their fingers, and he went still.
“There,” Daven murmured. “Better.”
Ryneth looked up at him. “You’re making that up.”
“I’m a prince. I’m allowed.”
Ryneth huffed a tired laugh and leaned in just enough that his shoulder brushed Daven’s chest.
Moargan stopped in the doorway, took one look at their joined hands over the kitchen island, and said, “If you two start dry humping in front of the liquor, I’m leaving.”