Chapter 3 #2
Mirel’s power began to wane, his chest rising and falling too quickly.
Breathless, he watched as Kylix advanced, fireballs glowing in his hands.
“Beg,” the prince whispered once more. Mirel shook his head, tears stinging his eyes, tears that iced before they could fall.
Fear overtook fury. With one final, desperate attempt to defend himself, Mirel staggered back, palms spread.
Ice bloomed again, this time not as spears but as walls, jagged towers rising to cage him from everyone and everything, a crude barrier against the Imperial Prince and the world beyond.
A child’s defense, na?ve, desperate, as if he could bury himself in frost and vanish from Kylix’s eyes.
The cold pressed tight around him, sealing him in his own wall of ice.
Inside the frozen hush, his ragged breaths echoed back at him.
His legs buckled and he sank to the ground, palms scraping stone as exhaustion ripped through him.
Panting, ribs sharp under the threadbare shirt, he lay huddled at the base of the wall, spent.
For a moment he felt almost safe, until the heat of Kylix’s presence seared closer.
Kylix’s laugh rolled cruel from outside his wall of protection. “My men are standing outside of this pretty sculpture,” he mocked. “In a minute I will give them the order to detain you. Any final words to your friends here?”
From the stones Geron’s voice rang out, fierce despite the fear. “Mirel! Don’t give them the pleasure. I’ll find you, I swear it.”
Mirel’s power faltered. He staggered, chest heaving. His whole body ached with overuse, muscles trembling as though splintered. Breath scraped raw in his throat, lungs desperate for air that felt too hot, too thick.
Outside, fire roared. Mirel squeezed his eyes shut as his wall of ice melted in a rush of steam. The towers sagged and ran like water, the barrier collapsing until he was exposed once more, panting in the wreckage of his own defense.
Kylix stepped closer, standing over Mirel’s collapsed form, looking down at him like prey pinned beneath a predator’s shadow.
From this distance Imperial Kylix was even more dangerous and devastatingly handsome.
His bronze skin gleamed with heat, dark hair clinging in damp strands, golden eyes lit with wicked amusement.
The jeweled incisors that glimmered when he smiled revealed something feral.
He murmured softly, almost tender, “Finally finished fighting, little ghost?”
He lifted a hand. The guards moved, but his gaze cut across them, and they froze. “Not yet,” he said. “I’ll handle him.”
Then, louder, “Take him. Careful, he’s weak.”
They obeyed, closing in. Mirel thrashed, shame and panic burning through his chest, his body too weak yet still fighting.
The taste of iron lingered on his tongue.
Cold metal bit into his wrists, cuffs grinding tighter with every jolt.
From the graveyard’s edge the residents cried out one last plea as the Luminary dragged him toward the waiting hover car.
Their awe and fear tangled in the air. Mirel’s fight was wild, electric, scratching, biting, nothing like submission.
Over and over he cried the only word left to him, “No! No!” His voice cracked against the night.
From the shadows of the graveyard the residents stirred, voices rising in protest. Geron surged forward with desperate fury, but the Luminary moved as one, shields flashing, keeping the people at bay. The riot of sound pressed in, a tide of anger against the Imperial Prince’s cruelty.
They dragged him across the graveyard, his heels scraping stone, each step tearing him farther from the place he had called home. The cries of the residents echoed behind, growing fainter with every pull of the guards.
They shoved him inside the car, the metallic scent of oil and steel pressing in, the floor vibrating beneath his knees.
Frost still clung faintly to his cuffs, cold biting his wrists, a reminder of the power that had slipped beyond his control.
Through the narrow slats of the window he glimpsed the city passing in streaks of light, alleys he had run once, roofs he had slept beneath, now rushing by beyond his reach.
Neon signs and glowing spires bled their light into the cabin.
A faint thought drifted. Had he ever sat inside a hover car before?
He couldn’t remember. Another thought pierced sharper.
What was Cyprian doing now? Did his brother think of him as he thought of him?
Geron’s plea still rang in his ears, ghosting over the hum of the engine.
The vibration rattled the cuffs and made his fingers go numb.
His head lolled once against the cold wall before he forced it upright.
Shadows slid across his face as lights flashed by.
The hum filled the cabin, a low, constant pulse crawling under his skin.
Metal walls breathed heat; each tremor carried through the cuffs into his bones.
Mirel fixed on the small window, the blur of lights sliding past. The world moved and he did not.
His breath left faint fog on the glass that vanished before he could see it.
Across from him, the prince’s gaze didn’t move. It pressed harder than words.
The guards’ eyes lingered, one muttering, “Grave-rat,” as he shoved Mirel’s shoulder.
But it was Kylix’s silence that weighed the room.
The Imperial Prince sat still, gaze unreadable now, stoic as the world believed him to be.
Yet Mirel felt that stare like a brand, chest tightening.
He could not explain it, only that danger pooled more in the quiet than in threat.
Fragments of dread pressed in, but disbelief too, that he was still alive at all.
Weakness blurred his vision. For a heartbeat he reached inward, straining to find the thread that might lead to Cyprian, the only tether he knew.
His eyes fluttered, heavy, the link slipping before it could form.
Too weak. Too far. Only silence answered him.
When the hover car hissed open, night air rushed in. The lieutenant stepped forward, hesitated, then bowed his head. “Sir.”
Kylix’s command came flat and final. “He’s not going to the cells. He’s coming with me.”
Mirel felt the words burn through him, clear and merciless. He would not be tossed into some nameless file or chain, but kept close, studied like prey still twitching. Whatever waited, it would not be mercy. It would be fire, waiting for him.
Guards pulled him out, cuffs biting his wrists.
The estate loomed ahead, black stone veined with gold light, gates yawning wide.
Towers speared upward, windows glowing molten, balconies jagged.
The smell of scorched stone and smoke hung heavy, heat pulsing from the walls.
Every step toward it made Mirel’s chest tighten, dread knotting deeper, until the mansion rose above him.
Some part of him still couldn’t believe it, that he had dreamed of Imperial Kylix once, from the safety of shadows, the face that haunted every poster and broadcast, the man he’d imagined only from afar. And now that same man had found him, hand closing around his life.
For a fleeting instant he wished he could beg for his miserable life, if only it meant seeing Cyprian again, but the words refused to form. His throat stayed closed, his silence unbroken, as the gates shut behind him.
Kylix’s voice carried, calm and commanding. “Vandor. Bring him upstairs.”
Mirel’s knees buckled again, panic tearing through his chest.
Upstairs. He had no idea what waited above, only that whatever it was, it could not be mercy. The air inside was hotter, thicker, perfumed faintly with smoke. The staircase loomed ahead.
There was no escape. No voice. Only fire waiting.