15. Krait
Chapter 15
Krait
W hile relighting some candles in the bell tower quarters, my blood pounded in my ears. With a shaky hand, I used a soft cloth to polish the stand of her statue. Thick gray curtains were drawn, and no sunlight leaked into the space. Only twinkling flames lit the small room and the stairway, which led to the bell.
The weight of having found Sybilla—of what that meant hit me. Even the thought of her name while standing in this space felt wrong.
I set the cloth down and moved to the desk, where The Book of Isolde , the First Reverist’s prophecies, lay safe in a glass case. No one else was allowed in this room, where I preserved the book from hands, dust and sunlight.
The prophecies of Isolde were full of stupid fucking riddles.
But my ancestors had decoded each line with great precision and lived by them for centuries to keep the Death Origin from rising. Until me.
My disobedience, my choice to marry Freya, to not wait to find the Last Daughter of Isleen—everything I’d done had set chaos in motion four hundred years ago. It had lost me the love of my life. I’d fought my father’s insistence on following the prophecies until her death.
Those stained pages had sealed my fate long before I’d been able to speak for myself—long before I’d met a Princess who had been my Source Match yet hadn’t been destined to be mine. Long before she had been taken from me.
Now we had a chance to stop the Death Origin once and for all. A new royal wife and I, a child of ours. Maybe none of my mistakes had to be in vain.
If it wasn’t already too late. It had taken so long to find her.
The cards had fallen so perfectly—a political marriage for her, one of dreadful fate for me. There would be no replacing Freya, and the Central Queen offered me the type of arrangement that wouldn’t sully what we’d shared.
I pulled open a desk drawer abruptly.
Grabbing ink and a piece of parchment, I thought for a moment. I then scribbled down a few faults of the Central Queen. This list would act as a reminder if I ever began to see her as anything more than what she was—a convenient means to an end.
I. Phynnic idealist
II. Stubborn as a bull
III. Has little control over her own power
Staring down at my rushed penmanship, I felt better already. There was no room in my life to enjoy the company of Sybilla Wymark, no matter what she was prophesied to be to me. I slipped the parchment back into the drawer.
I didn’t need a wife, didn’t need a partner. I just needed her to be willing to consider what the prophecy required of us, and that might be easier to justify through marriage.
Two rulers could have a child without romance. It happened all of the time.
I shouldn’t feel guilty.
Unable to look Freya’s bronze statue in the face, I stepped toward the door. There was a knock as I reached for the handle, and my brow furrowed.
“What?”
As soon as I turned the knob, Elsedora pushed the door to poke her head in. “Pleasant greeting.”
I practically snarled, “What are you doing up here?”
My mood didn’t deter her. She slinked inside. “Lower your hackles—there isn’t a place in this house where I haven’t been. But I haven’t taken anything from this room. It seemed wrong...”
Elsedora’s gaze caught on the bronze figure, tracing over Freya’s gentle, eternal form. My late wife was depicted reaching out to hold up a crescent moon. She wore a billowing gown reminiscent of the one she’d worn on our wedding night.
Her essence could never be fully captured. Nothing set in bronze nor painted ever matched my memory of her. Or maybe I simply misremembered her. That pissed me off the most—forgetting.
“She was beautiful, truly.”
My throat tightened at the simplicity of her adoration.
I sucked in a breath and nodded. “Truly.”
“And judging by the sour look on your face...I take it that you found the Last Daughter of Isleen, didn’t you?” El fidgeted and ran a finger over a candle’s flame, letting fire dance toward her and away.
“We aren’t discussing this. Not here.”
She sighed. “I saw those men that attacked her...they were haunted. Husks. I know there is only one type of power that can do that . The same one you’ve had me searching for.”
“It isn’t her,” I tried.
Her hand stilled, and she snapped, “Don’t you dare lie to me. It’s an insult to my intelligence.”
I headed toward the door, but she stepped into my path. “El, please. Not here.”
“Then where? When? What are you going to do, Krait? I deserve to know.”
Maybe she did deserve answers. Instead, I growled, “Don’t be dramatic.”
“I’m not! Are you dense?”
I rarely heard Elsedora angry.
While rage also crept into the corners of my mind, I wasn’t mad at El. She’d just forced me to think about the repercussions of every action I’d taken in my five centuries of existence.
“Why aren’t you with her?”
My concern must have been answer enough because Elsedora’s entire posture softened. “She’s with Ryn—they’re eating lunch. Now answer me. Is it her?”
“Yes. She’s the last full Reverist, and you cannot tell a soul.”
“And?” El pressed.
“And...” I struggled with the next part. Elsedora knew The Book of Isolde as well as I did. She’d spent centuries searching for hidden artifacts mentioned in it that might’ve led me to Sybilla.
She just needed me to confirm what she already knew.
“According to the prophecy, the child of the fifth heir of Shadows and the Last Daughter of Isleen will end Death’s second reign.”
Elsedora snorted. “Well, Fifth Heir of Shadows, I’d suggest you be a tad nicer to her then. I don’t know a single woman who would choose to procreate with such a gloomy asshole.”
If she only knew the proposition Sybilla had laid before me the night prior.
“Such high praise for your King,” I mused. My normally light and airy friend was stone-faced and solemn.
“After you have an heir—how long?”
I shrugged and said, “My father was immortal until my birth. He lost control of his Shadows and passed them to me by my twentieth birthday and then lived a long mortal life. It won’t be instant. You aren’t getting rid of me so quickly.”
“Yes—but you will be mortal. Me, Ryn, the Sahlms, we’ll all lose you eventually. Are you sure there’s no other way? I can go to the East Corridor ruins again...” The idea died on Elsedora’s tongue.
“There is no other option. You’ll need to guide them. Maybe my heir will be less of a ‘gloomy asshole’ to you.”
Elsedora pursed her lips and narrowed her gaze.
Mortality didn’t frighten me. As a younger man, it had. My father built dying up to be some grand, dreary occasion. He was buried somewhere in the catacombs beneath the Brennac ruins. He’d endlessly harped on me not to take my immortality for granted.
My mother had been mortal, a spitfire that everyone in Brennax had loved. She threw loud parties, never took no for an answer and loved fiercely. I’d grown up feeling as though she might be the only person who could truly love my father for all he was.
They got lucky. None of the prophecies in that old fucking book had relied on them procreating with a specific person.
I looked away from Elsedora and up at Freya—my Source Match, my everything.
She had been the only reason I hadn’t Shadowed the whole world apart by now. Freya had been gentle and loved by all. She’d always known about the prophecy and had reminded me often that even though it could never have been our child, she would’ve raised any heir of mine as her own. That had been our plan then.
Now, she wasn’t here to offer me a kind hand on the cheek or to tell me to go on. She would have wanted me to do the right thing for the realms. It still put a sour taste in my mouth...
Elsedora eyed me with skepticism. “You don’t intend to force her to—”
“Of course not.” I held up a hand and ground out, “You’ve known me far too long to ask that question.”
“Then how ? You need to tell her about the book—about how she fits into the prophecy. Soon...Now. Should we go tell her now?”
I shook my head. There would only be one chance to convince a woman who loathed me to agree to have a child with me. I damned well wasn’t going to try it in front of Elsedora. “It’s my choice when to tell her, and it will be her choice to accept or decline when she knows the full prophecy.”
“And if she chooses against the prophecy, what then?”
“You won’t have to worry about losing me.”
Elsedora sighed. “Well then, the least you could do is bring her flowers or something. After all—your people just tried to kill her under your roof.”
I sighed.
Elsedora rolled her eyes and motioned for me to follow her out. “Fine...Maybe just growl at her less.”
Happy to have ended the heavier conversation, I joked, “Some women like the growling.”
She laughed as we made our way down the stairs. “I have always wondered what the appeal was.”
We approached the kitchenette. Laughter carried into the hall. It sounded like cool rain on a hot day—like pure, unfiltered joy.
Despite everything that had happened to her the night prior, Queen Sybilla laughed as she leaned into Ryn’s shoulder, looking at something on the table. The two of them were arm to arm, heads drawn close. I could imagine them painted like that.
They were too chummy already.
Sybilla gasped out another chuckle, but it rasped, and she coughed, which drew my eye to the back of her neck. I knew bruising still lay beneath the blue ribbon she’d decorated her throat with. She’d refused to see a healer, and that had pissed me off.
Peeking over their shoulders, I caught sight of lewd sketches splayed out on the table.
“Look at how crooked his—” Her words caught in her throat upon seeing my shadow on the table. From the side, I could tell her face had sobered, and she turned the parchment at once.
“We were just taking a look at some of the literature that was on our prisoners when we stripped them,” Ryn explained, choking down a laugh as I rounded the table.
Their proximity to one another twisted something inside of me.
Enough of that—remember the list.
Let Ryn be there if she needed comfort, laughter, happiness—he smiled enough for the lot of us. Plus, those comforts weren’t things I could ever offer her.
As if sensing my displeasure, Ryn scooted over to put a hand’s distance between himself and our new ally. He couldn’t help but smooth her emerald silk tunic sleeve before folding his hands on the table and peering at me with a cocked eyebrow.
One out-of-place strand of silver hair, still wavy from his braid, hung loose, and he shook it away. “Good morning to you too, Krait.”
I hummed a response. Maybe it was a grunt—El would have called it a grunt.
He didn’t need to ask what my problem was. Instead, he glanced over at Sybilla, and a dimpled smirk crept onto his face.
Both Ryn and El knew the implications of finding the Last Daughter of Isleen. They knew what the prophecy entailed…
Sybilla’s attention shifted between the two of us. She skeptically said, “It is as if I am not the one who can read minds around here. Can you boys use your words, please?”
I huffed out a sigh. “Learn to break in if you’d like to hear our thoughts,” I deadpanned.
Her gaze narrowed on my lips while her fingers danced momentarily across the wood table as though playing the same piano chords repeatedly.
“Are you ready to question the prisoners?” I asked.
“As ready as I can be.” She straightened.
She rose and rounded the table toward me—all business now. It was irksome that all prior amusement had left her when she’d seen me. From behind her, Ryn stared at me with a look of sheer mischief.
He mouthed, “It’s her, isn’t it?”
I glared at him and led Queen Sybilla out of the kitchenette.
Silence stretched between us as we walked down the hall leading to the main staircase. Light was cast in through one of the floor-to-ceiling windows we passed by, illuminating her golden hair, which was still slick and mostly straight from the night prior. She wore a loose-fitting green silk skirt that matched the draping silk tunic. While more modest than Elsedora’s typical wares, it still hugged her hips in a way that made my fingers itch to dig in.
Sucking in my cheeks, I broke the silence. “Do you want me to be there when you question them?”
She flashed me a wide-eyed look, seeming shocked to have the option.
“I...” She paused as we neared the bottom of the stairs and turned toward the doorway that led down to the cell. We only had a few holding areas in Sahlmsara—most of our prisoners were held in Sahlmkar.
The steep stone stairway to the cell was lit by the flicking fire of too few sconces. “I’d prefer not to be alone,” she admitted.
“Good,” I answered, secretly reveling in not having to let her walk down those stairs and out of my sight. I might have many reasons to dislike her, but her well-being was now tied to something larger than our feelings toward one another.