43. Chapter 43
“ A gain.” King Maelion’s voice was smooth as he moved the first piece across the wooden board. Kaelin’s eyes narrowed on her dwindling army of pieces.
“You’re so intent on watching my hand,” Maelion murmured, resting his chin on steepled fingers, “that you’ve forgotten to mind your own.”
Kaelin’s fingers hovered above a piece in hesitation. Her father’s eyes followed the motion, dark and sharp as a hawk’s. She shifted the piece forward, lifting her gaze to meet his.
“You always taught me to be three steps ahead,” she said coolly.
“Five,” Lyra corrected from her seat near the window, reclining against velvet cushions with a glass of red wine poised elegantly in her hand.
Maelion made his next move. A simple flick of his wrist, and suddenly Kaelin’s strategy unraveled. She hadn’t noticed one of her pieces cornered. By the time she realized, his pieces swept in to claim it, the trap snapping shut.
Maelion folded his hands together, studying her. His smile was not mocking but patient, proud. “You’re perceptive.”
“Which you get from your mother,” Lyra added, swirling her wine .
Maelion ignored Lyra’s comment, eyes never leaving Kaelin. “But your gaze is always outward – watching, anticipating. Don’t neglect the steps you take yourself.”
The fire cracked, filling the silence as his words settled. Outside, the wind pressed against the windowpanes, as though the storm longed to intrude.
“One more round?” Maelion asked.
Kaelin rose, her chair scraping softly against the stone floor. “I’ll fetch another glass.”
She crossed the chamber, her heels sinking into the thick carpet as she moved toward the small table near the hearth.
A half-empty bottle of red wine awaited her, the glass catching the firelight like blood.
Behind her, Maelion reset the board while Lyra hummed faintly, a tune Kaelin half-remembered from childhood.
She poured herself a glass, the crimson liquid rippling as she lifted it. But as she brought it to her lips, her thoughts drifted back to the library earlier that evening. Ren.
The memory struck with the sting of a blade.
The look in Ren’s eyes when Kaelin had snapped at her haunted her even now.
Kaelin had told herself this morning that whatever spark lingered between them had to be smothered.
That it was a weakness, a distraction. The kingdom demanded clarity, not clouded thoughts.
And yet –
Kaelin’s grip on the wineglass tightened. Ren’s face lingered in her mind, the faint parting of her lips, as if Kaelin had struck her with something sharper than words.
Kaelin hated herself for it. Hated how her chest clenched, hated the guilt gnawing beneath her ribs. But she also knew she would do it again if it meant keeping both Ren and Vaelaran safe from the consequences of her weakness.
Because in the courts of the fae, power was the board, and sentiment the first piece to fall.
Before going to the library, Ren stopped by her room.
Ren disregarded Mirella’s comments about her dripping hair and soaked appearance.
When Ren got too close, Mirella jolted back, muttering something about water never being good for her varnish.
Ren had gone straight to the warm springs, sinking into the heat until her muscles loosened and her mind nearly drifted into sleep.
The warmth of the water wrapped around her, soothing and steady, so different from the biting cold of the river that still lingered in her bones.
By the time Ren returned to her room and began pulling on her clothes, Mirella eyed her from the corner. “You’re dressing like you’re going into battle.”
“Moody fae princesses are battles.”
“Oh, admit it. You like sparring, whether it’s with swords or words.”
Ren tugged her cloak tighter, refusing to answer, though the corner of her mouth betrayed the faintest twitch. She left before Mirella could see.
The library had become Ren’s second battlefield.
Not of blades and blood, but of patience, parchment, and the steady grind of searching for something that didn’t want to be found.
Night after night, Ren came back. She would settle into the far table in the shadowed alcove, the one with the warped leg and the view of the window that overlooked the torch-lit courtyard.
Stacks of tomes leaned precariously around her, their cracked spines muttering stories of long-dead kings, forgotten realms, and fragments of prophecies that never seemed whole.
Dragons. She kept returning to them, to the old ballads, the half-legends that spoke of fire-wrought creatures bound to the bones of the land.
Sometimes, between one candle burning down and the next, she’d catch a new thread.
One night, it had been a faded scrap of vellum, ink bled nearly to nothing, hidden in the margin of a crumbling history of the Western Wastes. She could barely make out the words: “The flame reborn shall stand at the edge of ruin, and the world shall hold its breath.”
The phrase settled heavy in her gut, the way truths often did when they came too close.
Kaelin was there almost every night, too .
For several evenings in a row, they coexisted in an uneasy truce – if truce was even the word for it. Kaelin would drape herself in a corner chair with a glass of wine, and open some book bound in leather so fine it might have cost a soldier’s year of wages.
She never spoke to Ren. Never even looked at her.
Ren tried to ignore it, burying herself in her own hunt for answers.
But she always knew when Kaelin’s attention shifted, even if only for a moment, like the faint change in the air before a storm.
Ren caught herself glancing over far too often, tracking the way Kaelin’s slender fingers turned each page as if coaxing it open, the way her golden hair caught the lamplight.
Tonight, Ren knew something was off the moment she walked in. Kaelin sat rigid at her table, back straight, but her gaze kept flicking to the far door, to the windows, as if expecting someone, or something.
Ren buried herself in a particularly dense record of border wars, eyes skimming past the neat calligraphy without retaining a single word. The tension in the room had built, a dense fog that refused to leave. Finally, Ren slammed the book shut and leaned back in her chair.
“All right,” Ren snapped, her voice cutting the hush between them. “What’s eating you?”
Kaelin didn’t look up. “I’m reading.”
“You’re brooding . I know the difference.”
A spark of annoyance followed by a hint of surprise crossed Kaelin’s eyes, but she still didn’t answer.
Ren leaned forward on her elbows, refusing to let it go. “I don’t care if you throw every foul word you know at me or if I’m annoying you. What’s wrong?”
Silence stretched. Ren was about to bite out something sharper when she saw the subtle shift in Kaelin’s expression.
“It’s the traitor,” Kaelin answered finally, her voice low and taut. “The one who revealed Talen’s location the day of the ogre attack.”
“You think they’re here at court?”
“I know they are. I’ve been looking for them. Especially during the balls.”
“The balls?”
Kaelin’s gaze locked on hers. “You’d be surprised what people let slip when the music is loud, the wine is strong, and they think no one’s listening. The gowns and dancing are a distraction. The real work is in the conversations, the eavesdropping.”
Ren considered that, remembering the way Kaelin had seemed to glide through those events like she owned every inch of the room. “So, it’s all strategy.”
“Always,” Kaelin answered simply. “I have… suspicions. Sylven, for one.”
“I’d gladly drag him into the ring and make him eat his arrogance, but whatever else he may be, his devotion to the crown seems certain,” Ren said.
“He comes from one of the oldest families sworn to House Vaelaran,” Kaelin agreed, though her tone was more measured. “Loyalty like that should be unshakable. And yet…” Kaelin let the words trail off, her expression unreadable.
“Does he want wealth?”
“I think you underestimate how far the fae will go for the throne. We’ve been smiting each other for it for centuries. Gold, glory, revenge – it’s all the same currency.”
“That’s one hell of a thing to live with.”
Kaelin didn’t reply. Instead, she poured herself another glass of wine.
For a long moment, neither of them spoke. Ren leaned back, trying to make sense of the unease crawling under her skin. This was the most Kaelin had said to her in days, and yet… the princess still felt out of reach.
Ren wanted to say something to bridge that gulf. But the weight of the silence pressed her back into her chair. So she picked up her book again, the words blurring, and resigned herself to reading.
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Kaelin studying her. Only for a second. And then the princess’s attention was buried once more in the pages.
Ren was a distraction Kaelin did not need tonight.
The tome in Kaelin’s hands was heavy with dust, its brittle pages whispering secrets of the Embersworn. She had only just uncovered a chapter detailing their darker histories when movement in the doorway caught her eye. Ren .
Kaelin’s jaw tightened, a sharp dismissal already forming on her tongue. But before she could speak, Ren crossed the room with that steady, unhurried stride and sank into her usual chair as though it belonged to her alone.
Something inside Kaelin shifted.
Because Ren didn’t speak. She didn’t prod or poke, didn’t fill the quiet with needless words the way every noble in Pyraelia seemed compelled to do.
Most fae at court found silence unbearable and were desperate to smother it with idle chatter.
But Ren let the silence breathe. And Kaelin found that silence tolerable. Even welcome.
Her gaze dropped back to the page.
The Embersworn are a secretive order, feared not for their numbers but for the abhorrent magics they practice. Chief among these is the art of soul binding, a dangerous discipline that seeks to manipulate or imprison the very essence of a living being.
One of their most direct methods is the Soul Trap spell.
Blood is required as the tether, spilled by the caster.
If the victim died before the spell’s thread unraveled, the soul would be torn from its vessel and imprisoned in a crystalline gem known as a soul gem.
The practice has been forbidden in every court of fae and man alike, yet the Embersworn pursue it with ruthless devotion.
Records speak of a woodland messenger, scarcely grown into his adulthood whose spirit was bound into a common gem, his essence diminished to little more than fuel.
The Embersworn shattered that gem across their forges, using the trapped soul to enchant blades with unholy abilities and to brew potions that gnawed at both flesh and spirit.
Kaelin’s thoughts strayed to the night Ren’s parents were slaughtered. Ren spoke about how she saw crimson robes in the firelight, and heard the cadence of their voices raised in unison. She had always assumed they were chanting prayers.
But what if those words had been a spell?
A Soul Trap spell.
If those in crimson robes were members of the Embersworn and had performed a soul trap that night, then Ren’s family’s tragedy was deliberate .
Kaelin’s eyes flicked up.
Ren sat across from her, posture loose, legs tucked carelessly beneath her.
A picture of ease until Kaelin noticed the subtle furrow between Ren’s brows, the way her lips pressed together in concentration as her gaze swept across the page before her.
One stubborn strand of hair had fallen across her face.
Kaelin’s fingers twitched with the ridiculous urge to reach over and tuck it behind her ear.
She forced herself to look away. Just as she did, Ren’s eyes lifted.
Silence stretched. Kaelin pretended to study the curling script in her tome. When she dared another glance, she caught Ren doing the same – looking away too quickly.
And so it went. Their gazes circling, brushing, darting away.
A game neither had agreed to play, but both kept returning to.