Chapter 31 Percival
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Percival
The palace corridors hadn’t changed in two hundred years. Same obsidian walls, same torchlight, same echoing footsteps that reminded me I’d never quite belonged here.
Lucian and Solomon walked ahead. The king returning to his throne. The enforcer returning to his legacy. Both of them moving through these halls as men whose names were carved into the stone.
I followed three steps behind, the way I always had.
That was the difference none of us said out loud.
Lucian Valdris had a crown. The royal name that we’d all borrowed as a surname in the human world, a cover that fit him because it was his and fit Solomon and me because he’d lent it to us. Strip him of Veyndral and you’d find a man who didn’t recognize himself.
Solomon Theron had bloodline. His father had been the former king’s most trusted advisor, the name carrying weight in every chamber of this palace. Even walking three paces ahead, he moved through these corridors with ownership.
And me? Just Percival. No family name or lineage. No history in these halls beyond the one they’d given me.
A foundling in the Glowwood with a locket and no surname. Two men who’d looked at an orphan and decided to keep him around. That was my kingdom. Not the obsidian walls or the throne or the council chambers I’d never had a seat in. Just the people.
And now one of those people was on a cabin floor in a different realm, and we were here.
The muted bond sat in my chest, three frequencies dampened to almost nothing, and beneath them, the faintest echo of a fourth heartbeat.
Mira. Fading with every mile between us.
I didn’t agree with this. Couldn’t wrap my head around the logic, no matter how many times Lucian framed it as duty or Solomon justified it. But I understood they have so much to lose.
The palace halls were cold in a way the cabin never was. We’d crossed through the portal an hour ago.
“Her father will take her in.” Lucian’s voice carried the cadence of a king delivering a verdict he didn’t believe in. We were in the corridor outside the council chambers. Solomon walked three paces ahead. “She has a family now. She’s not alone.”
“Her father put her in danger just so he can get close to the lycans he wants to hunt. Do you really think she’d be safe with him?”
“She’d be an enemy to both lycans and hunters if she’s with us. The hunters might see her as a traitor but they’d be more forgiving. The pack will never accept her. We can’t protect Mira and the kingdom simultaneously. The council made that clear.”
“The council can go fu-”
“Percival.”
I shut my mouth. Not because Lucian’s tone demanded it but because the exhaustion in his voice was real. He looked terrible. Gray beneath the bronze of his skin, lines around his eyes that hadn’t been there a week ago, his hands hidden in his pockets because they wouldn’t stop trembling.
“She’s safer without us.” Solomon’s voice from ahead. He hadn’t turned around. “The hunters want us. She’s collateral. Remove us from the equation and Thiago has no reason to harm her.”
“You believe that?” I asked.
Solomon didn’t answer.
“You actually believe that a man who burned down his own daughter’s bookshop, drugged her tea, and armed her abuser is going to keep her safe just because we’re not around?”
“I believe that staying would have put her in the crossfire of a war she can’t survive.”
“She’s tougher than you’re giving her credit for.”
Solomon stopped walking.
“Maybe I should stay with her.”
The words left my mouth before my brain approved them. It was the raw truth of what I’d been thinking since the moment we stepped through the portal.
Solomon turned.
I’d seen Solomon angry before. In centuries of existence, the man had perfected controlled fury. But I’d never seen his composure crack. Not once in my entire life.
It cracked now.
“You want to play savior to her?” The words came out low, jagged, a register I’d never heard. “You want to go back, defy the council, defy your king, and do what exactly? Hold her hand while the Order maps our defenses through her?”
“I want to not abandon our mate.”
“You’ll be banished as a rogue. Stripped of your position, everything you’ve built. And for what?”
“It didn’t have to be this way. You just chose it.”
“Because someone had to.”
“We’re hurting her!” The yell bounced off the stone walls and echoed down the corridor.
Two guards at the far end snapped toward us.
“She’s alone with a man who wants to destroy us, the bond is killing her, and you’re standing here talking about duty and sacrifice and you’re out of your mind, Solomon, you’ve completely lost your-”
His fist connected with my jaw before I finished the sentence.
The hit was precise. A single punch that snapped my head sideways and sent a bright burst of pain through my skull. I staggered and caught myself on the wall.
Solomon stood three feet away with his fist still clenched and his chest heaving.
“I know I’m hurting her. You think you’re better than us? You think I don’t feel it? You think I can’t feel her through the bond right now, fading, reaching for us, hitting walls we put there?” His composure lay in shards on the stone floor. “You think this was easy?”
Lucian was between us in a heartbeat. His hand on Solomon’s chest, pushing him back firmly.
“Enough,” Lucian said, quiet enough to end a war.
Solomon’s jaw worked. He looked at me. At the bruise already forming, the blood at the corner of my mouth. The anger cracked open and what I saw beneath it was worse. Grief. The specific grief of a man who’d just hit the closest thing he had to a little brother.
“There are other things involved,” Solomon said, his voice steadied but raw. “Things you don’t understand yet.”
“Then explain them.”
“Not here.” His eyes moved to the guards. “Not now.”
“You need to grow up, Percival.” The full name landed a second punch. Solomon only used it when he meant business. “Not everyone has the luxury of choosing with their heart.”
He turned and walked away. Lucian’s hand remained on my chest until Solomon’s footsteps faded around the corner.
“What was that about?” I asked.
Lucian didn’t answer. His expression is one that I’d only seen a handful of times in two centuries. A king who knew more than he could say.
“Give him time,” Lucian said. Then he followed Solomon down the corridor and left me with blood on my chin and the muted bond aching in my chest.
***
The window in my quarters overlooked the Glowwood. I sat on the sill with my back against the stone frame, one leg dangling. A leather practice ball rested in my palm, tossing it up and catching it in a cycle.
The bruise on my jaw had turned purple. Solomon didn’t pull his punch. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to regenerate fast or let it stay and taste the pain.
I heard the door open behind me. Lucian’s scent followed with the staleness of a man who hadn’t slept in days.
“Solomon never hit me before,” I said eventually.
“And he shouldn’t have.”
“He basically raised me. Taught me everything as a warrior. Never once laid a hand on me, not even when I deserved it, and trust me, there were moments I deserved it.” The ball went up. Came back down. “Two hundred years. And the first time he ever hits me is because I wanted to go back for her.”
“Give Solomon leniency.” The same words as the corridor but gentler now. A request, not a command.
“You’re siding with him?”
“No.” Lucian paused. Not choosing words.
Deciding whether to share a secret. Then, quiet enough the stone walls couldn’t carry it: “Solomon never told anyone. But I stumbled upon his things here, before we left for the human realm. Documents, maps, correspondence with contacts in the border territories.”
The ball stopped mid-toss.
“We all believed the Order was gone. The Long Watch declared the threat extinct. The council accepted it. I accepted it.” He looked at me. “Solomon didn’t.”
“What are you saying?”
“He had his own suspicions. Years, possibly decades. He never brought it to me because he didn’t have proof, and Solomon doesn’t speak without proof. But I realized there’s a reason why he was obsessed about investigating the threat since the dart compound.”
A shift moved through my chest. The first crack in my anger, widened by a piece of information I hadn’t known I was missing.
“Why would he spend years chasing a dead organization?”
Lucian straightened from the doorframe. His expression settled into the careful neutrality of a king about to deliver information that would rearrange the world.
“Because it’s not dead to him. It was never dead to him.”
The pause lasted three heartbeats.
“He believes the human hunters killed his father.”