Chapter 3
Kael
Maybe it was the doe eyes, the way her full lips kept pursing without her knowing, or the soft scent of roses that clung to her like sin.
When I entered the council chamber, Evangelina Corvo caught me for a heartbeat, so brief it might have been a faraway lightning strike, and something in me stirred.
She wore a long blue robe that hugged her where it ought to, generous in the right places, the fabric following the line of her body with careless grace.
Her dark brown curls were bound at the nape, leaving the sun-kissed flesh of her neck bare.
Flesh that, for a less sensible moment, I imagined ornamented by my mark.
Stop. Control.
Cage the wolf. Keep the storm within.
I repeated the mantra until the words were iron in my brain, the council’s arguments blurring into background noise.
Thalen and Selena tangled over if and where to send troops.
Isolde and Jorren still reeled from the day she had caught him with another woman, a scandal that reminded everyone why the Court deemed relationships among its own…
ill-advised. They jabbered, I waited. The gavel of finality fell to me because it always did.
Despite never having spoken until now, I knew many things about Evie.
She always kept her hair bound, even when her curls were perfectly untamed.
She bit her lip when she was nervous. Confidence was not her forte, yet she had her moments, sparks of defiance when she dared to stand her ground.
She was a pacifist, never drawn to battle spells, choosing instead to read the quiet magic of nature.
These were among the many things I’d learned from watching her at a safe distance.
Distance, however, was no longer a word that fit. Nor was safe.
I had met Evangelina long before this assembly. Once in the courtyards of the academy. Several times during her lectures, when I lingered in the shadows, watching her from the dark corners of the amphitheater. So many times our paths had crossed, and still, she had never noticed me.
I had seen her the day she’d arrived at the Court, wrapped in a warm wool-lined cloak, looking as if she might curl against the cold like a marmot about to hibernate.
I couldn’t really describe what I’d felt then, but catching a glimpse of her this time had given me the animalistic urge to squeeze her, to dig my talons into flesh and wrench whatever lived inside her out.
This had been a first.
The thought was ugly and annoying.
I didn’t know my impulses could get so visceral.
A few weeks later, I had gone on business to the farming village with a Bretannian noble who wished to buy land. The tensions with Bretannia were mending, and Lionel—the king himself—wanted to leave a good impression, deciding that the Court Wizard’s presence would seal the deal in stone.
Because the wizards had saved the kingdom from the plague. We had vanquished the Breath of Death. At least, that was the story Lionel clung to, that the people still looked to us as anchors. Perhaps they did. Perhaps not.
I had spotted Evangelina then, speaking to goats, just as the guards and pages who loved their gossip had claimed she would.
She hadn’t noticed me; she never did. But I had heard her laugh—bright, ringing, crystalline.
It had made me want to hear what other sounds she could make.
Soft breaths, sudden gasps, the broken scream of fear…
or pleasure. I had not heard that laugh, nor any sound from her, since.
I forced myself back to the assembly of magisters, to our endless debates on how to mend Vanhaui.
Hauvia and Bretannia, friends for centuries, now fractured by tragedy.
The Lutessians, less troublesome, bound still by blood to the royal family, as the king’s grandfather had been a proud Lutessian.
But Bretannia’s unrest was our priority, and I was willing to let Selena lead for now before harsher measures were considered.
Apologies, Thalen. If you disagree, I will meet you in the storm’s eye.
Despite my aversion to politics, I played the game well enough. Nothing we faced now compared to the three years spent waging war against the plague.
The worst was behind us. Recovery was never easy, but it was recovery.
Evangelina said nothing. Her dark brown eyes moved between each magister as they spoke, but when I spoke, they lingered too long. I felt the weight of them.
That little doe liked what she saw.
Interesting, almost amusing, how incapable she was of hiding it.
But it was dangerous, for I had managed not to look at her for the entire council, until the end. Then I caught her, held her, kept her trapped in my gaze. She looked at me as if she wanted both to run to and away from me. Those lips parted, eyes wide…
She was definitely going to be a distraction. I had no space for distraction.
Why did she have to come this close?
Stop. Control.
Cage the wolf. Keep the storm within.
Selena still moaned to me about Thalen’s insistence on sending guards and battlemages into the gutters, cleansing them for good. Her voice droned at the edge of my thoughts, beneath my attention, and I only half-listened.
She walked beside me out of the council wing, immaculate as always, the pale blue of her gown catching the light like frozen water.
The high collar pinched her throat a touch too tight, every seam taut, every fold precisely intended.
She could fool the Court and the entire kingdom with warmth and words.
Not that she cared not for the commons; she cared deeply.
But when impossible choices came, the real Selena became a statue of ice.
Flawless, efficient, and lifeless all the same.
Despite myself, I felt a flicker of pity. After her chancellor succumbed to the Breath of Death, she alone carried the Council of the Commons’ weight. No new chancellor had been appointed, and she had done the work of two. I acknowledged that.
“I would have you at the markets when I speak,” she said, her voice smooth like aged liquor.
Her gaze warmed when it settled on me. “The people are restless. They don’t trust speeches, not anymore.
But if they see me, steady, warm, the face of the commons, and you beside me, Kael, the storm leashed at the king’s command, they will believe the Court still holds.
You terrify them, and I soothe them. Together, we give them both what they crave, fear and comfort.
That is how we keep them from burning the markets again. ”
“If Lionel commands it, I will stand there,” I said, my voice clipped, final.
She intended me to be a prop. A display of power for her theatre. Once I might have mistaken that poise for strength. Now her words grated like an ill-sharpened blade.
Her gaze lingered on me with an appetite I couldn’t care for. Not while the image of the girl who laughed like crystal beat at the back of my skull.
Selena fit Vanhaui’s measure of beauty—tall, slim, golden hair, translucent skin.
By those standards, she would be a perfect fuck.
By mine, her nature was interesting. She was certainly convinced she could use her charms like tools on me.
Her mouth shaped itself in invitation for my cock far too often.
We passed the grand staircase. She smiled. “You won’t need to say much, Kael. Standing beside me will silence them.”
I started to search for a retort, any excuse to bow out of commons duty this week, when the scent of roses caught me by surprise. I glanced over my shoulder and there she was.
Evangelina.
I’d just managed not to think of her for a minute. Now she reappeared in my orbit, hair loose, falling in perfect curls down her shoulders and across her chest. The sight made the beast inside me growl.
“Sorry to interrupt!” she exclaimed, doe eyes wide in an apology she didn’t need to make. Then she pointed at the staircase. “I’ll just… head down.”
She scurried away, almost out of reach, when Selena’s voice stopped her.
“Magister Corvo,” she called with a curious tone. “We haven’t properly been introduced.”
Evangelina stood as if she were torn between fire and ice. She approached slowly, shyness moving through her like a tide. It was irresistible. She looked at Selena with obvious admiration. She dared not look at me.
The two shook hands.
“I’m Magister Hart, Council of the Commons. You may call me Selena.” She offered one of those warm smiles where the eyes remain cold. “How have your first weeks been? Already tempted to hush away?” There was humor in her tone, threaded with something else. Something provocative.
Evangelina collected herself but seemed unable to find all the pieces. “W-well… The assembly of magisters was interesting. Hard to follow, I’d say. But I’m figuring it out slowly. Oh, and please call me Evie.”
Her voice was husky, edged with a rasp, music that slid into my ear, and I knew I’d never forget. She had a slight accent, warm and rolling, the kind you’d hear on southern shores where marble cliffs meet the sea.
“Good. Nice to meet you, Evie,” Selena sang. “I remember my first day. We had different problems then.” She glanced at me with an air of complicity, as though we’d weathered it all together. Perhaps we had. I would not grant it the place she implied.
Selena looked at me, and Evangelina followed. Our eyes met. I swore I could hear the strike of lightning from her soul. She seemed to shatter into tiny pieces.
Was I that intimidating? Most who met me didn’t want to run that fast. But then again, most never met me at all.
For a breath, I wanted to play with that reaction. Just for a little bit.
“Best learn to keep up, Magister Corvo,” I said, voice low and measured. “The Court devours weakness.” I let a wicked grin fall across my face.
She smiled, awkward and unsure whether I’d joked or meant it. Judging by those doe eyes, she took me for serious.
“I’m only jesting,” I added, with no jest in the sound. “If you can look past the usual wizard jabber and bickering, you’ll find we’re all here for the same purpose.”
“To bind our wisdom and mend the realm,” Selena echoed, repeating the post-plague motto she’d polished herself to steady public faith. “You taught at the academy before this post, correct?”
Evie—cute—nodded. “Yes. I taught the basics of scrying and weather prediction.” She said it almost ashamed of the pride she might have felt. “Those are excellent skills for helping crops grow!”
Selena chuckled. Evie’s self-deprecation amused her. And me, but I did not smile. I watched how Evie scanned me, searching for a reaction. A soul, maybe. Approval, perhaps.
Evie was twenty-six years old. At an assembly last month, with all the magisters and chancellors together, Bramwell had bragged about appointing the youngest magister in history.
That was of course incorrect information.
I had been the youngest, at twenty-four, ten years ago.
Ten years bound to the king, and never had I felt a current like this, staring into Evie’s eyes and seeing that her only wish in that moment was to escape me.
Not only was Evie younger than me, but she was also very tiny. A little over five feet, more than a head shorter than I. The thought that I could make her vanish in a single embrace was both infuriating and exhilarating.
Stop. Control.
My gaze followed her curls. I eyed her up and down, and when I settled back on her face all I could see were her full lips, slightly parted, dry from dread.
And suddenly all I could think about was how hard I wanted to bite into them.
That was something else.
Cage the wolf. Keep the storm within.
Selena must have noticed as she caught my arm gently but firmly, nonetheless.
“We should get back to it. The king awaits,” she said softly, as if not wanting Evie to hear, yet loud enough for her to.
I glanced at her hand on my arm because I wanted her to remove it. I did not like strangers touching me.
I looked at Evie, who was staring at Selena’s hand, too.
“Have a good day, Evie,” I said. My calling her nickname caught her by surprise.
She licked her lower lip, then bit it, and that was when I knew I had to leave before I did something she would regret. I didn’t know what that would be, only that she would not want to find out.
I turned and forced my steps toward the audience hall, Selena at my side. Every nerve, however, stayed behind, snarled around the image of a tiny woman with doe eyes and bitten lips.
A realization settled in me, one I could admit only in silence. So long as Evangelina Corvo walked these halls, the storm would not stay caged. She was a dangerous presence, unraveling the control I had forged through the years.
Why had I let her enter this court in the first place?
Best to steer clear of her, to keep her, the Court, and the city of Befest safe from me.