Chapter 6
Kael
Lionel, salt-and-pepper hair now more salt than pepper, sat on the dark oak chair at the head of the table in the Council of the Crown’s central chamber.
He never wore his crown when we met in private.
The blue of his eyes had dulled with years, but they still held the kingdom, and they carried a peculiar shadow whenever they rested on me.
Chancellor Bramwell Alderholt of the Council of Farming stood behind him, gazing up at a portrait of Lionel’s ancestor hanging sternly on the wall.
Across from me sat Chancellor Veyric Dornfeld of the Council of Justice and his magister, Isolde.
They’d been wrangling with me over the riots festering in the gutters.
Thalen, the old battlemage of the Council of War, who had begged me more than once to teach his adepts in the barracks, had not been invited.
He was too bound to his emotions to offer anything but steel, and I needed calm minds.
I’d asked for Bramwell’s presence to discuss the grain caravans I intended to send to Bretannia as a token of gratitude—or, in my language, mercy.
Perhaps the true reason was that I had half hoped his little magister would accompany him.
But she had spent her day in the farming village.
I would have to wring information from Loren, who seemed to know her well, because ever since the last council I’d not been able to banish the image of Evangelina Corvo and her sweet lips.
That scent of roses, that brief flash of doe eyes meeting mine…
It had lodged itself like a thorn in my mind.
Even here, in the presence of my king, I found her shadow in every mention of fields and harvest. No one noticed the storm unraveling in me at each small reminder.
Lionel cleared his throat, the sound pulling me back from the image she’d left in my head. He watched me a heartbeat longer than courtesy demanded, an old, unreadable softness flickering in his gaze before he masked it.
“Two years it’s been,” His Highness began, voice warm but rough. “It’s over now. These winter coughs are nothing. The cure is out there, and the Council of Commons continues to carry it to the faraway corners of Vanhaui.” His gaze flicked to me. “Kael, what will it take for Bretannia to calm down?”
A hard question, but as I’d said before, I’d long since learned to play the game that is politics.
“Most in Bretannia have accepted the cure and begun to move on from those dreadful years,” I said. “The groups who still scold the Crown will die out if we do not abandon the people and continue to feed them.”
“You talk about these groups like they are mere ants,” Isolde said, arms folded. Always contrary. “We are speaking of militias whose doctrine has reached the capital’s gutters.”
“They have broken a thousand laws and are poised to break more,” Veyric added, eyes sharp as chisels.
He was old, always angry, yet his hair was still improbably black.
He remembered every law ever inked, and in their matching black tunics, they looked more like father and daughter than chancellor and magister.
“If we acknowledge them, we grant them the power of existence,” I said. “We keep our forces protecting the people, we watch the threat they pose, but we do not cast off an entire state because a handful howl at the Crown.”
My words landed. Silence, for a heartbeat. “Bramwell,” I said, and he straightened at once when our eyes met. “How stand the caravans of grain?”
“Almost ready to depart, Magister.”
“Have them leave at dawn.”
I turned to Lionel. Concern was etched across his features.
It was the kind of concern he rarely showed in public, sharpened, almost personal when directed at me.
These days, most councils with magisters were guided by me.
Lionel was the hand that stamped the decisions.
We had that kind of bond; my judgment was his, my orders were his orders.
But now he looked as if something weighed against it. I needed to know.
Our eyes met. He leaned back, drawing a long breath. “Those years, Kael… We fought so hard against the Breath of Death. We won. But sometimes I wonder just how much we lost.”
I recognized that tone. Not weakness, but the private weariness of a king who had bled for his people. No one else ever heard it. Only I did, in moments like this. And I knew what I ought to do.
“Those years were ugly,” he continued. “We all made sacrifices, choices we are not proud of. Do you think we chose rightly?”
I knew what he sought. People saw kings as marble, but they cracked like clay. All they had was a crown, a title, and the weight of a realm on their shoulders. In moments like this, my task was simple. He needed reassurance that the things he did, the orders he gave, were the right ones.
“You made the only choices you could,” I said.
And with that, the council broke. Chairs scraped, and the others shuffled out one by one.
Lionel remained seated a moment longer, eyes distant.
His hand lifted a fraction, as if he meant to touch my arm before he thought better of it.
For a breath, I wondered what words he had almost spoken, but I let the thought pass.
I stood, the storm banked within me, silent but felt, the true power in the room even as I bowed to my king.
Outside the chamber, Selena waited for me. I had no time for her. I wanted to check Bramwell’s caravans and request a battlemage or two from Thalen to guard them. Her gloved hand brushed my arm to catch my attention.
“You know we have the magisters’ dinner tonight, Kael?” she asked with that tone of hers that always grated.
I turned. When our eyes met, she flinched.
“I’m preparing the seating chart,” she added, recovering quickly. “I thought placing Magister Corvo between us could be… interesting. For her, I mean. She could learn much from you.”
I froze, then frowned. I knew Selena too well to mistake this for courtesy. This was calculated.
She must have noticed, as I had, how insecure Evie had been in council.
And outside, when we’d met and I’d seen those lips up close.
If Selena judged Evie unfit for court work, she would throw her to the wolves to prove it.
She never chose seats for tutelage or whatever story she dressed it in.
She was placing Evie where she pleased, a lamb before the storm, to watch how she behaved.
A lesson for Evie, and a message for me.
She could still arrange the Court Wizard like a piece on her board, still tighten the leash she wore like a white-gloved ornament.
I wondered whether she had also felt how the room shifted after the assembly, how Evie had tugged at my composure. With all the empathic power Selena wielded, she might have. And if she had, why seat Evie next to me?
All I wanted now was to keep Evie from her. My instinct flared with the sole wish to protect her. From Selena, and also from me.
I was about to tell Selena to shove her seating chart where the sun didn’t shine, but she turned and drifted down the corridor like a wisp of silk.
When I looked back, my gaze caught on Evie.
Selena cast her a small, knowing smile as they greeted one another, then looked over her shoulder at me before vanishing.
My eyes met Evie’s, and in them I saw only how fiercely she wanted to run.
That sight, for my sins, was not merely electric. It was a dark spark under my skin, a pull that made me ache to reach for her even as I knew, for her sake, that I must not.
Her doe eyes were wide, her breath caught somewhere in her chest. Then, slowly, her face softened. She raised her chin and, against all expectation, she curtsied, bending her knees and lowering her head.
It was… adorable.
I pressed my lips together so I wouldn’t laugh.
When she looked up, she must have realized what she’d done, because her eyes flared open and shame spilled over her pretty face. Even her olive skin couldn’t hide the flush on her cheeks.
“Gods… I don’t know why I did that,” she blurted, then visibly cursed herself for saying it. She was terrible at hiding what she thought.
I chuckled. “It’s alright, Magister. I’ll allow it.” I stretched my lips into a satisfied smile.
She was still blushing. “I’m looking for Bram. Have you seen him?”
“He was in council with me moments ago. Then he went to the courtyard.”
“Oh…”
Silence settled briefly between us. The conversation had run its course, yet I didn’t move. Under normal circumstances, I would have walked away, but this awkwardness amused me. Even knowing that staying near her would wake the storm inside me, I wanted to play.
A little longer.
I finally had her here. And I loved the way she looked at me.
I stepped closer, close enough to catch the faint scent of roses rising from her. She took a few steps back, which stirred the buried instinct to corner her, to follow until her back touched the wall and she had nowhere else to go. Her eyes begged me not to come closer.
Which is exactly what I did.
That look ignited something in me. A dark, hungry flicker that sent images through my mind. Those eyes bright with tears as she begged me to stop but didn’t mean it. Those lips parted, trembling as her breath hitched from what I was doing to her. Those knees bending as she curtsied over my cock.
Gods be damned, being near her like this, wrapped in her scent, made me obsessed.
“W-what’s going on?” she stammered in a little voice.
I drew a deep breath. “Your eyes… Why are you so afraid?”
She swallowed. She was trembling. And the sight of it drove me near madness.
I had to leave. If I didn’t, I’d lose control. And trust me, no one wanted that.
“I’m not afraid,” she lied, voice caught in her throat. “You are… really close…”
Was I?
If I took one more step, my hand would find her skin.
I couldn’t allow that.
Stop. Control.
Cage the wolf. Keep the storm within.
It stirred in my bones before I even realized. My fists were clenched, my breath harsh. I first heard the crackle in my thoughts, the final warning before the storm would burst. Then lightning sparked inside my palm—painful, restrained, testing my resolve not to move.
She had no idea what brewed within me. All she saw was the Court Wizard standing too close, and she couldn’t move.
I had her trapped. I had her so confused.
She should run. Now.
Because if she didn’t, my next move would be to touch her. And if I touched her, nothing in this world would stop what came next.
“Magister Forloren!”
Loren’s voice cracked through the corridor like a whip.
Time snapped back into place. Reality crashed over me like a receding tide.
I exhaled, forced my fists open, and stepped away. My scribe stood at the end of the hall, oblivious to what he’d just interrupted.
“Magister Hart requested your presence in the audience hall,” Loren said.
What does Selena want again?
I grunted and cast one last stern glance at her before turning away. In a way, I was grateful to Loren for breaking us apart.
I’d toyed with Evie’s reactions twice now, and this time, keeping my composure had been harder than holding the storm at bay. I needed to stop. Gods, I’d told myself that just days ago. But I was a man who liked to live dangerously, and so I’d done it again.
I couldn’t do it again.
It had taken years to learn how to cage the storm, years of discipline and pain, the wolf bound by the lessons and training the academy had forced upon me. Even their most powerful magister hadn’t managed to contain it fully. And he was dead now, taken by the Breath of Death.
All that was left to hold the storm was me.
Evangelina Corvo was dangerous, a spark poised above dry kindling, a flash grenade waiting to detonate. No more teasing, no more testing myself. She was temptation carved into mortal flesh, and she didn’t even know it.
She was supposed to remain at the academy. She was supposed to stay far away from me.
I marched out of the council wing, my thoughts trailing back to her all the same. The scent of roses still clung to me, faint but stubborn.
On my way to the audience hall, I caught a glimpse of the sky outside, thunder murmuring low beyond the walls. The hairs on my arms rose. The storm within me stirred in answer, restless and hungry, her name splitting through it like lightning.
Who was I kidding?
Evie was bound to stay in my orbit for years to come. Of course something would happen again.
And maybe—just maybe—some part of me wanted it to.
Because every day of my life was built on control and restraint.
And the thought of finally letting the storm break loose… felt almost like peace.