Chapter 10
Kael
Ihad done exactly what I wanted, which wasn’t always the right thing to do.
I’d touched her. Cold and trembling beneath my fingers.
After all these years watching her, keeping my distance, I’d touched her.
Because I couldn’t resist her being that close, close enough that I could hear the moment her breath stopped.
She had dared me. Those sparkling doe eyes and tentative smiles… She had no idea how good she was at making the whole world stop when her lips curved just so.
The urge took me. My hand twitched, squeezing her fragile skin, and the sound that slipped from her lips stole the last of my restraint.
My hand stayed there. On her.
Like she already belonged to me.
The thought sent lightning through my veins.
I kept her still, mine, quiet and obedient, while I carried on conversation with the other magisters. The act of holding her captive with nothing but a touch made my body tighten with need. And my cock twitched against the fabric of my breeches, hungry.
She was so beautiful when I owned her.
But as the evening dragged on, reason began to seep back in. Barely enough to remind me that nothing good could come of this. So I fought the urge, braced against the storm rising inside, and let her go.
I hadn’t realized she’d been holding her breath until I saw her chest rise again. And all I could think about was how long I could have pushed it.
I had to leave.
I could never do this again.
I left the great hall without looking back. Outside a page in the Court’s beige tunic with blue linings came to fetch me. His red hair and ugly baby face made me, for a few seconds, forget Evie’s beauty.
“Magister Forloren,” he said, timid, his lips trembling. I was sure he and the other pages had drawn straws to see who would speak to me. “The king requests your presence in the Crown’s chamber.”
And with that, the stirring in my breeches faded.
“Very well,” I grunted. I pushed out a deep breath and relaxed my shoulders to brace for an evening of council.
I was fortunate that drink did little to me. I could speak with the king without smiling like an adorable fool. Unlike Evie.
Get out of my head, doe.
I made for the grand staircase that led to the council wing on the first floor, where I knew the king awaited. The page lagged a step or two, then sighed in relief as he rounded the corner and vanished.
I entered the Council of the Crown’s chamber and found Lionel and Alaric von Brecht, from the Council of War, Thalen’s chancellor, deep in conversation.
Alaric was General of the Vanhauian Armies, gruff and uncompromising.
His armor gleamed as if always polished for council.
His gray hair had thinned these past five years, and tonight he had trimmed his beard, as had Lionel.
He was the king’s childhood friend and confidant.
He did not like me. Never had. Perhaps he never understood why the king had chosen me as his magister.
I couldn’t care less. I did not need his approval. I needed only his respect, and I had it. The rest could rot.
They fell silent when they saw me. I approached, and Alaric stepped back a pace.
“You asked for me,” I said to Lionel.
Lionel handed me a letter. “Read,” he said, his voice dark.
I opened it. The seal of the Earl of Perlgate lay torn in two. I frowned. I expected a declaration of war at this point.
Which it was.
My dear Lionel,
Has it not been too long since you’ve hidden behind your castle walls while our beloved kingdom spits blood into its waters? It grieves me deeply to see innocent souls drowning in despair. The people whisper in fear of unjust arrest. Markets close. Famine rises.
And yet no word of comfort or truth comes from the throne.
Rumor fills the silence. And silence, as you know, is the language of guilt.
I write not as your enemy, but as a loyal servant of the realm. We have played this game for years, Lionel, and still you retreat into your tower while your magisters play gods with common lives.
The people still believe—and who can really blame them?—that this plague did not crawl from the hells, but from the chambers of your magi.
If it is false, then show proof. Restore the realm’s faith.
If it is true, then may the gods forgive you, for the people will not.
I have always stood for the voice of the streets. The forgotten, the hungry, the betrayed. They call for leadership. They call for truth. Because when their king grows deaf, someone else will listen. And when the people find a voice, Lionel, they rarely give it back.
For the sake of the crown you wear, step forward and show them their faith in you was not misplaced. Do it now, or history will raise a new ruler in your stead.
And heads will roll.
With deepest concern and unwavering loyalty,
Dereck Thorne
Earl of Perlgate
“When did you receive this?” I asked, handing the letter back to Lionel.
His eyes were flat and somber. “A page brought it only moments ago. I had Alaric summoned at once.”
This was a threat, plain and proper. Dereck Thorne had been courteous enough to sign his handiwork with a flourish.
“What’s the status on the gutters?” I asked Alaric without pretense.
Alaric straightened, took a breath like a man bracing for foul wind. “Thorne slipped into Befest last week. He’s been whispering in the alleys, stoking them with grievances. Two magi were assaulted three nights ago, accused of corrupting the cures at the apothecary.”
If I had killed a man for every accusation like this shouted across the markets, Vanhaui would have been a graveyard two winters ago.
“What of the Duchess of Bretannia? Why did she release him?” I demanded.
The idea that Dereck Thorne, a man who’d bled Bretannia dry and sold promises of freedom for coin to fund his war, could still strut free made bile rise in my throat.
And freedom from what? The Breath of Death?
We had done that.
“He’d finished his sentence,” Alaric said bluntly.
Lionel looked at me. He wanted counsel. He always did. My first gut answer was simple and honest. Let them come. Let his militias march the castle steps so I could unmake them all in one crack of lightning. It would be mercy to end the rot quickly. It was the release I craved since the plague.
My power was not a show. It was cleansing. A last resort. When the kingdom had drowned in despair, I did not drown with it. I unleashed the storm and did what had to be done.
You ask for proof? My memory kept it like a tally.
Every soul who’d coughed blood, contagion hitch inside them like a parasite.
I’d focused the storm until sound became white and thin as bone.
Lightning had answered my thought, and where it’d struck, there’d been no slow decay, only ash.
I couldn’t pretend that I had been gentle.
It had stopped the spread everywhere the thunder had rolled.
When rioters had surged with swords and torches, I had stood on the castle steps and painted the night with light. Do not ask me about color or beauty. Ask whether the city had lived the next morning. It had.
Inside me was an inexplicable storm starved for death.
I could call a current that tore through armor, cities, and mountains.
I did not cast pretty spells. I shaped weather into judgement.
The king needed someone who would, without trembling, pull the cruel lever when his kingdom’s survival depended on it.
But there was a cost. The storm scratched at my insides like a caged wolf. It asked for release and remembered every time I held it in. So I used every face I ever made into silence, remembered every single one of them and used their pain to keep the storm at bay.
And since the plague, the kingdom felt peace, but I didn’t. Now, the storm ached for release like never before.
But that was not Lionel’s way. He was a peacemaker. He counted lives like a caring shepherd; he would not throw the scales into a fire to sate a whim. I swallowed the words that would please me and offered what the kingdom needed.
“What’s your recommendation, Alaric?” I asked. He looked at me as if I would hedge.
Alaric braced himself. “Increase patrols around the castle. Lift the watch over the gutters. And have our agents report anything unusual immediately.”
Those measures would put our spies in danger. They were necessary anyway. “Stock the armory with arrows,” I said. “Prepare for siege.”
Alaric’s nod was short, businesslike. Agreement between us was rare, but it was there. Men like him preferred a plan they understood.
“Have battlemages at the towers,” Lionel added.
“See the queen and my daughter safely escorted to the manor in Shelb. Let no delay hinder them.” Then he paused.
A man who always kept his voice even, he said the next words in a tone too dark for him.
“And Kael…” The hesitation refracted something harder than doubt.
When a king hesitated, the pause contained a verdict of its own. “I never imagined I would need to ask this,” Lionel said finally. “I chose you… for wisdom and discipline, not for the power you wield. Not… this.”
The implication hung in the air. He did not say the words, but he meant them. My power was the last resort. As much was acknowledged.
“If you must,” Lionel finished, and the phrase came out like a prayer and a plea both, “I want you at the forefront of the battlefield.”
There were polite orders and there were absolutes. This was the latter. I tasted the permission like iron. My fingers grew restless. The storm that lived beneath my skin flared with the thought of release.
Alaric’s jaw tightened. He was a soldier. He read the sentence plainly. Lionel’s eyes narrowed in grief I could not fix for him. A peacemaker, yes, but he, too, had his limits. Dereck Thorne was on the verge of crossing them.
“I will do as you command,” I said, and the words were steady. Inside, something like hunger unfurled. I swore on the Crown I would strike clean and quick. If the gutters rose, I would turn them to ash.
When I left the chamber, the static still hummed beneath my skin. A smile eased across my face, dark and inevitable.
I was on my way to my chambers when I saw her. She looked broken, as if someone had hollowed her out and left the shell behind. The sight did nothing to steady my control.
At first, I kept my distance and spoke of Selena to distract myself. Selena was simply Selena, and Evie had been unsettled by her coldness, by the cracked mask the woman wore since the plague. I had seen how deeply it had struck her.
So I reassured her, saying Selena posed no danger. After all, she was not me.
Then the storm within me drove me to the unthinkable. I caught her pretty face, seized her by her bound hair and forced her to meet my gaze.
The way her eyes went wide and brimmed with tears as my fingers clutched her sent vertigo through me and unfurled dark images in my mind.
In that instant, I saw everything I wanted to do to her.
I imagined shredding her black robe, lifting her on top of the railing and taking her while my hand squeezed her throat so hard she couldn’t scream.
Actually, I wanted her to scream. I would flip her toward the railing and take her there, rough and raw, while she answered me with no resistance, only the tremor of want. And her sweet, breaking voice would fill the castle walls with eternal echoes.
I would hold her tight while lightning danced across her skin and my tongue traced each secret place, every slit, and whether she’d beg for mercy or for continuance didn't matter. I just wanted to see what she’d look like, begging.
So I did what I ought to do, for in that instant I knew I could never keep myself from Evangelina Corvo.
I told her to stay away from me.