Chapter 31
Evie
Dawn rose, sunlight breaching through the curtains I had forgotten to close in the heat of the moment. Kael still slept beside me, on his stomach, as he did every night. That man slept like a stone. Not even the bright first light of summer drenching his face could wake him.
We were in my quarters, which was not unusual, yet this morning felt different.
Perhaps it was because a month had passed since I had removed the blight and the world had gone quiet.
No more danger creeping down the mountain.
No looming threat of siege. The gutters had finally been cleansed, not by force but by the steady aid the Crown had poured into them.
What had once been a maze of refuse and rot now stirred with the first timid signs of order.
Workers hauled away the last of the squalor-scarred timber, and fresh stone waited in carts along the riverbank, ready to rise into walls and walkways.
New plans to shape the gutters into a proper district were being drafted even now, drawn by the king’s own hand.
His vision spoke of clean wells, wide lanes, and homes built high enough that sunlight might reach places it had not touched in years.
The next step was to invite the Duchess of Bretannia and the Duke of Lutessia to the castle, and host a feast fit for the three states.
A display of unity, Bram, who very much relished in the idea of a feast, had said.
Something about public appearances… and the need to show the people that the Court still breathed strength rather than fear.
Or maybe, just maybe, this morning felt different because tonight we would board a ship headed to Sud. And we, because Kael was coming with me.
He would meet my parents—Lydia and Roberto—which honestly made me quite nervous.
My mother would love him at once. Kael held the highest status a wizard could ever reach.
Her large, dark brown eyes would sparkle like lantern glass.
My father, though, would immediately wonder whether Kael had used his position to coerce me somehow.
He had always been so protective, yet so dismissive all the same.
I did not blame my parents for mistaking me for a seerling.
Even I had misnamed myself. I had been a strange, quiet child who had seen echoes of people’s pasts, most often without warning and often to my detriment.
My parents, especially my father, had told me to conceal my power or I would never be accepted into any school, any academy.
Better to smother the gift than let it grow wild, he’d said.
Better to hide it, seal it, pretend it was nothing at all.
So I had done exactly that. I had folded my power into silence, tucked it into the smallest corner of myself inside a box of blackiron, and lived as though the echoes were a curse I must outlast.
But now I was something no one, not even the academy, could explain.
And I had become the talk of wizard town.
They didn’t know whether to call me reflector or echomage, or echomancer for the fancy ones. I would like to be called simply Evie.
Naming a whole new branch of magic… could you imagine?
Kael loved to toy with my power. The lightning I echoed back to him always steadied him. When the storm stirred too fiercely, he poured his magic into me, and the world quieted for him at once.
And then I saw all of him, the raw parts of him, and I loved him a little more each day.
I woke Kael by stroking him gently so he would turn onto his back. I ran my fingers down his athletic chest, exploring each ridge and sinew, down the heated line of his manhood. He was already hard for me.
“Good morning, Magister,” he murmured, his voice still heavy with sleep.
He let me climb atop him and kiss him. Last night he had unleashed the storm into me, so he was gentler now.
He would not see this coming…
With a flick of my fingers, magic coursed through me, and I had him pinned to the bed with a gust of wind.
He looked at me first in surprise, and then that surprise gave way to a slow, hungry curiosity.
He would let me play.
I settled, knees braced on either side of his hips, guiding his shaft into me. I sank down gently so he would feel every inch of me, every breath of warmth that welcomed him in. By the look on his face, the hazy eyes, the parted lips, he enjoyed this as much as I did.
I moved up and down, writhing the way he liked, feeling him deep inside me where the world steadied and felt right again. Low grunts rolled through his throat the faster I rode him, echoing my soft moans, and heat gathered in me, sharp and sweet, pulling me toward the peak of release.
My bed was smaller and older than his, so it creaked with every slow oscillation. The sound only stoked my arousal, for there was something wickedly thrilling in hearing the bed itself bear witness to us, its wooden groans rising with the rhythm of our bodies making love.
When his hand cupped my breast and the other gripped my hips, I knew I never had him pinned at all.
He flipped me over in one swift, effortless motion and pounded my flesh until we both came apart, lips locked, screams muffled against each other’s mouths.
Then he lay back beside me and gathered me into his arms, my head resting on his chest, with only the sound of our breathing filling the space around us.
“Magister Corvo,” Kael broke the silence. “How does it feel to be destroyed?”
I raised my head, a slight frown creasing my brow. “What do you mean?”
He squeezed me closer. “I said I couldn’t love you without destroying you. So, how does it feel to be destroyed?”
I chuckled. “Hm, are you telling me you love me, Magister Forloren?”
“I’ve been telling you every night. You just never heard me.”
For a heartbeat, I forgot how to breathe.
His arms still held me, warm and heavy, yet the world tilted beneath me.
The man I had wanted, feared, longed for in equal measure had spoken the one truth I never dared hope for.
My chest tightened, not with dread but with a trembling, dizzy joy I could hardly contain.
Destruction didn’t feel so terrible. Well, except for my aching legs…
Gods, if this was destruction, let it take me whole.
“I love you too,” I said.
Our lips met again.
“I know.”
There was one more thing we needed to do before we started packing for Sud.
The assembly of magisters, which had been postponed again and again since—well—siege, blight, and all the pleasant chaos that came with them.
We both knew the council would not begin without him, so we took our time getting ready and making our way down to the council wing.
I entered first, finding my seat among the magisters I had come to know and understand a little more.
Understand how to speak to them, how to set my boundaries, how to play the Court’s game without letting it swallow me whole.
Kael followed, as rough and intimidating as ever, his demeanor nothing like the one I knew in our quarters when it was just the two of us.
His gaze found mine and held it. The chamber stirred around us, voices low, papers shifting, yet for a moment it felt as though no one else existed.
Then he straightened, the Court Wizard once more, cold and untouchable to the rest of them.
Only then did I notice the empty chair where Selena once sat, its stillness leaving an unexpected cold in the room, colder than any she’d ever shown me.
I gave my report on the blight, which everyone already knew of, especially Jorren with his many bejeweled rings, all too fascinated by how I had defeated it. We did not speak of its source, its cause, nor of what it had taken to lift the curse. We would never speak of that here.
I knew we could not fix the world. We could not force the Court to come clean, to admit its crimes, the cure, and the steep price paid to make it. That was a truth I had learned to accept. But at least Kael and I had each other, and we knew it, acknowledged it, bore it together.
My eyes met Lo’s, and he granted me a sly, knowing wink, for my gaze had drifted—again—toward the excruciatingly handsome Court Wizard.
Only Lo understood what that meant. To everyone else, he was merely the king’s stormbound shadow.
I knew the tempest beneath that composure, the lightning he leashed for the world and bared only for me.
Because I had survived it and chosen it.
Cold prickled along my skin in the ice-cold council chamber, but it was nothing like the first time I had sat here.
It did not threaten. I let the echo flow through me.
I had kept my power locked in a cage for so long, listening to every voice that told me to hide, believing I had no control over it.
Now, in accepting it, I held all the power.
I saw the magic this room carried, layer upon layer, magister after magister sitting here through the years, each with their story, each with their weight of power.
I felt Henrich Eisenberg’s echo, the shadow of his fear and his pride for Kael.
And while the others discussed the project in the gutters, I simply listened, echoes flowing as naturally as air.
I hadn’t been entirely truthful. We had needed to attend the assembly before departing, yes, but there was one final final thing I needed to do. Alone.
There was something I had seen, something that gnawed at me, and I needed clarity. And the only person who could give me that clarity was the king himself.
I entered the audience hall, where His Highness sat upon his marble throne, a golden crown resting upon his salt-and-pepper hair.
He wore a red and gold tunic suited for a day of counsel—the kind worn when the people would soon file into the hall to present their pleas and grievances before their king.
I had little time, but I needed to speak with him.