39. Chapter 39
ERYNDOR
Every audience I'd ever had with my father had begun with a summons.
A messenger. A bell. A guard appearing at my door with that particular expression—respectful on the surface, pitying underneath—that meant the King required my attendance.
I had spent a lifetime entering rooms because I was told to.
I walked into this one because I chose to.
The study was warm. A fire in the grate, two chairs, a decanter of wine so dark it looked black. My father sat behind his desk with a stack of correspondence he wasn't reading. He'd been waiting.
He'd known I'd come. Just not when. That uncertainty—the loss of the initiative—sat in the tightness around his mouth.
"Eryndor." He didn't stand. "I assumed you'd need a moment to console your—"
"Your Soul-Smith is incompetent."
The words cut his greeting off at the knees. His eyes narrowed. Recalculating.
"The severance theatre was sloppy," I continued. "You let him mention pain as a tool in front of her. She's not stupid. She'll have the whole offer reframed as coercion inside the hour, and any genuine willingness you might have cultivated is gone."
He leaned back and steepled his fingers together.
"You're critiquing my strategy."
"I'm correcting your execution," I leveled back.
The fire popped. A log shifted, sending sparks up the flue.
My father exhaled slowly. His Truthshard Mark probing, tasting the air for deception.
I let it taste.
"The ceremony requires my Mark," I said. "My Mark currently requires the tether. The tether requires her. Which means every piece on your board runs through the same chokepoint. And I sleep ten feet from that chokepoint. Every night."
His expression didn't change. But his hand, resting on the desk, went still.
"You put me there yourself."
Silence. The Truthshard pulsed again. Found nothing to catch. Every word was clean.
"What do you want, Eryndor?"
Want.
That was the first time he'd ever asked me that. I watched him chew on the bitterness of it, grinding his teeth uncomfortably.
"I'll marry Vivienne. I'll perform the ceremony.
Every healing, every appearance, every public display of unity the Crown requires.
" I held his gaze the way he'd taught me to hold a blade—steady, patient, aimed.
"I will deliver Amaria's genuine consent for the Soul-Rend.
Willing. Uncoerced. The kind that holds. "
"And in return?"
"The prisoner in the eastern cells."
The room changed temperature.
It was subtle. A degree, maybe less. But the fire shrank and my father's pupils contracted and his Mark flared hot enough that I saw the glow through his robes.
He hadn't expected that.
"Which prisoner?" Careful. Too careful.
"The one you've kept off every manifest and every ledger. The one whose cell has no number and whose guards rotate on a schedule that doesn't match any other rotation in the palace. Amaria’s brother." I paused. Let the precision land.
My father's jaw worked. A muscle I recognised—the same one that jumped in my own face when the walls were under pressure.
"How long have you known?"
"That’s not your concern."
"And you said nothing."
"I'm saying it now."
The fire crackled. The decanter of wine sat untouched between us.
"You've been busy," my father said. "Mapping my rotations. Counting my guards. All while playing the broken son on my marble floor." His mouth curved. "When did you start?"
"The first night."
The curve deepened. Recognition. He was looking at me the way a swordsmith looks at a blade he forged—testing the edge, measuring the balance, surprised to find it sharper than he'd intended.
"The prisoner stays where he is," my father said. "Until the Soul-Rend ritual is complete and I have what I need." He turned his glass. "Then he walks. Not before."
I let the terms settle. Then I pulled the second chair from the desk and sat.
My father's eyes tracked the movement. I had never sat in his study without being told to.
"Furthermore, Amaria and her companions leave this palace untouched and free when the ceremony is finished," I said.
"All of them. The priestess. The glamourist. The dragonborn.
The brother. They walk out the front gate unharmed, and with no pursuit.
You get your marriage, your alliance, your healed kingdom. They get their lives."
My father set his glass down. The sound was deliberate. A period at the end of a sentence.
"You're listing terms like a male who'll still matter after the ink dries." He leaned forward. "The ceremony ends. The ritual completes. And then what, boy? What exactly do you hold over a king who already has everything he wants?"
I stood from my chair and leaned my hands on his desk, towering over him. Close enough that the Truthshard could read the capillaries in my eyes.
"I will stand on that dais in three nights and pour everything I have into the healing.
The crowd will weep. The Veil sickness will recede.
The kingdom will have its little miracle.
" I let each sentence land with its full weight.
"And on the fourth morning, if a single one of them is harmed, imprisoned, or pursued—I will cut Vivienne's throat in her sleep and smile while your miracle bleeds out on silk sheets. "
The Truthshard flared white.
No deception detected.
Because there was none.
"You asked what I hold after the ink dries." I held his gaze. "Your queen. Right there on the board. Unguarded every night. Keeping you in an eternal checkmate."
My father went very still. The firelight caught the planes of his face—the same face I saw in every mirror, the same architecture of control and calculation that I'd spent my whole life learning to wear.
"That's quite a price," my father said. "For a girl who just told you to stay away from her."
"You taught me that everything has a price." I straightened. "I'm finally buying something worth the cost."
He studied me. The Truthshard was quiet now. It had done its work. Every word I'd spoken had passed clean through its filter and come out whole.
Then he laughed.
Short. Genuine. He’d caught a sudden, unexpected glimpse of his own reflection in me and didn’t know what to do with it.
"You know," he said, "your mother used to look at me like that. Right before she got exactly what she wanted."
He reached for the decanter. Poured one glass. Set it on my side of the desk. I didn't touch it.
I turned for the door.
"Eryndor."
I stopped. Didn't turn.
"She'll find out what you're doing. What you've traded. And she will hate you for it."
I thought of Amaria's face in the laboratory. The serrated edge of stop pretending you chose me.
"She already does."
"And that doesn't concern you?"
The door handle was cold under my palm. I turned to face him as I answered.
"Hatred is something she can survive."
I left him with that and opened the door.
ERYNDOR
I made it four steps down my wing before my knees gave.
The basin was tucked into an alcove—porcelain, a pitcher of water beside it that someone refreshed every morning for a prince who'd been dead for years. I gripped the rim and my stomach emptied itself.
Not much to give. Just bile and the sudden, full-weight understanding of what I'd just bought and what it cost to carry home.
Three nights. A prisoner breathing on borrowed time. And a soul that could not be fooled.
I could threaten a king. I could map a kill and execute it. I could sit in my father's chair and play his game with his rules and feel it fit like skin. None of that put me on my knees.
This did. I had to make her hate me for the soul-rend to work, and for the King to give her what she truly wanted in the end. I couldn't just hurt her—pain would only make her hold tighter. I needed something worse than pain.
Her soul was still screaming my name. A female like Amaria—that feral, that relentless—love wouldn't fade on its own. Grief wouldn't kill it. Only hate had the teeth for that.
But hate wasn't the end. Hate still meant she was turned toward me. What the bond needed to release without killing her was what came after—the moment hate burned so long it consumed itself and left nothing. No love. No rage. Just the cold, flat apathy of a stranger.
I had to walk her there. Room by room. On a clock.
I had to kill that wild, seemingly infinite, passion. Precisely. On a deadline. With multiple lives hanging on whether I was thorough enough.
This would be my most terrifying target yet, the one that would haunt my dreams for eternity.
And if I told her why—if she knew about her brother, the deal, the clock—she'd understand. She'd forgive my trade. And forgiveness was a thread the soul would hold onto with both hands. We’d never be able to sever the bond.
I rinsed my mouth. Spat. Wiped my face with the back of my hand.