Chapter 32
A force older than thrones
LORIEN
I am drowning.
Not in water. I know water, know its currents, its weight, its power. This is something else.
Something I do not understand.
The moment the ocean bent to Jude’s voice, the currents turned against us, dragging my warriors and me into the abyss. I fought, Gods, I fought to reach him, but the tides were relentless, merciless, tearing us away like we were nothing more than sand scattering on the sea floor.
Jude is gone.
I do not know if he has been taken. I do not know if he is still alive.
I only know that he is not here.
The currents had released us far from the battlefield, throwing us into deep, open waters. My warriors were battered, bleeding, barely holding formation, but I did not stop. I did not hesitate.
I turned back.
I would not leave him.
I carved through whatever stood between us and tore the ocean apart to get to him.
And it was no use.
He was gone.
Strong arms grabbed me, wrenching me backward. Two warriors, grim-faced, held me by my arms, their grips unyielding as more piled in. Others circled around me, their faces pale from exhaustion, their bodies shaken from the force of our retreat.
I’d twisted, snarled, thrashed against their hold. I made them bleed as I struggled.
General Varyon had come closer. His dark eyes, usually calm, were black with an unpleasant emotion. Something close to pity. Pity. He told me we’d lost the battle, that there was no hope of recovering Jude now.
I’d lashed out, fought harder, and he’d tried again.
“We must retreat and live to fight another day,” Varyon had said. “We do not know what he has become, Lorien. We cannot save him if he does not want to be saved.”
Ice flooded my veins.
His words were a hammer against my skull, and I’d refused to hear them.
Jude is Jude. Jude is always Jude.
He hasn’t become anything else.
He is mine.
And I will not let the ocean take him from me.
Even now we’ve returned to the capital under the weight of failure. Even as I sit in the war room, listening to the dozen voices that fill the chamber as my warriors report the outcome of the battle. Not even as I stand rigid, my body aching, my mind burning from the pain of it.
Jude was supposed to be bait. A lure to draw the kelpies out, to set a trap and weaken them. Not a sacrifice. Not a loss.
But I failed him.
The truth gnaws at me like salt in an open wound. I was supposed to protect him. I told him I would. I promised him I would.
Instead, I watched him slip through my fingers.
Instead, I let the ocean take him.
The battle replays over and over in my mind, every moment twisting deeper into my ribs like a jagged hook.
I should have seen the trap before we ever set foot in those waters.
I should have known the kelpie queen would never simply let us take back control.
I should have been stronger, faster. I should have stopped him.
Stopped whatever force took hold of him in the end.
Because that wasn’t just Jude.
It was something else.
And I don’t know if the Jude I love will still be there when I find him again.
My chief advisor is the only one who dares to look me in the eye right now.
The only one who doesn’t flinch in the suffocating weight of my fury.
His pale hair drifts around his face in the shifting currents, his robes as black as midnight and marked with the sigil of my house whisper against his skin.
He is calm. Calculating—and I already hate whatever he is about to say.
Soren inclines his head slightly. “Your Majesty.”
I don’t respond. I don’t have patience for formalities.
He exhales sharply, reading my silence for what it is.
“The war council is waiting,” he continues. “They are expecting you to accept the loss and move forward.”
I lift my gaze to his, slow and deliberate.
“I do not accept losses.”
Soren is too well-trained to sigh, but I see the frustration in the set of his jaw.
“Lorien,” he says quietly. “You cannot wage a war on the past. He is gone.”
A cold, sharp silence spreads between us.
Then I say, very evenly, very clearly,
“You are dismissed.”
Soren does not move.
He never moves when I tell him to leave.
Instead, his voice lowers further, something close to pleading beneath the steel. “I know what he meant to you—”
I strike.
Fast. Unyielding. My hand slams hard into the table, the force of it cracking the stone. A splintering sound echoes through the chamber, a deep, resounding break that seems to fracture more than just rock.
This table has stood for centuries. The weight of rulers before me, of strategies, of bloodied hands pressing into its surface, has not broken it. It has weathered war. Betrayal. The rise and fall of empires.
And yet, beneath the force of my fury, it cracks.
Just as I have.
And we are both forever scarred.
Soren stills.
The room falls silent.
My voice is lethal when I speak. “He means everything to me.”
Soren studies me for a long moment, his expression unreadable, but I see the way his hands curl at his sides.
The way the air around him shifts, disturbed by the force of my rage.
I see the flicker of understanding in his eyes and the acknowledgment of something far more dangerous than grief. Because this isn’t grief.
It’s vengeance.
Then he nods, just once.
And finally, he understands.
“Orlith and I will remain,” Soren says, his tone as steady as the deep currents that carve through the ocean floor, as certain as the tides that never fail. “The rest of you heard your king.”
A single, fragile moment of silence follows. A hesitation, like the final breath before a storm breaks. The currents in the chamber still, heavy with the weight of something inevitable. The kind of hush that comes before an empire crumbles.
Then the council moves, breaking apart like a scattered school of fish, murmuring amongst themselves as they leave the chamber.
But Varyon, of course, remains.
He waits until the last of them have gone, then folds his arms across his chest, his mouth set in a tight line, his stance unyielding.
The light from the bioluminescent lanterns flickers against his armor, casting shadows across his sharp features.
There is iron in his gaze, the kind of hardness that comes from decades of war. A challenge, silent but clear.
He is not afraid of me.
But he should be.
“Lorien,” he says, voice carefully measured, “I must protest this course of action.”
I do not look at him.
He continues anyway.
“Charging into kelpie-infested waters alone is not a strategy, it’s suicide.”
“I never said I would go alone.”
He exhales sharply, his irritation barely concealed. “Then tell me, who do you plan to bring? You made it abundantly clear you will not risk our warriors. You know I cannot allow you to do something so reckless.”
“You cannot allow me?” I say softly, tilting my head as I finally meet his gaze.
He falters.
A flicker of hesitation, barely there, but I see it. The way his jaw tightens. The way his fingers twitch slightly at his sides. The barest, instinctive reaction to the weight in my voice, to the dark promise beneath my words.
He knows what I am capable of.
He has fought beside me, seen what I do to my enemies.
And yet, still, he dares to challenge me.
“You cannot be serious, Lorien. You cannot expect a steward, an administrator, and one general to defeat the kelpies.”
Varyon’s words hang in the water between us, heavy with doubt, thick with the kind of logic that should temper me. But it doesn’t. Nothing will.
“You misunderstand,” I say, my tone measured, the edge of my fury honed into something as sharp and endless as the abyss itself, a darkness that does not relent, does not reason, does not know mercy. “I do not expect us to defeat them.”
His frown deepens. “Then what exactly do you expect?”
I push away from the fractured table, letting the silence stretch as I circle around him.
Varyon doesn’t turn, doesn’t follow my movement with his eyes.
He’s too disciplined for that, too well-trained.
But I see the tension in his shoulders, the way he braces himself against whatever I’m about to say.
“A negotiation.”
Orlith exhales, rubbing a hand over his jaw. “It’s worse than madness. It’s desperate.”
“Yes,” I agree, “it is.”
Varyon shakes his head. “You think they will simply allow you to stroll into their stronghold and ask for him back?”
“No.” My grip tightens. “I think they will make a bargain.”
Soren frowns, his brows furrowing. “Lorien—”
“I will give them something they cannot refuse.”
“And what,” Varyon asks slowly, warily, “could you possibly offer them?”
The silence that follows is thick, pressing, like the deep before a storm. The surrounding water is still, waiting, listening. Even the walls seem to lean in.
I inhale slowly, feeling the burning of their gazes on me.
“I will give them me.”
Soren’s expression doesn’t change, but I see it in the sharp way he straightens, in the way his fingers twitch at his sides. He knew I would say something reckless, something unforgivable, but not this.
Varyon swears, low and vicious. “You cannot—”
“I can.” My voice is quiet, but there’s no room for argument.
Varyon’s fists clench at his sides, his control fraying. “You mean to offer yourself as what? A hostage? A sacrifice? You think they’ll take that over Jude?”
“I think the kelpies take what is most valuable.”
The words slip from my tongue like a blade drawn from a sheath.
Soren exhales, his patience stretched to breaking. “Lorien, if you do this, you will not be negotiating. You will be kneeling. They will kill you, Lorien. They will take your life for no reason other than to take pleasure in the kill.”
His voice is a low, cutting thing, but it does not shake me.
“I will do whatever I must.”