Chapter 5
Draevyn
The castle blurred around Draevyn as he stormed through the halls.
The torches lining the corridors flickered violently as he passed, their flames bending toward him, feeding off his wrath.
His blood burned; fire writhed beneath his skin, aching for release.
And there was only one person he imagined unleashing it upon.
“Wait! Drae, just stop for a second!” Atlas, his brother and heir to the throne, screamed from behind him. He sounded breathless as he hurried to keep up.
“Don’t do anything stupid! Godsdammit, you know how the king is,” Sam, his first mate, added as he ran alongside Atlas.
But Draevyn wasn’t listening. He couldn’t. There was a roaring in his ears that he knew would never cease for as long as the king breathed.
His father had killed Cyrus Blackwood.
King Rowe had killed Esmyra’s father.
And it was all Draevyn’s fault.
After everything, after all the warnings, after all the lines drawn in the sand, his father had still crossed it. Draevyn never should’ve left the king alone with Blackwood. He anticipated the man to be tortured and wanted no part in it. But an execution?
A chill ran along his spine, knowing exactly what Esmyra would do when she found out.
And, gods, he didn’t blame her.
Gods. That was who got them all in this disaster in the first place. For if Irah, Vydenne, and Villaem never betrayed Kaelypso and Naerysa nearly a thousand years ago, they wouldn’t be in this fucking disaster.
Draevyn would still have his Wildfire.
Or… or perhaps she never would’ve existed to him at all. He hated how the thought of that somehow stung more than anything else.
Turning a sharp corner, he shoved past a pair of startled servants. He barely heard their yelps, barely felt the burn in his muscles as he pushed forward, aiming for the throne room.
“Brother, listen to me!” Atlas’s voice finally broke through the haze. “You can’t go charging in like this. We need to think—”
“There’s nothing to think about!” Draevyn whirled on them so fast they both nearly slammed into him.
“The king is a murderer! I don’t give a damn that Blackwood was a criminal.
Our father took something that wasn’t his to take, and now he’s sitting on that damned throne like it was nothing. Declaring himself a fucking hero!”
Sam stepped between the brothers, trying to push them apart. “We know, Drae. But you need to be smart about this. Barging in there, shouting accusations… It won’t change what’s done. Blackwood is dead, regardless.”
Draevyn’s jaw clenched so hard it ached. “No, but it might stop him from bragging about his death. I need to buy us time before her fury reaches our shores.”
Because he knew the king would twist the knife deeper, ensuring the damage was irreversible. His father would likely announce Blackwood’s death to the realm immediately, demanding the respect he thought he was owed when all he did was hold an illegal, private execution in his castle’s dungeon.
And if Esmyra hadn’t already learned of it, she would soon. Then there would be no stopping the storm that followed.
Both Atlas’s and Sam’s eyes widened at what Draevyn declared, but he turned before they could argue, shouldering open the massive doors. They didn’t understand the ramifications of it all yet. They had no idea.
And there he fucking was.
King Rowe sat lazily on his throne, swirling wine in his goblet as his face wore a wicked grin. His father looked down at him and smirked. “Ah. The coward returns.”
The fire raging in Draevyn’s chest threatened to consume him whole. The world around him blurred, drowned in a haze of red. His blood thundered deafeningly in his ears, and before he could think—before he could stop himself—he was moving.
Draevyn stormed up the dais, his lip curling back as a growl erupted from him. The king barely had time to straighten before Draevyn’s hands were around his throat.
There was yelling, muffled bellowing voices surrounding him on all sides, but he couldn’t make out a single word. Truthfully, he didn’t want to. They were likely telling him to stand down, and he had no fucking intention of doing so.
Heat flared beneath his palms, his fury barely contained as his grip tightened on the king’s throat. His father let out a strangled noise, his goblet slipping from his fingers and crashing onto the floor with a loud clang; dark wine spilled across the stone.
“You murdered him,” Draevyn snarled, his voice unrecognizable. His flames begged to be unleashed, desperate to consume the realm’s true monster before him. “You condemned us all.”
The king gripped his wrist in a struggle. But when Draevyn expected to find fear in his eyes, he instead found something else. Amusement. Even with his throat constricted, his father’s lips curled in a slow, smug grin.
“You foolish fucking boy,” he rasped, voice strained but mocking. “You’re finally showing some real fire.”
Draevyn squeezed harder, his hands trembling with the effort to hold back the inferno roaring inside him.
His vision swam, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
He wanted to end him. Wanted to burn the king from the inside out.
And more than anything, he wanted to make him suffer the way Esmyra would suffer when she found out—
“Let him go!”
A hand clamped tightly onto his shoulder. Atlas yanked at him, trying to pull him back, but Draevyn held strong against it.
“Do it,” the king taunted. “Burn me, boy. Prove to them you’re the monster the realm fears. Prove to them the rumors of the Phoenix are true.” His beady eyes narrowed. “Kill me just how you killed your mother.”
Draevyn’s mind emptied at the words. Memories of the roaring inferno engulfing his mother’s chambers flashed across his mind.
The king striking her in his rage, and the look of fear on her face as she cowered beneath her husband.
Then the grim acceptance in her eyes when the smoke and flames engulfed both her and Draevyn once the king fled the room.
Only Draevyn had come out untouched, and the king was merely marked with burns on his forearm, while his mother paid for his mistake with her life after suffocating from the smoke. There was nothing the healers could do.
Fire flared in Draevyn’s hands, searing the fabric of the king’s collar before turning it to ash.
The guards rushed in from all sides of the chamber, hands on their weapons.
“No! Stand down!” Atlas screamed at the guards, but the sound of shifting armor continued all around them.
He could do it. Right here. Right now. Draevyn could end this. End the man who had stolen everything from him. From his Wildfire.
But then he pictured Esmyra’s face. Her glacial blue gaze and the runes on her skin that looked as if they were seared into her flesh by Draevyn’s flames, marking her as his.
This revenge wasn’t his to take. It was hers. And, by all those ruthless fucking gods, he refused to take another thing from her.
Draevyn’s grip loosened, and the sparks sputtered out as he shoved the king back.
His father staggered, falling back onto his throne. The king straightened with a chuckle as he rubbed at his nearly crushed throat. “Pathetic,” he muttered.
Draevyn’s hands clenched into fists at his sides, his entire body shaking as he stepped back, breath heaving. Atlas was still holding on to him, ready to restrain him again.
The king dusted off his collar, the charred edges crumbling beneath his fingers. He turned his cold gaze back to Draevyn, and the whole room seemed to hold its breath.
“Well, I must say, that was quite the show.” A voice sounded to the left of the dais, accompanied with a slow, dramatic clap.
When Draevyn turned, his anger flared all over again when his eyes landed on Varis Laen, the king’s advisor and royal chancellor. The bastard had been away for months, checking on the mining of velsinyte from Lephyrin’s soils.
Oh, fucking Irah. Why the hells was he suddenly back?
“Varis,” Draevyn growled, his brows creasing. “I didn’t realize the king was allowing vermin back in our halls.”
Atlas let out a dark chuckle, releasing his hold on Draevyn. “I knew I smelled something rotting. I didn’t know rats came out in the daylight.”
Varis’s beady little eyes roamed over the brothers as they stood side by side. “Always a pleasure, Princes. Just here for my reports.”
He slowly began to climb the steps of the dais, his eyes locked on Draevyn. “Someone had to bring our king something of use.” He winked. “I was happy to oblige when rumors claimed his own son couldn’t fight off a mere woman at a masquerade.”
For a heartbeat the hall seemed to still.
A fury-driven smile formed on Draevyn’s lips, and he flashed his teeth. Slowly, he tilted his head, studying Varis. And then, without another word, his fist shot forward. The crack of knuckles against bone echoed sharply through the room, sending Varis reeling back with blood blooming at his lip.
Gasps broke around them as the king’s advisor tumbled down the steps, but Draevyn only flexed his hand, the ghost of that smile still carved into his face.
I’ve wanted to do that for years.
Atlas let out a booming laugh, his hand falling to Draevyn’s shoulder to hold himself up. “It’s about godsdamn time someone did that.”
“Guards!” the king boomed, snapping them both from the moment. The armored men around the room surged forward at the command.
The brothers whirled on their father, brows raised.
“I can’t have you storming through my halls, throwing fists, and grabbing at throats like some feral beast. Take Draevyn to the dungeons,” the king ordered. “Let him cool that fiery temper of his in the dark for a night.”
Atlas stiffened beside him. “Father—”
The king lifted a hand, silencing him without a glance.
Sam stepped forward, his jaw hung open, but Draevyn knew he was at a loss for words. While he’d told his friend the stories of what his father had done to him, Sam never witnessed a true interaction between him and the king.
Varis’s grin was smug as he wiped the blood from his bottom lip. “Stupid brute.”
“Take him.” The king’s voice was final, edged with steel.
The guards hesitated for only a breath before closing in.
Draevyn clenched his jaw, every muscle in his body tense, but he didn’t fight this time. Not when the king was already reveling in his moment of power. Not when he knew Esmyra’s crew also awaited him in the dungeons, and now hopefully he’d be able to derive a plan with them.
One night.
One night in a cell was nothing compared to the war that was coming.
He let the guards seize his arms, shoving him toward the doors. As he was dragged from the throne room, his brother called after him, “I’ll get you out!”
“Don’t,” Draevyn said through clenched teeth before lifting his gaze to the king for a final time. “You deserve everything that’s coming for you.”
His father’s chuckle echoed as the throne room doors slammed shut behind Draevyn and the guards.