Chapter 3
NARYA
The Bloodstone King’s voice rolled across the clearing, devouring every sound and breath that filled it.
His dragon-shaped mask caught the light when he rose from his throne, the obsidian edges burning red where the torches hit them.
He removed it slowly, as though even the steel knew the weight of his reign, and when he looked down at the clearing, the air fell even quieter. Even the harps had stopped playing.
Vasten’s grip slipped for a moment, and I lifted my head.
It was enough to confirm that it was him. The male from the alleyway.
As he descended to the altar, every motion was deliberate and drenched in control.
Even the swirl of his cloak, the moonlight glinting off his red and obsidian armour—it wasn’t just movement.
It was a show of power that commanded everything around him.
A red crystal pulsed around his neck, glowing brighter with each step, almost like his aelith was drawn to something.
I could still feel the ghost of his touch on my skin, burning me up, his laughter echoing me as I ran.
“Warning… Your Majesty?” Gravyn’s voice cracked the silence.
The blatant hesitation on the Bloodstone King’s title drew a low chuckle from him. He didn’t respond, only kept walking until he reached a few feet away.
I managed to lift my head a fraction, and the king’s dark eyes burned through me. Vasten’s grip tightened again and slammed me back down against the altar. All I could see now were dragonhide boots and an ebony cloak stirring the dust around them.
“Touch her again,” the King warned, “and you will bleed upon this altar.”
His threat hung in the air like the blade at their throat.
Vasten didn’t let go, but he didn’t tighten his grip either.
“Vasten, was it?” The Bloodstone King’s voice carried to me again. “Tell me, which part should I cut off first?”
After a pause, Vasten laughed and shoved my head down harder.
I winced as the stone caught my cheek and grated my skin.
I could barely breathe let alone move my head.
“I don’t take orders from Bloodstone filth,” Vasten spat.
“Vasten,” Gravyn warned. “Be silent! Forgive my son, Your Majesty. He does not—”
“Which part?” the King repeated calmly.
I tried to lift my head again. Vasten slammed me back down.
“Fuck off,” he snarled back.
A moment of silence followed.
Then the Bloodstone’s reply, clear and final: “Tongue it is, then.”
Something whistled through the air.
“No!” Gravyn shouted, but it was already too late.
I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for pain. But there was only reprieve.
Sweet, beautiful reprieve as Vasten staggered back.
A gust of warm air drifted over me and lifted my hair off the altar.
I turned just in time to see the Bloodstone King’s hand wrapping around Vasten’s throat.
His dagger lay buried in the side of Vasten’s jaw.
Vasten couldn’t speak. He could barely claw at the hand that now lifted him off the ground like he was merely a child.
In that moment, the Bloodstone King didn’t look like a king. He looked like a god.
“Your rule weakens, Ultherion. Your dogs forget how to kneel.” He lifted Vasten higher. “Shall I remind them?”
Moonstone guards closed in around him, their weapons raised in a ring of steel.
The Bloodstone King didn’t flinch. He raised Vasten until he dangled several inches above him.
His own warriors advanced just as swiftly, and both sides stood poised to attack.
But the Moonstone King did nothing. He only watched, blue eyes glinting through the slits of his mask, as it all began to unfold.
“Unless the Moonstone King objects?”
Ultherion didn’t move or even blink.
“By all means,” he said, flicking his hand. “I grow tired of interruptions.”
His mouth skewered, Vasten choked as he tried to manage two syllables that sounded like father.
Gravyn looked to Ultherion. “My king…?”
But the Moonstone King turned his head, his dismissal cold, final.
“A benevolent king, indeed,” the Bloodstone King sneered, like he’d expected it.
Then he dragged the dagger down, and Vasten began to scream.
They ripped from his throat in raw, frantic wails. He sounded more like a dying beast than a man. Gravyn stood frozen, lips parted as if to speak, but nothing came.
And the Bloodstone King didn’t stop at the tongue.
He tore the jaw free and then crushed Vasten’s entire throat with his bare hand.
Then he threw his body to the ground, and turned his eyes on me.
Blood smeared his face and hair, and trickled down his neck as if he’d torn the throat out with his teeth. The rumours about him were true. He wore savagery like a crown, like it had always been a part of him.
Gravyn dropped to his knees, sobbing, but something about it felt wrong.
The tears came far too quickly. Here was the cruel, sadistic captain of the Moon Guild, weeping before his murdered son, yet his eyes told a completely different story.
There was no grief in them. Only darkness, deep and practiced.
I wondered if I was the only one who saw the performance for what it was. A pathetic play.
“Forgive me, my lord. Forgive me!” His voice cracked, but it sounded more like a plea for favor than a cry for mercy.
The Bloodstone King stared down at him, disgust thick in his gaze. To him, Gravyn might as well have been a pile of rot begging for mercy. He sneered.
“Get. Up.”
“Oh, thank you, my lord! Thank yo—”
“Silence!” He seized Gravyn by the throat, hauling him upright until their faces nearly touched.
His voice fell heavy, each word meant for everyone to hear.
“I spare you only because your fate will be worse than death. Every night you’ll hear your son’s screams and remember how you failed him.
You will carry that shame to your end, knowing your name will rot long before you do and that your legacy dies with a coward. That is why I spare you.”
Gravyn scrambled to his knees, bowing so low that his nose touched the floor.
“I am bound to your mercy, my liege!”
He really was putting on the performance of his life. Did no one else see it? The shadow of a smile beneath his grief, like a snake shifting through still waters?
He didn’t even lift his head once the Bloodstone King had passed, but I knew there was no surrender in him. There never was.
Before I could move away, the Bloodstone King’s eyes found me again.
I froze under the weight of that gaze, so dark and unyielding, as he closed the space between us.
His blood-stained hand found mine, and I let him pull me to my feet.
The air between us thickened, like something wild and fierce was clawing its way to freedom. It pressed against my skin, warm and electric.
An Unseeing shuffled hesitantly into view. Their hood had slipped back to reveal a face carved thin by devotion, skin leeched of all warmth, and eyes sewn shut with luminous thread fused into their skull.
“My liege,” they whispered, bowing low before lifting their head. “To claim a Fateless… it is not the way.”
The Bloodstone King merely turned his head, and the Unseeing recoiled, the moon-beads in his pocket rattling.
“It is now,” the King growled, raising his voice. “If any oppose me, speak now, but know that mercy will not follow.”
No one spoke. Not even our own king.
I scanned the clearing, and my heart leapt. Blayren stood with my sisters. He was no longer shackled—bruised, but whole. My sisters were unharmed. Horror filled Kaydra’s eyes, tears stains streaked Rueren’s ashen cheeks. Even the twins stood frozen, silent in fear. But at least they were all alive.
However, my relief shattered when Blayren gave no signal for me to join them. Why not?
I twisted my hand, trying to wrench free from the grip that bound me.
From the corner of his eye, the King sent me a single look—enough to stop me cold. Mine. If I wanted to live, I had to stay with him. Yet every part of me screamed to claw my way back to freedom. It was right there.
He must have felt my panic, because his grip tightened, his eyes narrowing to slits.
He’d let me go once before, in the alleyway, but now? Now I was his.
The edge of his lips twitched like he knew it too.
“I warned you, little dove. I only let you fly once.”
His voice rose then, carrying for all to hear.
“Now let it be known that by divine right, this Fateless is mine. Any hand that touches her will taste my wrath long before your gods see fit to punish you.”
He reached out and tipped my chin, forcing me to look up at him.
“Do you yield to this, Narya?”
It wasn’t a question. It was a command for my ruin.
I searched his eyes for a reason to refuse him, but the only truth I found was that he’d saved my life. So I nodded, and he drew me in, the space between us closing until there was nowhere left for me to run.
“Then let the stars damn us both,” he said, his mouth claiming mine.