Chapter Twenty
Rhael
I did not return to my chambers. Instead, I stayed in the confines of my office. Listening as Elara closed the door with a sound much too soft for the damage she left in her wake.
I needed to distract myself, except my feet stayed rooted in the exact spot she had left me in. Hands braced on the edge of my desk, breathing uneven, my magic still singing beneath my skin.
The room already bore marks of my previous angry outburst. A fractured pillar near the far wall, stone split where my temper had struck it one too many times.
Fine cracks in the marble were hidden by stacks of books and carefully placed furniture.
My office had always been a safe space for my rage, yet I could no longer bring myself to destroy it.
I took a moment, a pointless attempt to untangle the web of emotions that lingered inside of my mind. I had to be calm, to formulate a plan. My role was always to find solutions. Even if they were problems of my own creation.
The image of my sister stepping forward plays over inside my head, relentless like a curse I cannot escape. Olesia had seemed so calm, her back straight as she had offered herself in an alliance to aid my cause. No hesitation in her voice, no fear whatsoever.
I should have been proud. Averan would have been proud. In reality I felt frustrated. The thought of my only sibling no longer being here, turned my stomach every time it crossed my mind.
My hands dug through my hair as I finally moved.
Turning my back to the door and pacing like some kind of caged animal.
My wings twitched relentlessly beneath the skin of my back.
Itching for me to release them along with my anger.
To remind myself that I could level stone if I needed to, that I wasn't weak.
Yet, I was unable to stop this, to stop my sister from being thrown into the hands of a man who I would have once considered a friend.
Aasim had turned cold in the seven years since I had seen him last, he had always been dominant and unyielding, but he had never been this intent on seeing my destruction.
The worst thing was, Olesia was right. She has always been right, ever since she was a child. Ever since my mother had walked that small bundle into our lives, I knew she would spend her life time proving me wrong.
For years she had begged to help me carry the weight of the crown. Offered to take the role of second in command, but I had never been able to let it go. She was too innocent, too gentle, too pure. If I did not know better I would have assumed she still believed in true love and fairy tales.
The position should have been hers, it was her birthright, from the moment Averan’s blood soaked into stone and our futures rearranged themselves, into something neither of us were supposed to live through.
The images that I try to keep at bay flood me next.
The way I had held my older brother's body.
How his wings had laid wrong against the marble, torn and broken, as if death itself rejected them.
I could still feel the scream that had come from my throat, how it had broken the silence of the space that had turned into my brother's resting place.
My brother had not died in some grand battle, it had been betrayal. The fault of trusting the wrong person.
My fault.
The thought sank its claws deep into my chest. If I had not been so foolish it would have never happened. If I had kept my heart cold, locked in stone, like the warrior my father had expected to be, none of this would happen.
The same guilt filled me when I thought of my sister and her fate. If I had not reached for peace so foolishly, believing that alliances could be forged from bridges I had soaked in blood before I burned them, she would not be in this position. Another of my siblings would not be lost to my errors.
My hand slammed back into the desk hard enough to rattle the maps and parchment spread across it. Ink bottles wobbled, spilling black ink over the wood. I took a moment, staring at the dark liquid, breathing hard.
The ink was me. I bled slowly, quietly, in places no one can see and now my sister would pay the price for another of my failures. A mistake caused by me that I could not reverse. Another life ruined by my cause.
Aasim’s gaze when she had offered herself had been calculating, appraising, as if he was already imagining his possession of her.
He had smiled, not cruelly, not even unkindly, but with the confidence of a man who expects the world to give him what he wants.
A man patient enough to wait for it to come to him.
I hate him. But no matter how great my hatred for him, the hatred I felt for myself was more.
I sank into the chair behind my desk. The wood creaking under my weight. For a moment, I let my head fall back, eyes closing as I pressed fingers into my temples. I was tired.
It was not the kind of tiredness that sleep would fix. It was the kind that settled into the marrow of my bones, built from years of making decisions between bad and worse. It came from wearing a crown I was never supposed to inherit, from learning too young that kings do not get to want.
The candle nearest to me flickered, responding to the shift in my magic. I forced it down, swallowing the surge of power before it manifested into something destructive. Control. Always control.
My brother's death is replaced by images of Elara. Unwanted, unbidden the very creature who tested my control more than any other had. Tonight, her appearance was the level of perfection I had expected, draped in silk and careful composure.
That wasn't how I remembered her. Instead, the image that called to me most was the one of her on her knees. My cock in her mouth, as she took my control from me like she owned it.
I gripped the arm of the chair, knuckles whitening as heat coiled low in my gut.
Gods I had wanted to stop her, had wanted to haul her to her feet and shove her from the room telling her to keep her defiance to herself.
For some reason, I had stayed still, allowing myself a brief moment of pleasure I had not felt in years.
I had taken so many things in my life, command, loyalty, fear, even love before I knew better.
Elara had offered. I knew it had been to prove a point.
That not even the Fae King who owned her on paper, could own that mouth of hers.
She would do with it what she wanted, say what she wanted, demand when there were things I was not willing to give.
Those actions made her more dangerous than any army I had ever built or torn apart.
I exhaled slowly, leaning forward, as I braced my elbows on the desk.
Maps spread before me with borders marked in ink.
This was where I was meant to live. In strategy, numbers, choices that can be justified later by survival.
Not in the memory of a woman's hands and mouth around my cock, looking up at me as if silently begging me to give in, to have her.
Even if it was just once. The story of her burn had filled me with rage, even as I had sat on the ground like a child, willing her to give me part of herself she was not ready to.
It had started as a game, but ended in understanding.
I knew that kind of pain, what it was to be reduced to something lesser in your own mind because you were resistant when someone else ordered obedience.
Elara was a mirror of everything I had buried to remain King. She had made me remember what it had been like to lay beneath the stars and just exist. She makes me want joy, but joy was a luxury I had buried beside my brother.
I laughed under my breath, the sound bitter and sharp.
She had always been different. From the moment she had refused to bow I had thought she would be a problem, but never had I expected this.
Elara Varyn got under my skin, and I had to find a way to carve her out before she ended up embedded so deep within me, I could not tell what was mine and what was hers.
I stood again, restless, my mind fractured with different feelings, memories and pieces of information that were impossible to organise. The threads I needed to take control evading me every time I grasped for them. It was torture, the worst kind.
Somewhere within these castle walls, my sister was preparing for a life she should have never had to choose. Elara would be sat upstairs in a guest bedroom, the well groomed slave waiting for my next order. Averan lay cold in an early grave, marked by love from all those who knew him.
I had failed them all.
With a harsh curse ripping from my lips I sat back at the desk trying to pull the pieces together that I needed. If I was going to follow this through I needed to be clear on my next course of action.
The Siren Queen, the only female ruler in Alasgad, would not be impressed by sacrifice alone.
She would demand to taste the truth from every word I spoke, hear the fracture in my voice if I allowed myself to feel too much.
Maeve Kiehl traded in longing and despair.
Desire sharpened into a deadly weapon, one I could not allow. Nor one I could afford.
The decision settled in my mind with brutal clarity.
Distance. Whatever strange attraction I felt for Elara would end now.
I would keep her safe, honour my word and protect her from becoming another victim in my upcoming war, I could not let myself want her.
Wanting a human would make me careless and careless kings get people killed.
I pulled a fresh piece of parchment from an unused pile and began to write.
Orders first. Envoys, timelines. Where I would draw the line in my offering with the Siren Queen and how much blood it would cost me.
The pen moved steadily across parchment as my thoughts slowly knit together, becoming cohesive as the decision settled like a weight on my chest.
The candle burnt lower as the night stretched on. Ink staining my fingers as plans were stacked amongst one another, each one a fragile thing balancing my people on the end of catastrophe.
By the time I finally stilled, dawn was becoming more than just a pale promise on the horizon. Light bled freely into the darkness. I leant back in my chair and allowed myself a moment to breathe.
For a single treacherous second I indulged in the remembrance of Elara beside me under the stars. How her skin had felt beneath my fingers, and the way her body had supported mine when I thought all was lost.
Then I lock it away. I was a King first, King to my people, legacy of my brother and protector of my sister, but always King first. Even if it cost me the only thing that had made the crown feel lighter upon my brow.