Chapter 10 #2
“Syrenne will oppose anything that strengthens my position. That is not new. She has opposed me for longer than your territory has existed. What is new is that she has an audience for the opposition. Your presence gives her a stage.”
“And if she persuades the other courts?” I ask.
“She will not persuade Stone. My court knows its mind. Tides will vote strategically. Maeven calculates long before he speaks, and the calculation will favor alliance. Gales will do as Gales does.” He settles back.
“Ithara sees patterns in the future that make the present irrelevant. She will abstain or she will speak, and if she speaks, every court will listen, and what she says will change the shape of the vote in ways none of us can predict.”
“You’re telling me the outcome rests on a woman who speaks in riddles.”
Lanthar’s mouth thins. “I am telling you the outcome rests on the truth of what you present. We recognize truth with a precision your species cannot match. When you stand before the four courts and tell them what Konstantin is building, they will know you believe it. The question is whether they believe it is their problem.” He holds my gaze. “Convince them.”
The word lands and the rock absorbs it.
My weight is forward, palms against the stone. Something in my blood has settled into a rhythm that matches the mountain’s pulse, synchronized with something vast.
Every minute I spend in this realm, whatever woke at Iron Claw deepens.
The table beneath my hands just proved it. The pressure behind my sternum. The shadows reaching for the great tree’s roots. It’s connected. All of it.
“There is more,” Lanthar says.
I wait.
“I know what lives in your eastern buffer zone.”
The shadows react before I do, pressing outward, and the gold veins in the nearest wall flicker.
Lanthar watches without expression.
Then he continues.
“Konstantin has constructed something larger than a facility. A convergence point. Three types of magic intersect at it. Witch binding. Blood contamination. And something he retrieved from a source older than any of these.”
“The wolves cannot enter the eastern boundary because the ground itself has been rewritten. The Earth’s composition altered at a fundamental level. What it broadcasts now is a signal every predator’s instinct reads as territory already claimed by something larger.”
“What did he retrieve?”
“That I will tell you after the convening.”
My jaw tightens.
“If Syrenne discovers I gave you intelligence before the other courts received it, she has grounds to invalidate the alliance. Fae law is exact.”
“You’re asking me to walk into the convening without full information.”
“I am asking you to trust that what I tell the courts, under protocols that make deception impossible, will carry more weight than a private briefing in a stone room.”
He’s right. I don’t like it. But he’s right.
The silence fills the room, and no one rushes to end it.
“My granddaughter,” he says.
His voice changes on the word. Lower. His chin drops a fraction. The smallest crack in the composure. Controlled. Brief. Private.
“She was six when you saved her. She is three hundred and six now. I have watched every year from this side of the Veil.”
His hands grip the table edge.
“I watched her refuse to let her mother heal the burn scar on her left wrist from the iron chains. She trained in combat magic until she could destroy anything that came for her. I watched her grow fury into a spine.”
“She calls me Uncle Max,” I say. “I have never corrected her.”
His eyes close for a single breath. When they open, the crack in his composure has widened.
“With time,” he says. “I could have torn the Veil open and walked through at any time.”
“I didn’t. Because every intelligence I had told me that revealing her connection to the Fae throne would make her a target for every faction in Thessivane that wants leverage over me.
Syrenne would have used her. Veyran would have tried to protect her and failed.
The courts would have turned my bloodline into a political instrument. ”
“You stayed away to keep her safe.”
“I stayed away because safety required my absence.”
His fingers close. Open.
“And it is the choice I am least proud of.”
I let it stand.
I think about the ring. My father’s ring, on Konstantin’s finger. The cost of what you carry and what gets taken from you.
Lanthar chose to set his down. I had mine stolen. The loss is different. The absence is the same.
“She will meet you at the convening,” I say. “On her terms.”
“I would expect nothing else.”
He stands. The chair releases him, flowing back to its original shape.
“Lord Maximus.”
He pauses at the edge of the table.
“You saved my granddaughter when her grandfather could not. That is the debt.”
The gold in the walls blazes. Full white. The table vibrates beneath my hands.
It is done.
The light fades. The room stills.
“Bring your bondmate,” Lanthar says. “Bring my granddaughter. The courts convene at the turning of the stone. You have three risings to prepare.”
He walks through a passage that opens at his approach and seals behind him.
I’m alone in the deep chamber.
The shadows under my skin are quiet.
I stand. The chair recedes into the floor.
I crossed that square without understanding why. A Fae king just told me he was watching. That the barrier he built held against him while she was chained to a pyre. In a room where lying is impossible.
I follow the corridor up. The bond thickens with every step, presence returning in inches, until by the time I reach the chamber threshold she is full against my chest again.
The wall opens as I near it. She’s already standing. I cross to her. I don’t slow down.
Her hands come up and she takes my face between them, her thumbs at my cheekbones, and her eyes find mine.
I bring my forehead to hers.
“Whatever it is,” she says quietly, “you don’t have to carry it tonight.”
She turns her head a fraction, presses her cheek to mine.
The convening can wait.
I lower my mouth to hers.
She rises into the kiss without hesitation, the way she meets everything else.
When she breaks it, her hands move from my face to my chest. Pressed over the mark. The crescent pulses against her palm.