Chapter 14 #2
“You’re asking me to give up my wand?” Her voice lowered with disbelief. “That’s not happening.”
Ellisar’s face remained carved in stone. “I’m asking for Tanyl’s.”
Imani lost the rhythm and stumbled, and Ellisar caught her against his chest. The refusal died on her tongue as understanding clicked into place.
“Tanyl’s,” she repeated.
“Yes.”
The turn carried them apart, giving her a moment to let the pieces fall into place. Tanyl’s Drasil. Ellisar wanted leverage over the impostor king.
Tanyl already possessed Essenheim’s throne, its court, and the armies that still answered to the crown.
None of those things explained why he had acquired a second Drasil from a power outside the Mesial Realm.
If maintaining his kingship were his only objective, he had already secured nearly everything he needed.
The additional power pointed somewhere beyond the throne.
Her breath hitched.
“That’s what he’s been doing,” she muttered as the truth locked into place. “Tanyl has been busy readying himself for a power far greater than the Essenheim king.”
“And you’ve just made yourself central to that position,” Ellisar replied.
The music slowed, drawing them into the final sequence. The distance between them vanished until her breath brushed his collar. Imani didn’t pull back. She studied the severe lines of his face and the absolute lack of hesitation in his expression.
His demand suddenly made brutal sense. Taking Tanyl’s Drasil could change the balance of the realm.
“You expect me to take it from him.” A reluctant respect edged her response.
“Yes, and I expect you to understand why it’s necessary.”
The music ended. A final step pushed them apart, and the physical space returned while the invisible tension held fast. Imani released him and wanted to fidget under his stare, though she gave him a practiced curtsy instead.
“Enjoy your celebration,” she murmured, then walked away before he could answer.
With each step, the weight of the new reality sank deeper into her bones.
The Drasil had become the axis around which the realm’s power turned.
Tanyl had been playing a grander game all along, several steps ahead of her.
Ellisar had already seen the board for what it was.
And now, so did she.
* * *
Lantern light stretched in steady, golden lines across the stone walls, replacing the evening’s frantic rhythm with something measured and watchful as Imani slipped away from the celebration’s noise.
She skulked along the room’s outer edges until she reached the palace’s quiet corridors.
The music dulled to a distant thrum, voices fading into indistinguishable murmurs as the space closed in around her.
She pushed open the door to her room and stopped mid-step. The air in the chamber was suffocating, heavy with an intruder’s presence. Sniffing, she recognized the scent of smoke and bergamot.
Kiran was already inside.
Her heartmate stood in the dim light as if the room itself bent to his gravity.
Where someone like Ellisar commanded a space through icy restraint, Kiran consumed it.
He was put together yet fraying at the edges—dark hair tousled by restless hands, his shirt slightly untucked.
His mismatched eyes fixed on her the moment she crossed the threshold.
Between his fingers, his wand twirled in a ceaseless, agitated rhythm, betraying the tension he made no effort to hide.
He didn’t have to hold himself still to be intimidating; his sheer, restless energy pressed against the walls, impossible to ignore.
She understood enough to guess how he had managed to thwart Ellisar’s security. The walls had not failed, and neither had the wards, so Kiran must have gone around both.
He was too intelligent to keep testing a fortress once he understood brute force would expose him.
Imani could imagine him watching Vathis from a distance over the past several days, learning which gates handled military traffic, which uniforms belonged to messengers, and how people moved through the High Sentinel’s estate without attracting attention.
She could not know how long he had studied it, only that appearing inside her bedroom required more than luck.
Tonight would have given him the opening.
The sea battle had sent soldiers, officers, wounded men, dispatch riders, and messengers through the city in uneven waves.
Then the celebration had opened the estate to an even larger stream of nobles, military guests, servants, musicians, deliveries, and staff moving between rooms. Too many legitimate people were coming and going for every unfamiliar face to become an immediate threat.
Kiran could have stolen a uniform or copied a seal. Flesh magic could have supplied whatever face the guards expected beneath it. By the time anyone thought to question a messenger carrying news from the coast or a servant moving through a crowded estate, he would already have passed them.
Whatever method he had chosen, Imani doubted he had broken Ellisar’s security. No, he had persuaded it that he belonged there.
Brilliant, manipulative bastard, she thought.
Imani reached for her wand as the atmosphere turned instantly volatile before a word was even spoken. She pointed it at him, her lip curled in distaste.
“You made a deal with Tanyl,” she said. Her voice was quiet, but it carried enough edge to slice through whatever defense he was preparing.