Chapter 29
KAELERON
The flames dancing on the logs in the grate shifted as the door of our private drawing room opened and my sister stepped inside.
They guttered and then rebounded, rising higher, reaching towards the chimney.
I rotated the amber liquid in my glass, keeping my gaze on the fire as I sat in the same armchair I had occupied that night Saphira had first set foot in this room.
Here was where I had branded my little wolf without her consent, giving her my bond to protect her, to ensure she would always be safe and I would always be there for her.
But I was not there for her, and while the pieces of my plan were slowly falling into place to make this court her home—a safe and happy home for my love—and to carve out that future I wanted with her, I struggled with the darkness that writhed inside me, whispering a thousand tormenting doubts in my mind.
Why had she looked so tired?
And why had her damned hair been half the length it used to be?
“Three, Kael. Really? Three? The courtyard is starting to look like… I do not know… a butcher’s shop.
” Jenavyr planted her hands on her hips, her fingers tightening against the black leather of her trousers, pulling it even more taut across her stomach.
She huffed. “Three. Three of them. You swore you were done.”
I swirled my liquor and then sipped it. “I was done. Then I was not done. Others might yet join them.”
Her mood only darkened upon hearing that, shadows snapping restlessly at the floor around her feet, lunging for me as if she wanted to attack me.
I arched a brow at them.
“Temper,” I murmured in warning.
“Temper? I think I have a right to lose my temper when there is a male… or at least pieces of a male… strung by his entrails across the courtyard. I do not need to witness that every time I go to train the recruits.”
I swigged my drink again and slid my gaze to her. “Go the other way around the castle then.”
Her lips flattened.
She looked as if she might snap fangs at me again, but then her dark eyebrows knitted and her gaze catalogued my appearance and the half-empty crystal decanter resting in my lap.
Instead of biting my head off, she pulled the other armchair closer to me and sat with me.
“How are you doing?” Her voice was soft, warm, and very coaxing. So was the look she gave me as she reached a hand towards me and placed it over mine on the arm of my chair. “I know seeing Saphi again must have been a shock for you.”
A brittle laugh escaped me.
I did not take my eyes off the fire or my mind off my beautiful little wolf as I admitted, “Shock seems like an understatement. It was… It was shocking to see her there, when I was least expecting it, and it was hard not to teleport to her and just take her. I wanted to take her back with me.”
“I know. I know how hard this has been on you, brother.” She smiled softly when I finally dragged my gaze from the fire to settle it on her, sure I looked as weary as I felt.
Tired down to my bones tonight.
As if my soul was breaking under the weight of it all.
No longer able to stand up against the pressing heaviness of the things I had done.
“You know only what I let you see.” I hid nothing from her when I uttered those words, too close to the edge of breaking to conceal my feelings. The guilt. The sorrow. The pain. I let her see it all as I said, “You have only ever known what I allowed you to see.”
Her eyebrows dipped low, but her tone remained gentle. “What do you mean by that? Is it the drink talking?”
I subtly shook my head. “No, it is not the drink. The only thing it is responsible for is finally loosening this tongue that has slowly been strangling the life from me.”
Her eyes narrowed and she angled her head. “You seem drunk to me.”
“Not drunk.” I lowered my glass and slipped my hand from beneath hers as I tilted my head back into the rear of my armchair and lifted it to pinch the bridge of my nose as my eyes closed. “Just tired of it all. Tired from everything that has happened. Tired of keeping things from you.”
I loosed a long sigh as I opened my eyes and looked at her.
She shrugged. “You are king, and the things you must deal with at times… I am glad I do not know everything.”
I looked her in the eye as I let the words fall from my lips. “Even if the things you do not know… the things I keep from you… relate to the night we lost our parents and brother?”
She went very still now. Watching me carefully. Her tone cautious, but sharp as she said, “What do you mean by that? What have you not told me about that night?”
I stood, bringing the decanter with me, and pressed my glass into her hand and refilled it, sure she would need the drink and unable to keep still if I was really going to do this. Something had to break, and I felt it would either be me or this silence I had bound myself to since that night.
I took another glass and filled it with the remains of the liquor, and drank half of it in one go as I paced the room, fighting to find the words, sure she would be furious with me.
I needed the closure though.
I needed to move past that night that had haunted me for five centuries.
Not to gain her forgiveness, because I was certain she would not give it, but to perhaps learn to forgive myself.
She deserved to know.
I owed it to her.
Saphira had made me see that. Holding this back from Jenavyr, shoving it down deep inside me where it had festered and rotted all that was good in me, had led me down as dark a path as my vengeance had.
“That night…” I started and faltered, trailing off as fear closed my throat and I had to swig the sweet and faintly spiced drink to steel my nerves.
I paced back and forth another two times, agitated strides that my sister tracked in silence, not touching her drink.
I cleared my throat. “That night when they came… when the seelie came to… to the palace.”
My voice died again, the words clogging in my throat as the dampness in her eyes tore at me, and I found I could not do it.
I could not put her through the pain of knowing.
I could not risk losing her.
I had done everything to keep her with me, a desperate fool afraid of being left alone in this world, without any light to guide me.
Without another soul to love me.
Something within me cracked open at the thought she might leave me, that she might look at me with hatred burning in her eyes as I deserved, and leave me.
“Kael,” she whispered and pushed to her feet, taking a step towards me.
I shook my head and held my hand up, halting her as I swallowed hard.
“I can…” I blew out my breath. “Just… Do not… I can do this.”
I wanted to beg her not to leave me. I wanted to beg her to swear she would still love me when she knew how I had failed her.
How I had failed them all.
She could not leave me.
I needed her now more than ever.
Dread pooled in my chest, seeping into the fissure that had opened in my heart, chilling it until I felt sure it might stop if she left me, if she looked upon me with scorn and spat the vile words I deserved to hear at me.
But this weight was too much now.
I had been carrying it alone for centuries before Saphira had torn a confession from me, finding me in that dreadful state when she had roused me from a nightmare, and I had expected the weight to lift then, but it had only seemed to grow heavier. And heavier. Faster than before.
Because Saphira was not the one who should have heard that confession.
My sister was.
My darling, beautiful sister.
“That night—” My voice broke, failing me, but I refused to let this cloying fear win. Not this time. “That night I was there.”
“We were both there,” she said.
“I was there.” I emphasised that word, willing her to know what I meant by it so I did not need to say more, but she just stared at me, a confused crinkle forming between her brows, and perhaps this was what I deserved for failing to tell her, for holding it back from her for so long.
I deserved to be put through the pain again, to relive it and my shame, my guilt, by having to say it all.
I drained the rest of my glass. “I was in the room with Mother when they came. She… knew they were coming… and she… she gripped my hands and she told me… she told me I was to hide.”
Tears filled Vyr’s tender eyes, the pain that shone in them in danger of breaking me.
“I… Great Mother… I… hid. I hid and I watched… I watched as the seelie came. I watched as she fought them. I watched as she silently told me to stay hidden. I watched as they… as they… slit her throat.” I swallowed hard, my throat so dry I was not sure how I could speak.
“I watched as she… died. I watched and I did nothing. Goddess, I am sorry, Vyr. I did nothing to stop it. I hid there… a snivelling pathetic boy, watching them murder our parents… hearing our brother’s screams. I hid there and did nothing. ”
She had gone so very quiet.
I blinked away my own tears as hers chased down her pale cheeks, and looked at the decanter in my hand, lifting it and draining every last drop of the thimbleful remaining in it.
“I did as she wanted… I hid… I lived… I was too afraid to help her when she fought for her life. I hid. When he slit her throat. I hid. When I heard our brother being dragged away. I hid. I watched her die, and I hid. I did nothing.” I hurled the decanter at the wall, hating how she flinched and how it did nothing to alleviate this rage burning inside me, this grief and this pain, and this terrible fear that any moment now she would come to her senses.
She would have realised what I had done.
How I had failed them all.
Failed her.
And she would leave.
I braced for impact when she finally blinked and looked at me, as if roused by my lashing out.
“How could you?” she whispered, her voice hoarse, as broken as I felt inside as I waited for her anger, for the fury I deserved.