CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Iflicked a piece of steamed rice with my fork, pushing it through the glossy sauce until it vanished under the swirl of black.
Xylos, centuries later, still sat in a cage.
It was beyond cruelty.
I could not fathom how all of these people could sit here and fork their beans while a man rotted beneath their feet as though his suffering had become part of the architecture.
A sour taste coated my tongue. I would never be able to live with myself knowing I could have helped an innocent and failed to act.
My chest tightened with a heat that burned too fast and I stabbed a forkful of black beans with more force than necessary. The scrape of metal against obsidian shrieked into the cavernous hall, but not a single head turned.
The table stretched endlessly, a slab of igneous rock polished to a black sheen. Around it, the Veythar sat in their positions of power. Their gazes slid away from me, lingering instead on the wall carvings, the glowing veins of fungi overhead, or the untouched food on their plates.
Anywhere but my face.
The silence lingered, heavy enough that I became acutely aware of my own breathing.
Talon placed his fork down with care, the soft clink echoing unnaturally loud in the quiet. His jaw worked slowly before his eyes lifted, the molten depths fixed entirely on me.
Even the lumengems seemed to dim in his gaze.
“Little flame,” he rumbled. “Is something wrong with the food?”
“No, Master,” I said, drawing the title out. “The food is fine.”
His jaw clenched, the muscles corded and tight beneath his skin. “Your tone suggests otherwise, Kaelia. You sit at a table of power. Please be mindful of the respect this hall demands.”
My temper flared, but beneath it, hurt and the quiet sting of betrayal twisted.
“And what have I earned from this table? Other than half-truths and silence?”
Across the table, Eladaria’s expression shifted, a flicker of surprise breaking her stoic mask and Bater’s massive shoulders stiffened. The Shadow Forgers beside Talon did not move an inch, perfect statues of black stone.
Talon’s lips thinned. “You push the boundaries of your place, little flame. Be mindful.”
I slammed my palm against the table, the impact rattling plates and sending a thunderclap ricocheting off the vaulted ceiling. “How can you tell me this bond is sacred, that your people will protect it, when Xylos remains in the Thrynn chambers?”
Silence collapsed over the hall. Not even the hum of the lumengems stirred.
For the first time, Talon faltered. Surprise cracked his perfect composure before his expression hardened, his eyes solidifying into molten stone.
I leaned forward, dragging each word like a blade across the stillness. “His own kind tortures him for a bond forged two centuries ago. Two centuries, Talon.”
“Do not speak of things you do not understand.”
Maybe I did not understand the ancient politics or the weight of the pact, but I understood enough to know cruelty when it stared me in the face.
Xylos and Thora’s bond was recorded as a Lunthra, but I knew that two beings did not gravitate toward each other with that kind of magnetic intensity unless something ancient and unbreakable pulled them close.
It was precisely the same way a Veythar gained nothing by forging a bond with a meager human.
“How could I understand?” I declared, throwing my hands wide. “When you have yet to explain anything to me?”
The room no longer belonged to the Veythar, it belonged to the tension between us, to the wildfire burning through my chest.
His voice cleaved through the silence. “Leave.”
The command was not for me. It was for everyone else.
Chairs scraped back reluctantly. Eladaria rose first, her composure fraying in the smallest tremor of her hand as she pushed her chair away. As she passed, her eyes caught mine, soft with sympathy, before she lowered her gaze and disappeared through the archway.
Bater stood next. His skin, already pale, drained further when Talon’s eyes cut toward him in warning. He left quickly, his bulk swallowed by shadow.
Neya lingered, her eyes shimmering with unshed tears. A single one slipped down her cheek as she looked at me and her head shook in a small, almost invisible warning, before she turned and followed the others into the corridor.
The Shadow Forgers dissolved into the dark as though they had never been there.
And then it was only Talon and I.
Talon pushed his chair back, the sound cutting through the empty chamber. He did not rise. His tattooed hands stayed clenched on his thighs, the tendons standing out—the only sign that he was not as calm as his expression led me to believe.
“Stand, Kaelia.”
For a heartbeat I wanted to snap, to refuse, to hurl every plate on the table at his broad, infuriating chest. But the room belonged to him. The territory, the silence, the walls, were all shaped in his shadow. Fighting here would be like striking granite with bare knuckles.
So I stood, my movements stiff.
He lifted one finger. A silent come here. The arrogance of it burned under my skin, but my feet moved anyway, carrying me around the long table until I stood before him. He watched me like he was reading every flicker of rebellion in my muscles.
Then he tipped his chin up, just barely. “Get on your knees.”
My body froze, heat and cold colliding in my veins all at once, and my palms broke into a clammy sweat. “Pardon me?”
“You disrespected me before my kin,” he said. “You challenged my authority and misrepresented truths you do not possess. You cornered me in my own hall. I will not look up to you while you stand in defiance. Get on your knees.”
The humiliation hit like a crack of lightning, scorching and hot, but beneath the sting lived something far more dangerous—pain.
I did not want to be at war with him, and I did not want to feel small in front of the man whose presence had made me feel chosen.
My hands curled into fists so tight my nails bit crescents into my palms. His eyes remained locked onto mine, unflinching and absolute.
I lowered myself, my knees hitting the cold stone with a dull thud. The chill rushed up through my skin and the shame followed.
I stared at the floor, focusing on the grain of the obsidian, because looking up at him now would either cause me to cry or shout.
“That is better,” he murmured. “You forget who you speak to, little flame. I may be your Solea, but this is my city.”
The flush across my cheeks deepened until it felt unbearable. My throat tightened and my body trembled, but I stayed still.
“I respect you but I do not need to respect your choices.”
“You have made that publicly obvious. Do you wish to make me look a fool?”
My head snapped up. “No. But, perhaps, if you trusted me, I would not be the fool myself.”
“What would you like to know, Kaelia?”
“Everything.”
A muscle feathered in his cheek. “You do not need to cause a scene to get your way with me.”
I scowled. “If I asked you, would you have told me?”
“Yes.”
“You would have admitted to keeping an innocent man locked in a cell?” I countered.
“That is not how this goes.”
“Then tell me how it goes,” I pleaded.
I shifted closer without thinking, until my chest brushed the hard line of his knee.
Talon sighed, his hand coming up to rest at the nape of my neck.
“Xylos’s father,” Talon began, his voice growing darker with each syllable, “led the Umbral before I, and many centuries ago, he allied himself with the High Court in a way that compromised life in both realms.”
“And he was not good?”
“He was not good,” he confirmed. “When Xylos bonded with Thora, his father saw it as a direct violation of the order he had worked so carefully to preserve. He believed mortals and Veythar should never mix. That our worlds must remain separate.”
My stomach twisted. “So he locked his own son away for it?”
“He surrendered him,” Talon corrected. “Offered him to the High Court as proof that even his own blood would not be spared for breaking the law.”
I stared at him. “What kind of monster could condemn his child to that?”
“A man who valued power more than blood,” Talon replied. “The High Court agreed. They turned it into a spectacle—declared the bond an abomination and used Xylos as the example that would seal the law into place.”
“And he is still here?”
“Yes,” Talon said softly. “Because as long as he remains in that cell, the reason for the law remains standing with him.”
He exhaled slowly.
“The High Court told the human kingdoms it was proof that the Veythar despised their kind enough to imprison one of our own. A grand display of our supposed cruelty.”
His mouth curved without humor. “It served their narrative very well.”
A quiet anger crept into his voice as he continued.
“But Xylos’s existence threatens them. It proves something they cannot afford to admit.”
“What?” I asked.
“That the Sayel bond can exist between species. And if that truth were accepted, then the foundation of their law—and the lie they have fed Haelen for generations—would collapse.”
I frowned. “We cannot leave him down there.”
“It is not as simple as that, little flame.”
“What if that was me down there? Alone in a dark cell?” Talon’s eyes darkened to the color of a midnight sea. “Do not give me that look. I almost ended up in his position, Talon.”
His voice dropped to a dangerous, protective register. “I would have never let you enter those chambers. I would have burnt the High Court to ash before I let them touch a single hair on your head.”
“You are not seeing the point, Talon!” I cried out, the frustration boiling over into a sob. “It does not matter who it is—it is the fact that you allow it! You have to help him. You cannot let him rot while we sit here in luxury.”
“Kaelia,” he said, shaking his head. “To free him is to ignite a war.”
“Then ignite it. If your people claim to be protectors of our bond, then prove it. Do something. Do anything.”