21. Foundations #6
Cries of outrage and desperation shattered the fragile stillness.
Nobles scrambled from their seats, shouting over each other.
Some demanded proof of legality, others begged for clarity, still others screeched for protection from what they'd just witnessed.
Papers fluttered to the floor. Goblets crashed.
A chair toppled backward as its occupant lunged toward Surion's seat.
Servants tried to flee the noise but found the doors blocked by guards who had no orders to let anyone leave.
"This is tyranny!"
"He threatened the council with death!"
"We were coerced! The contract is void!"
"Someone contact the Western delegations?—"
"He's making her nobility! A Canariae!"
"What does this mean for succession?!"
"The child—what about the child?!"
The storm Malec left in his wake consumed the room whole. Advisors argued with nobles. Nobles screamed at guards. Guards looked to Surion for orders that never came.
And at the center of it all stood Surion.
His hands flailed as he tried to calm the chaos, raising his voice to shout commands, to restore order, but the nobles were no longer listening. They argued around him, over him, through him. His voice broke against the swell of noise like waves against stone.
The King of Ulvareth had already lost control.
He sank back into his chair, pressing the heels of his palms into his temples, his face pale and drawn. He had been humiliated in his own court, his cousin seizing power through fear—and fear always commanded better than crowns.
Across the table, Surin remained perfectly still. His face betrayed nothing. One long finger circled the rim of his goblet in measured rhythm, as though the chaos in the room had no weight at all.
Then Surion's voice slid into his mind, carried clean through the ancient thread of their shared blood-bond. It was old, private, familiar—the kind of tether that could bypass lies and strip words down to truth.
"So. It's come to this."
Surin's mental reply was cool, flat, dangerous. "It has."
"I didn't think he'd actually do it," Surion thought, his mental voice tight with frustration and barely concealed rage. "Threaten the entire council with execution? Force signatures at sword-point? This is madness. Go talk him down, Uncle. You're the only one he listens to."
Surin's finger continued its slow circle around the goblet's rim. His expression remained carved from stone. "And what would that accomplish? You know how deep his obsession runs. Try to separate them now, and we won't leave this city alive."
Surion's irritation flared. He snorted aloud before catching himself, earning a few odd glances from nearby nobles. He forced his face into neutrality as his thoughts bit like knives. "He always gets his way. Always. Just once—I want him to lose. To feel it. To know what it means to not win."
There was a long silence in their link. Heavy and loaded.
Then Surin's voice returned, darker now. "So this isn't about politics for you. You just want to punish my son."
Surion's eyes flicked across the table, landing on his uncle with thinly veiled bitterness.
"Yes. But also..." He paused, the thought coiled into calculation.
"Kael has already bought her. He said if I sold her to him, he'd give me the Western trade route and end the border wars.
He'd sign a treaty. It would solve everything. "
Surin didn't blink. Didn't shift. His face remained unreadable as stone.
But inside, the damage was done. A splinter tearing through the oldest part of him.
"You're going to do it, aren't you?"
It wasn't a question.
"We don't have a choice," Surion thought back, his mental voice hardening with resolve. "The kingdom is hemorrhaging resources. The border conflicts are bleeding us dry. Kael's offer is too valuable to refuse. She's one female. One Canariae. Against the survival of our entire nation."
Surin looked down into his goblet. The wine rippled faintly with the tremor of his finger, catching the candlelight like blood in water.
His thoughts, when they came, were quieter. Resigned.
"Yes. I know. And may Malec forgive me."
The decision had been made long before this meeting ever convened and long before the parchment was signed beneath the wary eyes of cowed nobles.
Surin had recognized it the day his son tore across the country in a frenzy of fire and blood, slaughtering informants, dragging nobles from their beds, and burning villages to ash in a rabid hunt for the runaway Canariae who had stolen his soul.
That was the moment Surin knew. If she remained, Malec would burn. And Surin would sooner be ended by Malec’s blade than watch his son be consumed by the flame he loved.
Now the kingdom trembled on the brink of war.
Foreign kings offered peace in exchange for her body, while Surion’s fragile reign hung by a thread that could snap at any moment.
With every other path closed, only betrayal remained.
Surin would send her away, spend her like political currency, and break his son’s heart if that was the price required to keep him alive.
Surin lifted the goblet to his lips and drank deeply, the wine bitter on his tongue.
Around him, the council chamber continued to burn with chaos and outrage.
But in the quiet space of his mind, the decision had already been made.