22. The Necessary Evil #6
Because if Melodie stayed, and when the world knew what she could do, they would come for her.
Hundreds. Thousands. Desperate nobles, ambitious kings, and scheming houses would descend in numbers too large to count, hunting her as if she were prey.
Malec would destroy himself trying to protect her, burning through every enemy in his path until nothing remained but war.
He would give his life without hesitation, and Surin would lose his son to the same obsession that threatened to set kingdoms ablaze.
There was no turning back.
But gods, it hurt.
Malec shifted on the settee, helping Melodie sit up beside him. His eyes never left Surin's face, reading the tension there with the instincts of a warrior trained to spot danger.
"What is it?" Malec asked again, his tone intensified. "What's happened?"
Surin stepped forward slowly, each movement deliberate. He saw not the commander, not the infamous Silver Fox, but the boy he had raised. The soldier he had trained. The son who had carried the family name on his back without complaint.
And the soul undone by love.
His throat constricted. He laid both hands gently, almost reverently, on Malec's broad shoulders.
Malec frowned, confusion sparking in his eyes. "Father?"
Surin's voice broke as he slipped into the old tongue, the language of their ancestors, the words reserved for the most sacred and terrible of vows.
"Va'hayel ith ni vorrin." Forgive me, my son.
Malec's body went rigid. His eyes widened, the confusion crystallizing into alarm. "What?—?"
But the question never finished.
Surin's hand rose in a swift, precise movement, his fingers pressing hard to the center of Malec's brow. The strike was silent, surgical—an art as old as their people, passed down through generations of warriors who needed to subdue without killing.
A faint pulse of silver light rippled outward from the point of contact, spreading across Malec's skin like frost creeping over glass.
Then it vanished, absorbed into his body.
Malec's eyes rolled back, his body going limp instantly.
He crumpled without a sound, collapsing like a star falling from the sky.
Surin caught his weight, the full mass of his son heavy and helpless in his arms. Tears stung his vision, blurring the sight of platinum hair spilling across his chest. His hands trembled, betraying the resolve he clung to with everything he had left.
"I'm sorry," Surin whispered, his voice raw and broken. "I am so damn sorry."
He lowered Malec carefully onto the large bed, cradling his head as though he were still the small boy who used to fall asleep during history lessons. He brushed back a strand of hair with shaking fingers, the small, fatherly gesture utterly inadequate for what he had just done.
It did not make up for this betrayal.
It never would.
Behind him, Melodie had gone deadly still. The kind of stillness that came before a storm.
Then she moved.
"What did you do?" Her voice was barely a whisper, strangled with disbelief. "What did you DO?"
Surin didn't turn. Couldn't. If he looked at her face, saw the devastation there, he might break. Might stop. And he couldn't stop. Not now.
"MALEC!" Melodie's scream tore through the chamber, raw and piercing. She lunged forward, scrambling off the settee and dropping to her knees beside him. Her hands flew to his face, his chest, searching for breath, a heartbeat, any sign that he was still there. "Malec, wake up! Wake up, please?—"
His chest rose and fell. Slow. Steady. Alive.
But he didn't wake.
"What did you do to him?!" She whipped her head toward Surin, her dark eyes blazing with fury and terror. "FIX IT! Whatever you did, FIX IT!"
Surin finally turned to face her, his expression set in the hard stillness of carved stone. Only his eyes gave him away, red around the edges and shining with a haunted grief he could no longer fully hide. "I can't," he said quietly.
"You CAN'T?" Melodie's voice cracked, disbelief and rage warring in her tone. "You did this! You—" She choked on the words, her hands still clutching Malec's face. "He's your SON! How could you?—"
"To save him," Surin said, and the words came out like a confession torn from his chest. "To save you both."
"SAVE US?" Melodie screamed, and the sound was pure anguish.
"You just—he was HAPPY! We were—" Her voice broke entirely.
Tears streamed down her face as she pressed her forehead to Malec's, her hands cradling him like she could pull him back through sheer will.
"Please wake up. Please. Please don't leave me! "
Surin's throat closed. He turned away from the sight of her grief, from the image of his son lying unconscious while his Vash’telor begged him to come back.
Stealing himself, Surin crossed the room and reached the door.
His hand closed around the handle, and for one suspended heartbeat he hesitated, the thought of calling it all off rising like a final temptation.
He could protect his son’s happiness and endure whatever ruin followed.
The idea lingered only a moment before duty crushed it.
Instead Surin pushed the door open.
And Melodie's screams followed him into the hall as soldiers flooded in behind him, as King Kael stepped through the threshold and froze at the sight of her collapsed over Malec's unconscious form.
The Western King's expression twisted with genuine distress, his features hardening as her anguished cries filled the chamber.
The rescue he'd envisioned had looked nothing like this bitter reality.
But the door swung shut behind them with brutal finality, and the last thing anyone heard before the lock clicked into place was Melodie's voice breaking on Malec's name.