Chapter 12 #2
Avaristo leaned in, golden eyes gleaming with indulgent menace. “I regret the necessity of it all, truly. But the accusations were severe. Consorting with Lycans. Conspiring with insurgents. My hands were tied.” He spread them, mock innocence curling his lips. “I had no choice but to act.”
A tremor ran through the council: murmurs, outrage, the clatter of a goblet knocked too hard.
“Lies!”
“You had no right—”
“She is a Dragov!”
Stephan’s vision blurred at the edges. His nails gouged the wood beneath his hands.
And Avaristo? He sipped slowly, watching them unravel like theater.
“This farce ends now,” Raphael said, his voice cutting through the noise.
Avaristo lifted a brow, amused.
“You will release her,” Raphael continued. “If any crime is to be judged, it will be by our council, not yours. If you refuse,” his voice dipped cold, “then you will answer for it.”
The chamber froze.
Avaristo’s smile faltered. Not much, but enough. After a pause, he exhaled slowly.
“Your army is formidable,” he mused. “And I do so hate unnecessary bloodshed.” He leaned back, feigning diplomacy. “Perhaps you're right. Perhaps the Princess should be given the benefit of the doubt.”
Stephan didn’t breathe.
But Avaristo’s voice darkened. “She is, after all…young. And youth makes mistakes.”
Every muscle in Stephan’s body locked.
Avaristo continued, generous in his cruelty. “As a gesture of goodwill, I will release her, provided her father ensures she is…properly disciplined.”
A subtle flicker crossed Yori’s features, deadly as his lightly steepled hands pressed tighter.
Stephan surged forward; wood cracked beneath his grip as his chair scraped violently against stone. The screech echoed, sharp as a blade drawn. Before he could speak, Yori did.
“We will send an official envoy to retrieve her immediately,” he said. “Commander Toren Saverius will oversee the handover. A medical expert will accompany them to assess her condition.”
The command was absolute. Avaristo’s expression twitched. He clutched his chest in mock offense.
“A doctor?” he echoed. “My dear King, you wound me. You’d suggest I’ve treated your daughter with anything less than the utmost…care?”
Stephan felt Adrian’s firm hand clamp onto his forearm, grounding. Don’t rise to it. But rage coursed too deep. Eris was suffering while they played politics. And he couldn’t breathe under the weight of it.
His wrist-comm pulsed. A message. But he did not look. His eyes stayed fixed on the man through the orb.
Avaristo, smirking.
“Very well,” the tyrant said. “Send your envoy. But do be swift.” His smile widened, mocking and final. “After all…we wouldn’t want her getting too comfortable.”
The connection severed.
Silence crashed down like ash. Stephan sat frozen, hands trembling as Avaristo’s venom lingered—mockery, sharpened like a blade.
Raphael was the first to speak. His resolute voice cut through the quiet like a war horn.
“This council is dismissed.” It was not surrender.
It was a declaration. “Our family will return to the High Estate to receive Princess Eris. But let there be no mistake: this is not finished.” His gaze swept the assembled Firstbloods, eyes burning with cold fire.
“We have been dishonored. One of our own, of royal blood, was taken. Humiliated. Held by those who believe they can defy us without consequence.” He leaned forward.
“That belief is a mistake.” A charged stillness followed.
The chamber bristled with restrained fury.
“We are Dragov,” he finished, his voice lethal.
“We do not forget. And we do not leave insult unanswered. Go to your homes. Rest. Tomorrow, we reconvene, and together, we remind Avaristo Rimashenko why the Dragov name endures.”
The sconces glinted off Raphael’s silver-streaked hair as he rose. A murmur of assent moved through the chamber as one by one, the council departed, slipping into shadow through the great obsidian doors.
As the last Firstblood exited, the chamber grew quiet. It was not peace, but something rawer.
Raphael turned. Yori stood alone at the table, his fingers still pressed against the polished wood. Head bowed. Shoulders taut. It was his hands that betrayed him; they trembled.
Raphael stepped closer, a steadying palm to his brother’s shoulder. “She will be home soon,” he said softly.
Yori exhaled, unsteady. “They took my daughter, Raphael. And I was not there.”
“She is coming back.”
Yori’s jaw flexed. His dark eyes lifted, haunted. “What if they hurt her?”
Raphael paused. Then his voice came, steady and final. “Then we make them pay.”
Yori nodded slowly. The Dragov mask returned to his face. But behind the king, the father still lingered in his eyes.
Across the table, Stephan inhaled, but it didn’t help.
She’s coming home.
The words echoed without comfort. Would she walk? Speak? Recognize him? His fingers twitched, but no answer came.
Then Cassiel’s hand settled on his shoulder. “It’s done,” he said, though he didn’t sound convinced.
Stephan nodded, hollow.
Adrian exhaled hard, dragging a hand down his face. “I still don’t trust that bastard.” His voice was clipped, controlled fury beneath every word. “He gave in too easily. We should be ready.”
“We will be,” Theon replied, arms folded tight. His stance was carved tension, every muscle braced for a second blow.
Stephan raked a hand through his hair, then both, desperate for relief but finding none. He was waiting, and it was agony.
“Stephan.” Adrian’s voice sliced through the haze.
Stephan blinked up as a soft LED pulse glowed against his wrist. The comm was unread.
“It’s been buzzing since the call,” Adrian said.
Stephan didn’t move. “It can wait.”
Cassiel frowned. “You sure?”
Theon exhaled. “Check it.”
He didn’t want to. Not now. But their eyes held something tense, expectant, so he tapped the device, and a low chime sounded as the screen activated. A projection flickered to life, and a memory began to play.
The kings stood a few paces behind Stephan, mid-conversation, their grief shaped in low, measured tones. As the image stabilized, they turned in unison, drawn by the flicker. The moment the memory played in full, the world began to shatter.
A smirk formed on the screen, sharp as a blade.
“Greetings, Stephan.” Rurik Rimashenko’s voice oozed silk-wrapped malice as his face shimmered into view, light catching the cruel twist of his mouth and the predator’s gleam in his eye.
“Remember yesterday,” he drawled, “when you said I’d never touch what wasn’t mine?” He paused, then tilted his head slowly, dragging the moment out like a blade across skin. “Well, check this out.”
The projection widened and twisted, blooming like a wound. A noose tightening around their throats.
And there she was: Eris. Pinned to the wall, her body bent at a grotesque angle, back arched in protest, arm trapped in Rurik’s brutal grip.
Her breath came in shallow bursts, fractured by pain.
Her lip was split, blood smearing her mouth like a curse.
Her hair hung tangled and wild, falling in loose waves over a face streaked with tears.
But her eyes, gods, her eyes, were fire and fear, rage and resistance burning behind glassy desperation.
She trembled.
“Isn’t she gorgeous?” he murmured, mockingly.
Eris jerked her face away. “Don’t do this. Please.”
Her voice shook.
Rurik laughed, pleased with himself. “Sorry, Stephan. Gotta put this away now. You understand.”
With that final taunt, the projection faded.
Across Goznoth, behind war tables and thrones, the Dragovs watched, powerless. Stephan’s vision tunneled. His mind raced into the black space after the recording. He didn’t know what came next, but his imagination filled the silence, and it hollowed him.
For a breathless moment, no one moved.
Stephan, his lieutenants, the kings behind him, all remained locked in place, stunned. They were caught in the stillness that followed unspeakable violence.
Then Stephan moved.
His chair scraped hard against stone as he rose, fists braced on the table and breath torn from his lungs. He stood shaking, barely breathing.
“I’ll kill him.”
He lunged. No thought. No restraint. Just rage, grief, instinct.
The kind that comes when everything you love is touched and torn.
Adrian caught him first, arms locking across his chest. Theon stepped in fast, blocking his path with the full weight of his body.
Cassiel flanked his other side, anchoring him.
“Let me go—” Stephan’s voice cracked, the edges raw, splintered. “LET ME GO!”
He was not shouting at them. He was shouting at the failure, at the memory now seared into him.
“He touched her,” he choked. “He touched her. And we watched.”
Adrian’s grip tightened. “You’re not wrong. But this… This isn’t how we win.”
“This isn’t justice,” Theon snapped. “This is vengeance. And it’s exactly what he wants.”
Cassiel’s voice was rough and low. “Eris wouldn’t want to lose you to this.”
It took all three to hold him. Not just his body, but his breaking. And when he finally stilled, it wasn’t calm. It was collapse. He slumped forward, fists shaking, eyes burning into the ghost of the projection.
Behind him, Yori Dragov sank into his throne as if the centuries had finally caught him.
This was desperation rendered in flesh and bone.
His fingers clenched the armrests, white-knuckled, while the rest of him sagged beneath the weight of absence and failure.
Raphael had never seen his brother like this, not as a king, but as a father, undone.
When he spoke, his voice was more breath than sound. “My Eris… I never thought I would live to see this.”
Raphael didn’t flinch. “Get up.”
Yori remained still, head bowed, breath unsteady. “She is my child,” he whispered. “And I was not there.”
“Enough. Both of you.” Raphael’s voice cut clean through the chamber, sharp and certain, eyes shifting between his brother and his son.
Yori looked up, hollow-eyed and shattered. Stephan didn’t move. He just stared down at the marble floor as if it could give him answers.
But Raphael didn’t soften. “She is not porcelain. She does not break. She is Dragov. She knows pain and she knows how to rise.” The silence that followed pulsed with heat and fury not yet loosed, then Raphael’s voice dropped cold and final. “Do not insult her with your weakness.”
Yori inhaled, slowly. His shoulders squared, though tremors still ran beneath his skin. Then, like a man pulled from deep water, he rose, despite the grief lining his face.
“You are correct,” he said. “Let us go receive my little girl.”
Raphael turned to Stephan and placed a hand on his shoulder. Not to restrain, but to anchor.
Stephan flinched. Only now did he realize he had drawn blood from his own palms.
Raphael’s voice rang through the chamber like law. “To the High Estate.”
“To bring her home.”
And this time, they moved like men who would not fail her again.