Chapter 2 Zeidan
ZEIDAN
The morning begins with blood on the snow.
Every training should look like this. The metal ring echoes around, steel on steel, sharp breaths, the hollow clatter of armor as bodies move in tandem.
My warriors circle like shadows, disciplined and silent, their blades carving patterns into the cold air.
I move among them without hesitation, parrying, striking, spinning. I am testing them.
I need them sharp. Every movement matters. Every flaw must be cut away.
I break from the last of them, breath fogging in the frostbitten dawn. The clouds above Velcryn churn, heavy with the storm that never comes. Always threatening, never falling. Just like the Council.
My second-in-command, Garrick, tosses me a cloth to wipe the sweat from my neck. “You’re pushing too hard.”
“I can still feel the slowness in my left arm,” I mutter. “That last blow should’ve slowed me more than it did.”
“You’re not a training dummy. You don’t need to prove anything to them.”
I don’t answer. Garrick knows better. Everything here is a test. Every word and every breath.
I was raised with blades and silence. My father trained me to endure first, to feel later, if at all.
A prince cannot afford softness in Velcryn.
Not when every courtier smiles like a predator and every toast tastes of politics.
Even now, I count steps when I walk into rooms. I measure pauses between greetings.
I weigh each glance like a dagger, waiting for the one that slips past my guard.
Garrick says I push too hard. What he doesn’t understand is that I can’t stop. The day I let myself breathe is the day they’ll sense it, that flicker of weakness. That slip. And here, weakness is a feast.
I’ve survived this long by being sharper than their plans and colder than their expectations.
Before I can return to the line, the wind shifts. Not the kind that carries scent or sound, but the deeper kind—the one laced with magic. A tremor skims the edge of my senses. Old. Foreign. Awfully familiar.
I turn toward the ridge just beyond the training ring.
Something is coming.
The Matron Council chambers loom like a throne of stone and bone, built from the remains of the ancient beasts that once ruled this land. The room is as cold as the high spires that pierce the sky above Velcryn.
Six Matrons sit in a crescent arc before me, draped in robes that shimmer like oil-slicks, beautiful, but predatory. High Matron Serida leans forward, her lips painted the color of bruised roses.
“She is coming,” she says. “A Purna emissary. Or something like it.”
“Amelia Crow,” I reply, already aware.
“You should turn her away at the gate,” snaps Matron Hessa. “Their kind is desperate. Utterly reckless. They smell weakness and think we’ll offer them scraps.”
“She comes on her knees,” Serida says. “But with fire behind her eyes. And her name… Crow.”
They mean to provoke me, but I keep my composure.
“I’ve fought her bloodline before,” I say. “They don’t kneel easily.”
Garrick stands silent beside me, unreadable. The others wait for me to flinch. But I don’t, I never have.
“She comes for aid,” Serida continues. “To beg. And you, Zeidan, are not known for mercy.”
“No,” I say, measured. “But I am known for strategy.”
That catches them off guard.
“She is desperate,” I add. “If she’s willing to offer something of value, we may use that. I am thinking of offering her a bond.”
A sharp rustle of silks. Whispers rise like smoke. I have expected that.
“You’re joking,” Hessa hisses. “The bond? With her? With any of them?”
“I’ve studied the old rituals.”
“You’re courting disaster,” another Matron sneers. “You remember what happened the last time we let shadowblood mingle with sparkblood.”
I remember. The memory doesn’t flicker across my face. It never does. Not anymore.
“And what would you gain?” Serida asks again.
“A tie to the Wildspont. A door into Purna magic. Access to what they’re hiding.” I let a pause stretch. “And perhaps... a key to the curse that plagues them.”
“You would risk your bloodline for theirs?”
“I would risk a great deal for power. So would you.”
“You speak of power like it’s yours to gamble,” Hessa snaps. “You forget, your bloodline serves at the Matrons’ pleasure.”
I meet her gaze without blinking. “And yet it’s my blood the realm remembers when the wars end.”
Serida tilts her head, studying me like I’m a particularly unruly piece of strategy. “You are bold, Prince. Bold enough to make us nervous. But not bold enough, I think, to play this game without bleeding.”
I let silence answer. The kind that makes lesser men sweat. The Matrons may think they hold the reins, but they forget, Velcryn survives because I win wars. Not because they speak in riddles and gowns.
They fall quiet. Not with agreement, but calculation. They’re intrigued. And curiosity, here, is a blade I can use.
“Very well,” Serida says finally. “But do not expect our protection if the bond spirals beyond your control. You carry the risk. And the ruin.”
“Understood,” I say. But in truth, I’m already miles ahead of them.
Later, in the solitude of my war chamber, I pour over maps of Purna territory, tracing the spread of the blight they claim is unnatural. Garrick stands behind me, arms crossed.
“You don’t trust her,” he says.
“I don’t need to trust her.”
“You still remember what the last Purna did.” His voice is low.
The ghost of her brushes the edges of my mind like a whisper I’ve learned not to answer. I don’t reply. Instead, I roll the map away and glance down at my forearm.
“Sabrina,” I say at last.
Her name slips between my teeth like a blade dulled by time, but it cuts anyway.
“I remember everything,” I say quietly.
Sabrina had been beautiful in a dangerous way, like the edge of a ritual dagger.
All grace and gravity, cloaked in silk and secrets.
She never raised her voice. Never had to.
She won rooms with a glance, twisted Council chambers into knots with half-truths and carefully planted doubt. I loved that about her. Now I hate it.
I thought I could handle her. I thought she saw me, not just the crown, not just the legacy. She touched my chest once and told me that if I ever stopped carrying the weight of Velcryn, my shoulders would collapse. I didn’t realize until too late she was studying where to strike.
She vanished after feeding the border coordinates to our enemies. My brother nearly died from the ambush that followed. The blade they left in his side was laced with spell poison and Vrakken sigils—mine.
I hunted her through half the realm. Found her deep in the ice caverns, cloaked in stolen runes. I gave her a warrior’s death. No one else knows that. No one else needs to.
So yes. I remember.
And now, fate delivers another Purna to my gates. Not a spy, not yet, but a firewalker. The kind that doesn’t break easily. That might be worse.
The bond stirs again beneath my skin, quieter this time, almost reverent. As if it’s waiting for her.
And I don’t know which terrifies me more: that it will awaken… or that it already has.
“She was nothing like this one,” I add. “She came smiling. This one comes furious for what I have heard.”
“That doesn’t mean she’s safe.”
“No,” I agree. “But it might mean she’s honest.”
I roll the map away and glance at my forearm. A faint shimmer dances beneath the skin, like smoke beneath glass.
The bond magic is stirring again. “It should still be dormant. Barely formed. But even at this distance, something old is waking. It knows her. Or wants to.
“She’s not like the last one,” Garrick says again, watching me carefully. “But if you form the bond, even partially... there’s no going back.”
“She doesn’t know what she’s asking,” I murmur.
“She will. Soon.”
I nod once. Then look up, meeting his eyes. “When she arrives, escort her directly to me. No ceremonial delays.”
Garrick hesitates. “And if the bond responds?”
I don’t look at the shimmer again. “Then may the gods help us both.”
Garrick's voice is quiet as he closes the map case. “Zeidan… if you let that bond take root, you know what that means.”
I turn, gaze sharp.
“Once it takes hold, it doesn’t let go easily.”
The bond doesn’t care about strategy. It’s not a treaty. It’s a chain forged in magic older than memory, older than either of us. Once it takes hold, it won’t be negotiated; it will demand.
It will twist who we are, until we don’t remember what was choice and what was compulsion. I know the risks. I studied the stories, even the ones we’re forbidden to write down.
Blood sings to blood. And once it starts, the song does not end gently.