30. Rothgar
ROTHGAR
My hand clamps around Calla’s wrist, and I pull her behind me just as the crystal’s green light swells beyond its shattered confines. Stormlight gathers at my fingertips, summoning a barrier around us strong enough to contain any magical backlash.
They dissolve the instant they meet the corrupted energy. The green radiance devours them without slowing.
The crystal no longer resembles anything crafted for ritual. The sound claws through the mind itself, scraping against memory and thought with unbearable force. Around us, nobles stagger backward. Several priests collapse to one knee, their hands pressed uselessly over their ears.
High Priestess Nyrra continues chanting. Even now, she forces the ancient words through clenched teeth, desperately trying to regain control of a ritual that has slipped beyond any priest's reach.
The cracks racing across the focus brighten. Every fracture fills with poisonous green until the crystal resembles a prison holding lightning that no longer wishes to remain contained.
The fractures spread too quickly for anyone to contain them. Green light surges through every vein of the crystal until the focus tears itself apart beneath the strain, releasing a wave of corrupted magic that engulfs the altar and races outward through the sanctuary.
The shockwave strikes with enough force to drive me back a step despite the strength rooted in my stance. Stone groans beneath my boots. Every torch lining the temple gutters out at once before reigniting in sickly emerald flame.
I draw Calla against my chest, wrapping both arms around her as the corrupted storm reaches us. I brace for the impact against flesh and bone. Instead, the magic passes through every barrier I raise and reaches somewhere infinitely more vulnerable.
I feel it the instant it touches the deepest part of my soul.
The careful discipline that has governed my every thought for centuries slips beyond my control. The ritual has claimed it as its own, drawing every guarded truth into the open with relentless certainty. The truths I have never spoken are no longer mine to keep.
Loneliness comes first.
Four centuries of silent halls and endless councils where every decision rested upon my shoulders.
Victories ended the same way they began—with duty fulfilled and no one waiting when I returned home.
I accepted that isolation because I believed command demanded it, and the storm tears that conviction from me as easily as breathing.
The court does not witness the memories themselves. They experience the crushing solitude that accompanies every one of them.
The memory shifts to Malakor’s banquet hall, where a human musician drew my attention so completely that the rest of the room dissolved into little more than background noise.
I remember my irritation at that fascination, followed soon after by the morning she crossed my garden with fear hidden beneath impossible resolve and offered a bargain no sensible person would ever have proposed.
Looking back now, I recognize that was the moment my solitude began to yield.
The ritual gives me no opportunity to hide what followed.
The court feels every quiet moment that bound us together: her laughter when I failed to understand one of her jokes, the evenings I lingered outside her chamber to listen while she played, the needless reasons I invented to remain wherever she happened to be.
They already know I love her. The storm had shown them that truth moments before the crystal failed.
What it strips from me now is everything beneath those words—the depth of it, the certainty that every choice I have made since meeting Calla has been shaped by the simple desire to keep her safe, even when it placed me at odds with my own instincts.
Beneath every feeling the storm tears from me lies the one truth I have tried hardest to master.
Loving Calla has taught me a fear no battlefield ever could.
I can command armies and bend lightning to my will, yet none of it offers certainty that I can always reach her in time.
The possibility of failing her has shadowed every choice I have made since the attack, and the court feels that helplessness as completely as I do.
The current flowing outward suddenly reverses.
Calla trembles in my arms when her heart opens to me with the same terrible honesty the storm demanded of my own.
I feel her fear before I see it in her eyes. Every frantic heartbeat is fixed upon me, terrified that I might be taken from her before she can hold on.
Beneath that fear lies the same unyielding resolve that carried her through the gates of Galmoleth. It remains unchanged, tempered now by everything we have endured together.
Then I feel the full measure of her love, and it is deeper than I ever allowed myself to imagine.
It surrounds me with absolute resolve that defies every doubt I have ever carried, and at once, I forget the shattered temple, the watching court, and everything beyond the woman in my arms.
The knowledge strikes with greater force than the explosion itself.
Every emotion reflected in her eyes answers my own. Whatever remained unspoken between us has vanished beneath the storm's relentless truth, leaving neither of us any refuge behind uncertainty.
Neither of us can tear our eyes away from the other as green lightning whirls around us, bathing the shattered sanctuary in impossible light while every truth we ever tried to hide lies exposed between us..
The bond between us surges outward until it encompasses the entire sanctuary.
Every noble, priest, and guard stands within its reach, experiencing the truth of our vows exactly as we lived them.
Nothing remains hidden. Every sacrifice, every promise, every quiet hope becomes part of the same overwhelming tide.
The ritual intended to bind two lives has accomplished something older than ceremony itself.
No proclamation could have carried greater authority than what the storm has revealed.
Just as suddenly, the corrupted energy folds back into itself. The green light vanishes, taking the terrible shriek with it, and silence envelops the sanctuary so completely that I can hear our breathing.
Smoke curls from the blackened stone encircling Calla and me. The ceremonial focus crystal is gone, leaving only a scorched ring around us as though the storm itself had marked where we stood.
My arms remain around Calla until I am certain the storm has passed. When I finally ease my hold, our hands remain linked, neither of us willing to let go as the temple falls utterly silent.
The entire court remains frozen, their faces stripped of the careful composure they wore only moments before.
The first sound to disturb the silence is the measured tread of King Asmodeus crossing the ruined sanctuary. Every eye follows him as he approaches the scorched circle where Calla and I remain standing together, still bound by hands the storm itself had refused to separate.