Chapter 2 #2
The nobles spoke around her in musical, poisoned tones, dropping barbed compliments, gossiping about skirmishes at the Nythran borders, exiled noble houses, mortals they’d hunted for sport, and about curses they’d survived.
Once, a tall noble with hair like spun silver approached their table, bowing with mocking grace. His eyes glowed faintly blue, and Maris felt his stare slice across her skin like a blade.
“My King,” he purred, “I had not heard you kept mortal pets. How… quaint.”
Kael’s eyes snapped to him, the faintest twitch of a smile on his lips, though the smile never reached those winter-cold eyes.
“Quaint, you say?”
The other noble’s grin faltered, reading the danger in Kael’s tone.
“Merely an observation.”
Kael leaned back in his throne, never looking away from Maris, as if staking a claim for the entire court to see.
“Observation can get you killed,” he said softly.
The noble bowed again, hastily, and retreated.
Maris’s heart skittered, her breath catching in her throat.
She tried to focus on her food, cutting small bites with trembling hands, but the weight of Kael’s attention burned against her skin. It was as if he saw through her.
As the night bled on, the hall turned wilder, music struck up from musicians with hollow eyes and silver-fretted lutes, and some of the nobles began to dance, their movements both graceful and predatory, circling one another like wolves in courtly disguise.
Maris sat frozen, afraid to move, afraid to breathe, while Kael spoke to his advisors. But even when he turned to discuss border raids or alliances, he still glanced at her every few moments, making sure she remained unharmed, unbothered.
No one dared touch her.
Every time a stranger’s gaze lingered too long, Kael’s eyes would flash in warning, and they would look away.
Mine.
That word clanged through her head, heavier with every heartbeat.
He had not said it again since the hall, but he didn’t have to.
Hours later, as the revelers began to fade, Kael rose to his feet, the room falling silent in an instant.
“The mortal is weary,” he declared, though Maris had never spoken the words herself. “See her back to her chambers.”
Valea materialized from the crowd, cool and precise, gesturing for Maris to follow.
Maris stood shakily, her knees stiff from fear and cold, and dared one last glance at Kael.
His gaze met hers, lingering, hungry, gentle, violent, a contradiction that tore straight through her. He nodded once, dismissing her, turning back to the court as if she no longer existed.
Maris let Valea guide her away, her mind spinning with more questions than ever, heart still pounding from the weight of the King’s eyes. She followed Valea through the twisting halls of Calyrix, trying to steady her breath.
The further they walked from the feast, the more the sounds of laughter and music dulled, replaced by a heavy, watchful silence. Torchlight painted the stones in stripes of red and gold, flickering across the iron-barred windows like a prison.
She could feel the exhaustion gnawing deep at her bones.
Valea paused outside the familiar carved door, giving Maris a look that was neither cruel nor kind, only assessing.
“You fared much better than I expected.”
Maris didn’t know if that was praise or a warning, so she simply nodded, fighting to keep her face blank.
The door opened on the same grand chamber, still echoing with her scent, still too large, too rich, too cold.
She stepped over the threshold, numb, and the lock clicked behind her as Valea left.
She leaned against the wall, letting the robe’s fabric brush against her arms, trying to calm the shaking in her hands.
Mine.
Kael’s voice still haunted her ears, that single word claiming more than just her safety. It felt like a chain around her throat. Why her?
Why had he dragged her here, made her stand before that monstrous court, and forced them all to see her as his?
Her thoughts circled and circled until she felt sick.
She stumbled to the bed and collapsed across the silken covers, still dressed in the fine black gown with its seed-pearled neckline. Her eyes fluttered shut, but sleep came only in broken fragments.
She dreamed she was back in the great hall, but this time she lay on the banquet table, spread out like a roasted bird, black wine dripping across her pale skin. The courtiers circled her, knives gleaming, eyes fever-bright, laughing as they debated which part of her to carve first.
Kael stood among them, silent and watching, silver eyes reflecting every cut, every bite.
When he finally reached for her, she almost wept in relief, thinking he would save her but instead he lifted a goblet, filled with her blood, and drank.
She awoke gasping, the taste of iron still sharp on her tongue. The fire had burned low, embers glowing sullenly in the hearth.
Maris pulled her knees to her chest, shivering, and stared into the dark until morning.
-Kael-
Kael stood alone in the gallery overlooking the hall, long after the feast had ended.
Below him, servants cleared the tables, wiping away the spilled wine, gathering bones and broken glass, restoring order to the chaos left behind by the courtiers.
He felt their eyes on him, even in silence those nobles who had stayed too long, pretending to linger in conversation while really studying him, wondering why a King of Nythra would bring a mortal into their fortress of nightmares.
He could feel their suspicion. Their hunger.
Good.
Let them wonder. Let them fear.
Kael exhaled sharply, as if the tension itself had been choking him. His mind returned to Maris, the slip of a girl in the borrowed black gown, her delicate green eyes rimmed with that unearthly silver, meeting his gaze with quiet terror.
Something about her unraveled him.
He did not like it.
His blood was nightbound, old as the curse itself, steeped in power and prophecy. He had ruled Nythra for centuries without faltering, surviving poisons, blades, betrayals that would have ended lesser men.
And yet she, a seamstress with tragedy hanging around her like funeral cloth, had undone every one of his walls in a single look.
Kael clenched a hand around the iron railing, knuckles whitening.
Fool, he told himself. She is a tool. Nothing more.
But something inside hissed that he lied, that a spark of something he barely dared name had ignited the moment he caught her scent: lavender and smoke and the faint glimmer of magic so subtle he still wasn’t sure it was real.
He needed to know what she was.
Why did the threads lead me to you, Maris of Eryndor?
He could see her even now, curled in the too-large bed.Trying to survive.
He would not let the court rip her apart. If they wanted a weakness, they would have to dig deeper. He would give them no leverage, no chance. She is mine, he repeated to himself. Mine to protect. Mine to command.