Chapter 23 A Soul Called
Chapter twenty-three
A Soul Called
-Kael-
The water was nearly boiling turning Maris’ mortal flesh pink and flushed with life. Kael craved the heat of it.
Steam curled around the vast bathing chamber like mist off the spine of a dragon. The scent of crushed pine rose with every ripple as he leaned back, his head resting against the smooth obsidian edge of the tub.
And Maris—
She was in his lap.
Naked. Soft. Covered in gleaming rivulets that traced her collarbones, and the gentle curve of her back.
She laughed, low, breathy as she dipped the linen cloth again, dragging it over the pale line of his shoulder, slow and indulgent.
His nameless servants had been cast aside — replaced by her, and her divine cruelty.
“I thought you had no patience for being fussed over,” she teased, running her thumb along a scar that curved near his collarbone.
Kael hummed. “Call it fussing if you want. But I see it for what it is — preening. Subtle and entirely meant to undo me.”
She smirked, that wild little look she got only after training when her skin still glowed with sweat and victory. “Maybe I am. Maybe I like watching you crave my devotion — my ruin.”
“Careful,” he murmured, reaching to cup the back of her neck, pulling her close until her breath brushed his lips. “You tempt a monster who likes being undone — one that will show you how ruin feels when it begs.”
Her mouth parted leaning into his ear. “Is that a threat or a promise, highness?”
Kael leaned in, pressed his lips to the wet hollow of her throat, tasting salt and skin and the magic that clung to her like wine to silk.
“Both,” he growled.
They lingered in the water, far too lost in each other to care about time.
Maris lay curled in their bed, tangled in sheets the color of blood.
Her chest rose and fell with a slow, peaceful rhythm.
The moonlight cut through the carved windows in pale slashes, spilling across her sleeping form like silver flame.
Kael sat by the hearth, a dark robe hanging loose around him, his damp hair tied back.
A glass of bloodwine sat untouched on the table beside him.
His thoughts pulling him under— he was consumed not by desire, but the slow, silent drift of her becoming something he couldn't hold. He saw it, those shadows that flickered behind her eyes when she thought he wasn’t watching.
She moved like herself, spoke like herself, but something in the air around her had gone still. It wasn't detachment, but a subtle transformation.
As if some piece of her had turned inward, quietly curling into itself. The lorekeeper had noticed too.
“She asks questions with the hunger of a soul being called,” the old man had said that morning, folding his fingers over his blindfold.
“But I fear the voice calling her is not yours.”
Kael had gritted his teeth. “You think something is influencing her?”
“I think,” Aldwyn had replied, “she is only beginning to understand how much she does not know yet. She's curious.”
That was worse. He dreaded the idea that she was being pulled, twisted — by something beyond them both. And it burned. He needed her safe. Needed her tethered to this kingdom, this room, this bed, to him.
Mine.
The word still pulsed through him like a second heartbeat.
He glanced to where she laid, the way her silken hair spread across the pillow, her hand curled into a loose fist near her cheek.
She drifted through the soft haze of a dream.
He wondered if her dreams reached for him … or for something beyond him.
Kael stood, crossing to her quietly. The moonlight made her look too delicate, too mortal.
As if the gods might snatch her from him at any moment. He brushed a strand of hair from her brow, whisper-light, careful not to wake her.
“Whatever forces call you,” he murmured, barely breathing the words, “I’ll cut them from the world before I let you be taken from me.”
But even as he said it, something cold tugged at the back of his mind. Like a breath of wind from the other side of the Veil.
Something had already touched her.
And if he didn’t act soon…
He could lose her.
The council chamber reeked of magic and quiet judgment.
Black marble floors reflected the flickering torchlight. The vast table shimmered faintly beneath the cold morning sun bleeding through stained glass.
Kael sat at its head, cloaked in a high collared tunic of rich matte velvet. His gaze cut like honed steel, hands clasped in a stillness that dared those around him to move.
To his right, Valea sat rigid, her jaw clenched so tight the muscles twitched. On her other side was Lord Draeven tall, gray-streaked, and haunted. His eyes were not on Kael but fixed on the empty seat that often had been occupied by their daughter during drill planning.
The silence stretched unbearably before it broke.
“We’ve had no movement at the border,” said Captain Loric, a commander of the Nythran guard. He stood with his helm tucked under his arm, armor dulled by dust and long hours. “Three days. No skirmishes. No provocations.”
“No border silence lasts this long,” Kael muttered.
“No,” agreed Corin, arms crossed. “And not from Calanthe.”
Beside him, Riven grunted. “Either they’ve gone soft, or they’re plotting something that makes all this quiet worth it.”
Kael said nothing for a moment, letting the tension settle across the council like ash.
Then his voice sliced the air.
“And what of the messages sent from our gates?”
“Intercepted,” Loric said. “Or rather… followed. Our spies tracked down their drop point, a fort on the western edge of the borderlands near the river’s edge, no more riders shall cross to their kingdom from the location."
“So,” he said coldly. "we've successfully cut off Calanthe from their spies — for now? .”
A murmur of unease rippled through the room.
Valea, silent until now, finally spoke. Her voice was not soft — it was the sound of stone cracking. She hadn’t been listening to the conversation at hand — only lost in thoughts that now boiled over from a barely contained hurt.
“You realize she was our daughter, did our loyalty not earn us mercy by your hand.” she said, not looking at him.
Kael met her words with a gaze that did not flinch. “She was a traitor.”
Draeven shifted beside her, but did not speak. His silence was his answer.
“She would’ve seen this kingdom fall,” Kael added. “Would’ve sold every secret for a fantasy she clung to like a child clutching a broken toy.”
“She wanted your affection,” Valea hissed. “And when it was not hers, she blamed the one who stole it.”
Kael didn’t respond.
They all knew Maris had not stolen anything. She had been chosen — claimed by him.
“She was executed swiftly,” Draeven said at last, his voice low reminding his wife of the king's mercy.
Kael nodded.
“We burned her body,” he said flatly. “And scattered the ashes over the cliffs. Let her soul be the gods’ problem now.”
Valea did not look at him again.
After the council adjourned, Kael stood alone in the stained glass light. The chamber was empty, but the echoes of that meeting clawed through his skull.
No skirmishes at the border. No sudden movements. Just silence — thick and unnatural. The kind that meant something worse was building. Not arrows in the night. Not blades. Something deadlier
Alarik was waiting in that silence —scheming. It ate away at Kael that he didn't know exactly what was coming
-Maris-
The morning light crept through the tall windows like a guilty thing, soft and golden and entirely unwelcome.
Maris stirred beneath the thick velvet covers, her skin still warm from Kael’s arms, her body aching in that quiet, delicious way only he could conjure. But it wasn’t the warmth that lingered in her chest, it was him.
Not Kael. But the one from her dreams.
It had started subtly. A flicker of eyes that weren’t Kael’s. A laugh in the wind that made her spine tense. A voice speaking her name in tones too smooth, too low, too… wrong.
But this dream, the one that clung to her skin now like a second soul, had been different.
He had stood before her, cloaked in white light, moonlight dripping from his hair like water. His eyes, that uncanny violet-blue, had locked to hers as if he’d known her always, and when he touched her cheek, her body had flared with heat and fear all at once.
“You are not what they think you are,” he had whispered, voice thick with sorrow and something that felt like fate.
“They bound you in silk and shadow. But you were made to shatter the sky.”
She had reached for him and woken with her hand outstretched into nothing.
Now, in the light of morning, Maris sat up slowly, pushing her hair from her face. Her heart thundered against her ribs like a war drum.
It wasn’t just a dream. She could feel it. She could still smell him strange, like salt and cold smoke — the words he’d spoken echoed like prophecy through her blood.
Gods, was she losing her mind?
She stood, wrapping one of Kael’s silken robes around herself, the fabric far too large but comforting in its weight.
Padding barefoot across the cool stone floor, she moved to the desk tucked in the corner of Kael’s private chambers.
She reached for her journal — pages half-filled with ink-smeared dreams, fragmented memories she couldn’t quite trust.
She sat and wrote:
He came again. The dream-man. The violet-eyed ghost. Not Kael. Never Kael. He speaks to something inside me that shouldn’t be awake. Something old. Something not entirely human. What is wrong with me? Why do I crave both warmth and ruin in equal measure?
A quiet knock broke her haze. She rose abandoning her writing.
The wraiths entered without words, and set her training leathers for the day across the dressing stand, obsidian with silver stitching. Regal. Commanding. Kael must’ve picked them. As she moved to change, she caught her reflection in the glass. Her eyes, seemed brighter somehow. Almost… unnatural.
“Who are you becoming?” she whispered to her reflection.
But it offered no answers only the dream’s echo:
“You were made to shatter the sky.”