Chapter 48 The Culling
Chapter forty-eight
The Culling
-Kael-
It began as a scream clawing deep through the marrow of his soul, raw and endless. A beautiful light dying within him that refused to go quietly.
The pain was all consuming. But hollow left behind was merciless, a darkness that devoured all else.
Kael jerked upright from the war table, the draft of the war room chilling against his skin despite the brazier’s flames. His generals froze. Draeven had just been speaking, detailing a report on ship progress—but the words wiped from Kael's memory in an instance.
Because the bond was gone.
Not dimmed.
Not distanced.
Gone.
His hands slammed the edge of the table. “Leave.” He barked.
None questioned. Even Corin and Riven moved without a word, their blood-slick armor clinking quietly as they exited. The doors groaned closed at their backs.
Kael pressed a palm to his chest as if he could reach through and find the frayed thread that had connected him to her—to Maris. But there was nothing. No echo. No tether. No soft flicker of emotion pressing against his own.
The silence inside him was deafening.
“No,” he growled in pain, pacing like a cornered beast. “No. This isn’t possible.”
He’d felt her the night before—flickers of something. He had convinced himself it was distance. That her magic was interfering. Maybe she had shut him out.
But this—this was severed. The kind of finality that offered no hope of recovery.
He threw a decanter of wine against the stone hearth and watched it explode like blood against the wall. Rage crackled through him, his shadows rising in furious tendrils around his shoulders.
He shouted, voice raw, knowing the gods were already be aware. “Tell me this is a trick. A lie.”
No one answered.
Because the answer was truth. She was gone in the way that mattered most. Unbound. Unreachable.
Kael caught himself on the edge of the table, panting. He had not known such helplessness since the night he killed Elenwe. When the gods had coiled their will through his bones and forced his hand into ruin.
He should have told Maris the truth sooner. Should have explained the man in her dreams. Should have said Alarik’s name. Should have guarded her with more than walls and generals and hollow plans.
But he had waited to control her. Force his own narrative, so she wouldn't run from him. He had played the long game with councils and strategy. He had begun to build an army the likes of no other to destroy Alarik and save her from his grasp. He had waited with restrained calucation.
And now he had lost his tether to her soul.
"This ends,” he breathed.
Kael stood slowly, every inch of him trembling—not with fear, but with terrible certainty. He turned to the window, to the lands that spread below Calyrix's high towers. The skies already dimming with storm and war.
He could not storm the gates of Nerium, yet. His forces were not aligned. The ships would take weeks to cross and return. A coordinated siege was out of reach.
But Kael could not wait.
He could not go with banners and blood. That would lose her forever.
He would go alone.
Not to fight.
But to see her. To touch her. To beg her, if he must.
For the first time in his long, cursed life, Kael felt the awful taste of desperation.
He had to find her.
He didn’t stop moving. Down the tower steps, boots thundering against stone. Rage consumed is shadows.
The twin generals caught him at the armory threshold, both armor-clad and breathless, having chased after him—the shift, the vacuum, the unnatural silence in their kings moments.
“Highness, what’s happened?” Corin said, his voice grim, expression unreadable.
“Maris,” Kael bit out. “I can’t sit on my hands any longer.”
Riven stepped forward, jaw tight, “We just need a little more time. You’re assembling the largest allied army in two centuries. You can take her back—”
“Two months,” Kael snapped. “Alarik was already in her dreams. Now he has her in the flesh.”
He stopped, voice breaking before he could tame it.
“And the bond…” He couldn’t finish the sentence.
The room fell deathly quiet.
Riven looked down.
Corin said nothing.
“I don’t have a choice, I have to go to her.” Kael continued, gathering weapons, wrapping himself in smoke-threaded leathers rather than regal robes. “Not with banners. Not with blood. I go alone.”
“You can’t mean that,” Corin growled. “You know they've raised new wards against your shadows, you can't leap between the realms to his gates. If you go like this he could have you killed — ”
“No happy ending begins with you walking through the front door and playing nice.” Riven added.
Kael turned, silver eyes burning. “Then at least I die before her.”
Behind them, the great doors opened again—Thauren stood in the threshold, arms crossed over his storm-scarred chest, brow furrowed.
“You’re abandoning the plans,” Thauren said evenly, but not without emotion. “We need you here. She needs you here.”
Kael stalked past him.
“No. She needs me there.”
Thauren’s voice deepened, thunder stirring behind his words. “You think this is how you win her back? By vanishing into shadow and leaving us to hold the line?”
Kael stopped at the corridor’s end. For a moment, he didn’t speak. And when he did, it was soft.
“I should’ve never let it go this long. I was a fool not to see it.”
And then—he vanished.
A sweep of smoke. A hiss of cold wind.
Gone.
The generals stared at the place where he had stood.
Thauren exhaled harshly. “We need to hurry the formation along, join him as quickly as we can with what forces we can muster.”