Chapter 58 The Throne Room
Chapter fifty-eight
The Throne Room
-Maris-
The palace doors towered before her, not merely wood and iron, but the embodiment of judgement.
Every step was a betrayal —of who, she didn’t yet know.
Nerium’s marble steps glittered under the low light of the moon. Each breath was thinner than the last, as if destiny had curled its hand around her throat.
Serenya walked ahead, ever the shield when Maris could not muster one herself. Alarik moved to her side — his posture stiff with everything unsaid between them.
The ship had barely docked when the whispers echoed —Kael was the palace.
He’d arrived before them.
Her hand, unadorned, curled at her side. The white-gold ring still lay tucked in her chest, cold and distant as the stars overhead.
She knew Kael would notice its absence. She worried he'd see Alarik at her side and would jump to conclusions.
As they approached, she saw Zairon waiting on the steps — his presence calm and unmoving.
“He’s here,” Zairon said softly, eyes meeting hers first, then drifting sharply to Alarik. “Waiting where kings rarely beg.”
Maris’s chest tightened.
Zairon’s voice dropped even lower. “If you’re not ready to face him… you don’t have to.”
No judgment. No force.
Behind her, Serenya laid a steady hand on her back.
She nodded, her voice low. “I’m not walking in there like a victim.”
Zairon’s brow ticked upward, just once. “Good.”
He stepped aside, the palace yawning open behind him like a beast with gilded fangs.
The throne room waited.
-Kael-
He had prepared a thousand versions of this moment in his head.
In some, she ran to him. In others, she struck him across the face. But in all of them, she wore the ring.
She didn’t now.
And that simple absence shattered every imagined reunion like glass beneath a boot.
The heavy doors groaned open.
Maris had stepped through, head held high.
She wasn’t the same woman who had once cowered at court. Her magic clung to her crackling beneath the surface. A sigil marked her hand now, glowing pulsing with each step. Once her eyes flicked to him they didn’t look away.
She didn’t pause. Didn’t smile. Didn’t rush to him.
She watched as Kael took one step forward.
He heard Alarik move behind her silently —protective but Kael didn’t look at him. He couldn't bare to.
“Maris,” he said softly, as if her name itself was a prayer he wasn’t worthy to speak.
She tilted her chin, "Kael" she spoke with a whisper.
Kael’s breath shook as the truth lodged in his throat.
He dropped to both knees, head hung low before her.
Not for performance or power.
For her and the weight of every mistake he had made.
“I failed you,” he said, voice low and hoarse. “In a thousand ways that you never deserved.”
He forced himself to continue.
“I loved you. I do love you. But I never told you the complete truth. I caged your power with silence.” He choked slightly. “I didn’t see you not for what you were becoming. I thought I could protect you by dimming you.”
Her expression wavered, sadden, but she said nothing.
Kael’s voice dropped, rough with ache. “You were never just a pawn. Never a piece in court strategy. I see it now — too late, maybe. But I see you. I see your strength, your divinity. I see your fire bright starlight. And I know I may not deserve even to be before you. But I had to come. I had to tell you.”
He looked up at her, silver eyes gleaming not with command, but with pain.
“You are the storm that shatters kingdoms — I was too blind to bow.”
He swallowed, letting the silence sit heavy between them.
Then, quietly. “I won’t fight for control anymore. I’ll fight for your choice.”
-Alarik-
He had prepared for fury.
Prepared for fire and blood and blades drawn at first breath. He had imagined Kael lunging for him, for her, for vengeance that had nothing to do with the gods and everything to do with Maris. He had braced himself for the chaos.
But not this.
Not the male on his knees.
Not the broken edge in Kael’s voice as he confessed his failures, not to the room, not to the court but to her. As if only her judgment mattered now.
Alarik stood a few paces behind. His hands curled into fists at his sides, not from jealousy — but from surprise. From the sharp twist of something he hadn’t expected.
Regret.
Not his own, Kael’s.
The silver-eyed king looked up at Maris like a man lost in the dark, and only now realized the lantern he’d carried had been snuffed out by his own hand.
“I didn’t see you,” Kael had said. “Not as I should’ve. Not as you are.”
And gods, he meant it.
Alarik could feel it in the marrow-deep stillness of the room. The court barely breathed. Zairon had said Kael would be let in only under the vow that he would not harm Maris, that he would hold his tongue unless she wished otherwise. And here he was tongue loose, soul cracked open.
Alarik’s chest ached in a place he didn’t often let himself feel.
Because Kael wasn’t groveling for dominance.
He was laying down his sword.
Begging not to be chosen but to be considered.
And that was a different kind of war entirely.
What would she do?
Her reaction strong, luminous, terrifyingly still. She had stood beneath a sky torn open by the gods and sealed it shut with a single breath. She had worn power with grace, and now she wore silence like armor.
Alarik hated Kael. Resented the expansive power he wielded. Envied the place he held in Maris's heart.
But he also admired him, his relentlessness, his control.
He prayed she remembered who had bowed before her first.