Chapter 62 Watchful Eyes
Chapter sixty-two
Watchful Eyes
-Maris-
The castle felt different now.
Stone corridors stretched long and echoing, veined with ivy and candlelight.
Courtiers passed with hushed steps, their gazes quick to drop the moment they caught sight of her.
Servants stilled. Nobles turned away, some with reverence, some with unease.
No one whispered within earshot anymore but they whispered all the same.
Veil Breaker.
The goddess-forged.
Not quite mortal. Not quite divine.
Maris walked among them with her spine straight and her chin lifted, but inside, she was a ruin held together by thread and grit. Alarik paced quietly beside her, one step behind and just off her left shoulder, not guarding, not leading. Simply there.
And somehow, that made it worse.
She couldn’t remember the last time someone had walked beside her without needing something. Without wanting something. Without expecting the impossible.
Alarik hadn’t said much that morning. Just offered her a cup of water and held her cloak open as she stepped into the cold corridor. No questions. No pressure. Only presence.
She hated how grateful she was for it.
“Do you want to go back?” he asked softly, his voice breaking through the silence like a hand brushing her shoulder.
She shook her head. “No. I want to see them. All of them.”
“The nobles?”
She nodded. “And the soldiers. The advisors. The people gathering to fight in my name.”
He didn’t respond. But she felt the tension, how tightly he was holding it in, that burning need to protect her from everything.
Maris turned a corner and paused at the edge of the great hall.
It was filled and overcrowded. Loud with clattering voices and the scent of damp cloaks and steel.
Calantheans in deep ocean blues, Nythrans cloaked in silver and black, Virellians etched in storm-gray.
Fae, Nightbound and vampire. Eryndorian humans in shades of brown and green. All beneath one vaulted roof.
A gathering no one would have dreamed of a month ago.
And yet… when she entered, they parted.
As if a fallen star had stepped into their midst wearing human skin.
She felt like a walking omen.
Maris moved slowly between them, Alarik keeping pace beside her.
She caught flashes of familiar faces: Valea’s red hair twisted back into a warrior’s knot, Zairon mid-conversation near a stack of maps, Serenya standing like a storm sentinel near the war table.
The twin generals, Corin and Riven, conversing with their wives.
Kael wasn’t here, but she could feel his presence threaded through this hall like ink through parchment.
He was always close now. They both were.
And still… she felt alone.
Not because they weren’t at her side, but because none of them carried this burden, none of them were made.
Maris paused near a marble column, breath catching slightly as she looked out across the room.
“I used to think,” she said quietly, “that fate was something you fell into. That it was a rope tied to your ankle, and one day you’d trip and be dragged wherever it led.”
Alarik tilted his head. “And now?”
“Now I think it’s a cage they dress up in poetry and prophecy.” Her voice caught. “They made me for this. Every thread of my life has been tugged and placed by divine hands. I never had a choice.”
She glanced up at him. His expression offered mourning behind his violet eyes.
“I wonder,” she added, “what it would feel like… to choose your own path. No gods. No crowns. Just… a life.”
Alarik’s voice was low. “If I could give that to you, I would.”
She turned her gaze back to the crowd. “No one can. Not anymore.”
Those around her watched with heavy expectation.
The dining hall, that evening, was loud with laughter and clinking goblets. The hum of strained joy pulsing beneath the vaulted stone ceiling. Strings and pipes softly played lilting and mournful hymns dressed with enough cheer to pass as celebration.
It was a fragile illusion.
One Maris let herself believe in, for a little while.
She sat near the end of the high table, off to the side where the shadows were kinder and the pressure less sharp.
The enchanted light hit her black gown of silk making it shimmer with glittering radiance. Her hair rested in intricate braids set by the twin wraiths. Kael had sent for them in Nythra the moment he realized she had no servants of her own in Calanthe.
A goblet sat untouched before her. She didn't wish to dull her senses, not when they were the only thing keeping her anchored.
Alarik had wandered off to speak with an admiral from Virellia. Kael was across the room, deep in conversation with his generals, glass in hand, though his eyes strayed to her often.
The crowd felt looser, though still frayed. A mixed court in mourning disguised as a celebration. They needed this. The soldiers. The courtiers. The people. They needed laughter, music, and to see their three kingdoms in arms together under one roof.
Maris excused herself softly from the table and slipped into the far corner of the hall, where the firelight curled over a row of tall windows and the sea glinted black beyond the glass.
That’s where Valea found her.
“Skirting the party?” the general said, coming to stand beside her, goblet in hand.
Maris smiled faintly. “Not skirting. Just… breathing.”
Valea huffed a dry laugh, sipping her wine. “Breathing is a bold luxury these days.”
They stood in silence for a moment, both watching the cliffs in the distance. Thunder rumbled like distant drums.
Valea’s eye shifted to Maris’s hair and her voice dipped. “I used to braid her hair like that. Astrielle’s. Before balls, before anything of importance. It made her feel strong. Like she could swing a blade and still be beautiful.”
Maris turned to her slowly, but didn’t speak.
“She was so sure she belonged to something greater,” Valea continued, her voice raw. “She wanted purpose. Glory. A place at the center of the world. I told her she had time to find it. Told her not to rush or force her way.”
Maris laid a hand gently over hers. “It wasn’t your fault.”
Valea’s jaw tightened. “But I raised her. Trained her. Taught her how to fight. And she used that strength for betrayal.” Her eyes shimmered. “I thought I gave her armor. Maybe I gave her poison.”
“No,” Maris whispered. “You gave her belief. A dream. What she did with it… is not yours to carry.”
Valea nodded, a stiff motion that barely held. She didn’t thank her. Didn’t cry. Just drank, and left the firelight behind.
Maris found herself walking slowly through the crowd again. The king Thauren spotted her before she could slip away, raising a brow and waving off his captain to approach her.
“You look divine, it's a pleasure to meet the force of the gods, face to face,” he said lightly, offering a crooked grin.
“It's an honor to have you fight with us,” she replied with a bow .
He laughed softly, then gestured toward the long balcony. “Walk with me?”
She nodded, and they stepped out into the cold night air. The ocean wind whipped her hair loose. Thauren kept pace beside her, hands behind his back, his sea-glass eyes scanning the black horizon.
“I’ve been meaning to ask someone,” she said after a pause. “Elenwe… your sister, what was she like?”
She had wondered about her, how she was weaved into both Kael and Alarik’s past. Their tension.
Thauren’s stride slowed.
“She was…” he exhaled, breath fogging in the air. “Kind. Braver than most kings, myself included. She never raised her voice, never needed to. When she walked into a room, it was like someone opened a window. You just breathed easier.”
Maris swallowed. “I know of her affections for Alarik but what of Kael?”
Thauren’s smile was a broken thing. “She saw through him, they were great friends once. She saw something good under all that ruin, and she clung to it. Even when it broke her. She thought of peace.”
“I was angry for so long. Angry at Alarik. At Kael. At the gods. But now… I wonder if she knew that her death would lead to all this. Maybe it was a mercy, in the cruelest sense.”
Maris closed her eyes for a long moment. “I can see why she was so loved.”
“Elenwe is one of the many reasons that I will help you destroy Eiren.” he said simply.
She nodded in understanding.
The music inside swelled again.
Maris turned back toward the glow of the hall. “Thank you for telling me.”
“Anytime,” Thauren said. “And for what it’s worth… I think she would’ve liked you.”
"I think I would have as well," she smiled.
She just walked back into the light and a shadow followed her stitched to her heels.
The warmth of candlelight wrapped around her. Laughter still fluttered in the rafters, though it seemed dimmer now, further away. A waltz had begun. Slow and haunting.
Her thoughts were still tangled in Thauren’s words. As she walked she felt a heavy familiar gaze linger.
As she weaved through a set of pillars, she saw him waiting.
Kael leaned against a stone archway, half-shrouded in shadow, silver eyes locked on.
His arms rested firmly crossed at his chest and his boots crossed at the ankle.
He gave her a tight nod toward the balcony doors on the opposite end of the hall — one of the more private in the packed castle hall, it lead to a quiet overlook where the cliffs met the sea.
Maris inclined her head and followed as he push off the arch.
The night air bit at her cheeks as she stepped outside. Kael propped him muscular form against the balustrade, his hair wind-swept and moonlit. He looked made from myth, too darkly beautiful to be real.
“Enjoying your evening?” he asked, his voice low.
“As much as I can,” she replied honestly, stepping beside him. “It’s strange… all of this. The warmth. The music. It feels like a memory I don’t quite belong to.”
Kael glanced at her hand, where his ring no longer sat.
“You belong to everything now, Maris. And none of it. That’s a heavy burden.”
She looked up at him.
He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I have many faults, more than I’ll ever finish repenting for. But I’m here for you now.”
Maris blinked, startled by the candor. “You don’t usually admit when you’re wrong.”
“I don’t usually feel wrong,” he murmured. “But with you… I’ve only ever felt like I was too late. Too blind. Too much shadow in your light.”
Her breath caught.
Kael turned fully toward her, his hand rising, hesitating just before touching her face. When she didn’t pull away, he let his fingertips trail gently along her jaw, feather-light, lovingly.
“I didn’t see you,” he said. “I was too busy trying to protect what I thought you were… instead of honoring what you might become.”
Her heart beat hard.
He dropped his hand, stepped back as if giving her space again was the only apology left in his bones. “You are the dream I was too foolish to believe in.”
She took in the sight of him and for the first time she didn’t see the king who had dragged her from ballrooms in jealousy or tried to cage her under the guise of protection.
She saw him.
The one who kissed her with trembling hands in a moonlit corridor. Who had watched her like she was the first star to ever rise. The one who had written her name into the marrow of his soul before he even realized he’d fallen. Hers.
Her voice shook. “Why do you speak so freely now?”
“Because I don’t know how much time we have left,” he whispered. “And I need you to know, whatever happens I love you.” He swallowed. “I will never stop standing at your side.”
His unspoken meaning lying between them.
Tears pricked her eyes.
She kissed him, quickly, not with a promise of anything, but a thank you.
She moved back grasping his hand, leaning into his shoulder.
The silence between her and Kael wasn’t heavy anymore. It was something gentler. His fingers brushed hers along the balcony railing, hesitant, reverent. Like he didn’t expect this, her. Not after everything. And maybe, in some quiet corner of her heart, she hadn’t expected it either.
But warmth bloomed between them, and when he looked at her like that — a sunrise he never believed he’d see again. Maris nearly forgot the weight of the world pressing in. She wondered what it would have been like to still be at his side in Nythra.
A cough sounded behind them, breaking the thought.
Not rude. Not impatient.
Just timed.
She turned, already knowing who it would be.
Alarik stood just past the archway, arms crossed lightly over his chest, a quiet smile pulling at his mouth. Not mocking. Not possessive. Just… waiting.
“It’s my turn,” he said, voice pitched low so only she and Kael could hear.
Kael’s jaw tightened for the briefest moment, but he gave a short nod.
Maris looked between them. The space between. The strange, awful, beautiful quiet of this.
She stepped back from the railing, her fingers slipping from Kael’s. He didn’t grip tighter. Didn’t beg.
He simply let go.
Alarik didn’t reach for her hand. He only turned and began walking, trusting she’d follow.
They walked side by side through the candlelit halls of the castle, guards offering shallow bows, servants retreating into corners. It wasn’t until they reached the quietest wing, her private chambers, that Alarik finally spoke again.
“You seemed… lighter with him.”
Maris blinked. “Are you jealous?”
“I’m grateful,” he said softly. “He’s seen you at your worst. And you at his. And he still looks at you like you’re his beginning.”
She didn’t know how to answer that. So she said nothing.
“But I…” Alarik slowed to a stop outside her door. “I saw you before either of us knew what you were. And I still see you now.”
She turned toward him. “And what do you see?”
His eyes searched hers. “Someone I don’t think anyone could find a way back from.”
He reached out, just once, and gently tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. His hand lingered there, barely touching her cheek.
He started to lower it, to step back and leave her with the quiet, but,
“Will you…” she hesitated, surprised by her own voice. “Will you come in? Just for a little while.”
Alarik blinked, as if he hadn’t expected the invitation.
“Of course,” he said softly.
She turned, fingers curling around the door handle. She opened it and stepped into the candlelit stillness, and when he followed, his movements were slow, careful, like the room itself was sacred now, like she was.
They didn’t speak much after that.
She curled up in the chair by the fire, and he settled across from her, not too close, not too far. The space between them was charged, but it wasn’t heavy. It was… steady. Settling.