Chapter 74 The Light That Calls the King
Chapter seventy-four
The Light That Calls the King
-Kael-
Astrielle screamed as he dragged her across the battlefield by her blood-matted braid.
She kicked. Clawed. Snapped her teeth like some rabid thing.
Kael didn’t care.
He had given her a thousand mercies in life. Overlooked the ambition. Forgiven the disobedience. Ignored the hunger in her eyes when she looked at his throne, and later, at Maris.
But this?
This was not the girl Valea raised.
This was rot. Bitterness given flesh. A weapon pointed at the woman he loved.
And Kael was a weapon too.
He dragged her to the edge of a scorched slope, where the earth had split from divine power, and looked down at her.
Astrielle spat at his feet, face twisted. “She’ll kill you. When she’s done needing you. They always do.”
Kael’s silver eyes didn’t blink.
“Then let her.”
And he drove his blade through her chest without hesitation.
No speeches.
No regrets.
Just the end she’d carved for herself the moment she raised a sword to his queen.
Her body slumped against the ground, eyes wide with disbelief. The light behind them went out as she rolled over the slope.
He didn’t look back because war was still roaring around him and Kael was not done.
His eyes cutting across the battlefield and then froze.
Corin’s axe glowed faintly at the edge. Not steel alone, but something more.
He and Riven, moving as one. Brutal, precise.
Corin’s axe split skulls while Riven’s blade danced with elegant cruelty.
Their wives flanked them, Serya a soft shadow turned steel, Leneth wild-eyed and bleeding from the brow but grinning like the battlefield was hers to feast on.
Riven’s movements shimmered with unnatural speed, his blade dragging light in the air.
Valea and Draeven fought back-to-back flame and steel.
Her rage burned through every movement, her daughter’s death avenged again and again in every enemy felled.
Draeven was quiet. Controlled. But the way he stood in front of her said enough — if death came, it would pass through him first. Valea’s strikes sparked flame with every swing.
And Serenya.
Gods.
The warrior of Calanthe bled from a gash at her temple, one arm dangling limp but she fought like fury incarnate.
She tore a spear from an enemy’s chest and used it to run another through.
When her knee buckled, Thauren himself surged forward to steady her, storm magic crackling around him like a warning to the world.
Serenya, wounded and breathless, still burned.
Her blade lit with a blue edge that shimmered like sea-glass. Tharen’s skin glowed.
The Wraiths, silent twins of shadow and myth, were no longer waiting in the palaces shadows.
They had joined the fray, slicing through enemy ranks with terrifying precision.
One vanished into smoke and reappeared behind a Veilspawn general, ripping out its throat.
The other painted death in silence, blood blooming across her path like a grim trail of ink. They shined in darkness.
Even the humans, once plain men of steel and grit, glowed. A soft sheen along their skin, a faint sparkle clinging to their armor. One of them cleaved through a Veilspawn with impossible force, and another healed a comrade with hands that glowed like sunlight in water.
Magic.
But not theirs.
Kael understood then.
She had touched them.
At the feast.
That moment when she walked through the hall, hand brushing shoulders, pouring wine, placing crowns of herbs on brows, kissing cheeks.
He remembered now, she had touched every single one of them.
And what he thought was ceremony…
Was sacrifice.
She’d given them power. Her power.
Splintered herself across an army.
Made herself smaller so they could rise.
Made herself vulnerable so they could survive.
His jaw clenched.
His chest ached.
But gods, of course she had.
That was Maris.
The girl who never flinched from pain.
Who stitched herself back together again and again, just to keep others from breaking.
The woman who had been made a weapon by fate, and chose to become a shield.
He looked across the glowing battlefield now and saw not just an army but a reflection of her.
She was in all of them.
As he cut through a line of undead warriors a burst of light shattered the sky.
The flare surged like a sun detonating across the Veil, sending shadows reeling and screams echoing into the clouds.
His heart stopped.
Maris.
She was burning.
Kael didn’t hesitate.
Didn’t think.
He ran.
The ground shook beneath him. Shadows lifted him like wings. His crown of obsidian reformed above his head, jagged and wild.
He didn’t stop for monsters.
He didn’t stop for gods.
He ran toward the light like it was life itself.
Because it was. Because she was.