Chapter 38 The Dinner Surprise #2
He sits as though nothing has changed. As though the last time I saw him did not end with his balls on the ground and him dragged beneath this palace.
I force myself forward, because standing still will not undo what has already been done. The feeling does not leave. It remains beneath my skin, contained only because it has to be.
The room comes into full focus as I enter, each presence registering with clarity.
Aunt Petunis stands at the head of the table, composed, expectant, her control over the moment unmistakable.
Aunt Jularin sits near her, upright and watchful, her attention already fixed on me.
Uncle Uralish remains silent, his posture relaxed, his attention fixed on the center of the table with a patience that feels practiced.
Syle sits quiet and contained, something in him drawn tight as though he already senses what has been placed before us.
Venya sits beside Hurstinal, too close to be incidental, her body angled toward him in a way that suggests alignment rather than comfort.
It is a small table, chosen for intimacy rather than ceremony, and that makes the betrayal feel closer, more precise.
Beside me, Colsar senses my tension and immediately understands. His body tightens the moment the realization reaches him. His hand remains in mine, but the pressure changes, grounding, ready, his attention fixed entirely on Hurstinal.
I turn to him. He does not look at me. I wait until he does.
I blink once. Twice. Three times.
Just play pretend. We have not used the blinks since that dinner, so many months ago, when Sevrin announced Yvara's pregnancy.
He remembers. His hand loosens slightly in mine. Not much. Enough.
I glare at Aunt Petunis.
Aunt Petunis speaks, her voice carrying easily through the room, reaching every corner without strain.
“This is what happens when a queen neglects her duties for three days,” she says, her eyes holding mine as though nothing else in the room matters.
“Betrayal. Decisions made without her. Power shifting where she is not present to hold it.”
I do not respond.
Before anything else can be said, I force myself to speak. “Lady Jularin,” I say, my attention catching on the pin at her temple, “I have never seen a stone like that.”
The light moves through it strangely, milky at first glance, then catching in a way that shifts as she turns her head, something beneath the surface that does not sit still.
Jularin’s smile deepens, pleased. “There is only one,” she says. “It was found in the mines of Yorali. A paravin stone.” A small pause. “It was a gift.”
I nudge Colsar lightly. “I would like special jewels mined from Yorali.”
Colsar’s attention lingers on it for a moment, then his mouth brushes my ear. “After what you just did to me in the corridor,” he murmurs, “I would bring you whatever you wanted. Even from Yorali.”
My cheeks burn, and I almost forget the unpleasant aura in the room.
But then Hurstinal looks up, and recognition takes hold slowly, his attention focused on me as he takes in what I have become.
His eyes move downward, drawn to the curve of my belly, to the undeniable presence of what I carry, and I watch the moment it registers, the moment it alters him.
The color leaves his face.
His attention shifts to Colsar, and this time it holds longer, something tightening in his expression as he tries to reconcile what stands before him with what he remembers.
Colsar stands beside me, his presence altering the room simply by existing within it, his robes open across his chest, the strength of him visible, carried without concealment.
I tighten my hand around his as we take our seats.
My eyes find Hurstinal's hand as we sit.
The scar tissue where his fingers once were catches the candlelight.
I smile at him pleasantly. His expression turns to fury.
Then he gathers himself, pulling composure back into place, though it sits unevenly now.
“Well,” he says, his tone smoothing into something that attempts ease and lands closer to mockery, “dog —”
The air changes. It presses in without warning, subtle at first, then not. My lungs catch on the next breath, the space in the room thinning as though something unseen has closed around it.
Hurstinal falters mid-word.
Around us, chairs scrape faintly against the floor. No one speaks. No one breathes. My chest constricts, the familiarity of Colsar’s power pressing in. I feel it before I look at him, the control of it, the precision, the way the room itself bends to his will.
Then I cough.
Colsar looks at me, and whatever he was holding in place breaks apart at once. The pressure vanishes instantly.
Hurstinal smirks. “As I was saying, dog prince, it has been nice getting to know your wi—”
Colsar moves before he can. The distance between them collapses, the shift too fast to follow in any clean sequence, and the sound that follows tears through the room, wet and final. Something strikes the table with force, an eye rolling once before coming to rest near the center.
For a moment, Colsar remains in that form, immense and unrestrained, his body filling the space in a way that forces everything else back. He turns, as though assessing what remains, and then moves again, tearing away Hurstinal’s arm and sending it crashing against the far wall.
Venya’s scream breaks through everything, high and uncontrolled, her body recoiling as she stumbles backward.
Colsar returns to himself, the transition smooth and contained, his hands moving to straighten his robes.
Hurstinal lies in a widening pool of blood.
No one moves. No one speaks. The air itself feels drawn tight, held in place by something unseen.
Then his body begins to rise. It does not happen all at once.
The movement begins deep within him, a slow pull upward that travels through muscle and bone in a way that does not follow breath or pain.
His torso lifts first, resisting the damage done to it, dragging itself upward with a persistence that feels wrong, and his head lags slightly before correcting, tilting and then aligning with a stiffness that does not belong to anything living.
Uncle Uralish exhales under his breath, the words slipping out before he can stop them. “A fucking deathmage.”
As if on cue, Hurstinal sits upright.
His eyes open, and they are wrong. Too clear, too aware for what has just happened to him.
His eyes meet mine. “I was simply here to congratulate you on the twins,” he says, and the words carry something beneath them.
“A secret,” he continues, almost amused, “you have managed to keep even from those closest to you…your healer…your uncle…and the Queen Regent herself.”
A cold line moves down my spine, my body reacting before my mind catches up. He should not know about the twins. My fingers tighten around Colsar’s hand without thought, grounding myself as the realization presses in from every side.
Hyverin said nothing.
The question does not leave me once it takes hold, circling back on itself with a persistence that feels too precise to ignore.
How would he know?
There is no surge of panic, only a tightening of focus as everything else in the room recedes, pressed outward to make space for the thought as it sharpens. My fingers close more firmly around Colsar’s hand, the contact grounding as I follow the line of it without resistance.
Outside of Hyverin, there should have been only two people who knew about the twins: Aunt Jularin and myself.
I remain still, letting the room continue as it is, voices rising and falling, movement shifting at the edges, the low current of unrest carrying on without interruption, while my attention moves elsewhere entirely.
I reach for my intunar without thinking.
Venya’s fear comes through first, uneven and spilling over itself, too loud to miss.
Uralish holds himself in check, his focus fixed on what stands in front of us, refusing to look beyond it.
Syle draws inward, contained and controlled, his attention narrowed exactly where it needs to be.
Then I find Jularin. There is no grief in her, no fracture in the calm she presents, nothing that reflects what has just taken place before us. What reaches me instead is something quieter, held close but unmistakable once I touch it.
Disappointment. It rests beneath her composure, contained and steady, as though something anticipated has failed to unfold as expected.
I lift my eyes to her.
She is already looking at me. Her expression has not changed. The softness remains, the same gentle smile she has worn from the beginning, the same quiet warmth that once made this place feel less isolating.
Now it reads differently. The word returns, insistent: twins. And she was the one who told me that Alarnan royals can weaken the wards. From experience, perhaps.
My fingers tremble as I remember what she told me just months ago. "Sometimes it is the presence of outsiders that ignites the change that is necessary.”
The pieces align too cleanly to ignore.
I smile back at her kindly, determined to still play this game until the bitter end. The moment does not linger. Whatever passes between us folds back into the room, swallowed by the tension that has not eased, the air still thick with what stands before us.
Hurstinal turns his head toward Venya, who has gone pale, her face draining of everything it once held. “No need to cry, mother. The deathmage using this body has far more purpose than I ever did.”
Enovar tears free from Syle's body without hesitation, his sword already in his hand as he steps forward and drives it through Hurstinal’s chest with force.
It does nothing.
Hurstinal’s expression lifts into something empty and wrong, and he reaches down to grasp the blade and pull it free from his own body with a slow, controlled motion before turning back toward me.
He begins to walk.
Each step lands with a certainty that does not belong to him.
Colsar shifts again.
This time, fire pours from him. It surges outward with a force that fills the room, a wave of heat and light that engulfs Hurstinal completely, and I freeze because although he had told me about this ability, seeing it released without warning was something else entirely.
The scream that follows tears through the air before breaking apart as the body that holds it begins to collapse.
The flames do not stop until there is nothing left.
Ash drifts downward, spreading across the floor, across the table, across what remains, and I stand there, my body still trying to process what I have just seen, the heat of it lingering against my skin, the knowledge of it changing something I cannot yet name.
Silence stretches across the room.