Chapter 63 The Broken Chair
The Broken Chair
The corridors leading to the throne wing are crowded but hushed.
Courtiers step aside as I pass, their attention lingering a moment too long before dropping away.
A captain of the guard bows, his expression set and careful.
I feel it in the way they hold themselves, a restraint drawn too tight, as if something has been pressed down and is waiting to break free.
The Threns did not merely kill commoners in a tavern. They revealed vulnerability.
At the entrance to the throne chamber, I glimpse Colsar ahead of me, still speaking with Arthen and another advisor. He stands composed, listening rather than commanding, though the effect is the same. When he turns and sees me, the conversation ends without needing dismissal.
A voice carries from within the chamber. “Out. All of you,” Sevrin says, and movement follows at once, chairs scraping as advisors emerge with strained composure while the guards step back from the doors instead of holding them. No one lingers.
Colsar reaches me then and takes my hand, his grip firm. I tighten my hold as the doors open. We step inside together, and they close behind us with a muted thud, sealing the chamber and leaving no one within but the three of us.
Sevrin stands near the long council table rather than upon the throne, sleeves rolled, dark hair disordered as if he has been running his hands through it for hours. Maps are scattered across the wood. A goblet lies on its side, wine bleeding slowly toward the edge.
The chair flies before either of us can speak. It strikes the far wall and shatters, splintering into a spray of wood that skids across the floor.
“Where the fuck were you?” The words crack through the chamber.
Colsar does not flinch. “With my wife.”
Sevrin laughs once, rough and humorless, and grips the edge of the table hard enough that the maps crumple beneath his fingers.
“I needed you here,” he says. “The Threns breach our borders, they slaughter half a tavern in my capital, they nearly drag a Princess into the night, and you disappear.”
His eyes cut to me briefly, burning with something feral and protective. “You were attacked,” he says to me, voice dropping only a degree. “And he takes you on a fucking holiday.”
Colsar steps half a pace forward, not shielding me, but aligning himself closer. “I secured her,” he says evenly.
“You indulged yourself,” Sevrin snaps back.
The room feels smaller than it should.
“You are heir to my armies,” Sevrin continues, pacing now, barely restrained. “You are my blade when diplomacy fails. And you decide this is the week you want to play husband in the countryside?”
Colsar’s expression remains composed, but something in the air around him tightens. “She was targeted,” he says. “They knew who she was. They saw my sigil.”
“Yes,” Sevrin fires back. “Which means they are escalating.” He lifts his goblet and hurls it across the room. “And I cannot tell if it is the Thren King or Teorin who is fucking with me.”
The goblet shatters against the far wall, wine streaking down the stone as his hand drags across the table, sending a stack of parchment scattering to the floor.
“They are not hunting peasants for sport anymore,” he continues.
“They are probing us. Testing our response. And when my response required you, you were gone.”
I feel the tremor beneath the anger. It is not only fury. It is fear, forced into rage because fear has nowhere else to go.
“You think I do not know what almost happened?” Colsar asks quietly.
Sevrin stops pacing, and for a moment, neither brother moves.
“You nearly lost her,” Sevrin says, his voice matter-of-fact.
He drags a hand down his face and lets out a short breath that almost resembles a laugh.
“The borders burn, the Baron sends letters demanding to know why his pregnant daughter bled for another woman, and then suddenly word arrives that he has retired to Borsa with his coffers for an extended stay.” He looks at Colsar.
“All while you vanish into the countryside.”
The mention of Yvara’s blood threads through the chamber like a second accusation. I lift my chin and say nothing, my hand tightening around Colsar’s as a quiet relief slips beneath it. Sevrin believes it. The holiday, the injury to pride, the retreat to Borsa.
“You should not have left,” he says to Colsar, though the rebuke does not belong to him alone. It reaches for me as well, folded into the reprimand like a quieter indictment.
“She needed distance,” Colsar replies, and there is no apology in it. “You sealed this palace over Yvara’s bracelet while she bled in the street. Perhaps there would have been more patrols that night if half the capital had not been confined to indulge your favored distraction.”
A faint pulse moves through Sevrin’s jaw, but he does not rise to the insult. Instead he descends from the dais, each step measured, until he stands near enough that I can feel the heat of his presence.
“There are rumors,” he says, and his voice alters as it turns toward me. “About you, dear Princess.”
“Oh?”
“They say you survived a Thren blade because you are something other than mortal.”
I do not dignify that with a response.
He watches me in silence, weighing what he sees against what he has been told. At last he exhales.
“It is useful,” he admits. “The way they look at you now. They see strength. They see resilience. They see someone who was dragged through blood and still returned to stand.”
He steps down from the dais then, closing the distance between us. “You hold something that could stabilize this kingdom,” he says. He turns to Colsar. “And yet you behave as though I did not give her to you.”
Colsar’s voice cools. “She is not something.”
Sevrin’s expression darkens briefly, but he does not argue the phrasing. He returns to the dais, ascends one step, then another, and faces us from a higher vantage.
“I will marry your wife.”
The words fall with terrible clarity, and the chamber seems to draw inward around them. “Tonight,” he adds. “Without delay.” He turns to me. “A dress has already been prepared. It will suit you. The annulment papers are being drawn and will be ready for your signatures beforehand.”
Colsar remains where he stands, his stillness far more ominous than movement. “Explain yourself.”
Sevrin studies him from above, not flustered, not ashamed. “You cast her aside when she first came here,” he says. “You even paraded another woman through these halls. You treated the union as a burden placed upon you.”
His voice tightens, edged with memory. “While you were busy proving how little you cared, I was the one who noticed her. The way she held herself in rooms that tried to shrink her. The way she endured humiliation without breaking.”
His attention drifts to me then, not briefly, but with open appraisal. “If I had understood what stood in front of me, I would not have handed her to you.”
“And what is it you think stands in front of you, Majesty?” I ask, trying to hide the weariness in my tone.
His answer comes without pause. “Beautiful. Stubborn. Powerful.”
He descends a single step, then turns to Colsar. “She bears the Mark of Forizan. And now she has survived a Thren attack, and the people have already begun to favor her. They see in her something rare, something they believe the crown itself has lacked.”
He smiles faintly, though there is no humor in it. “If I am to secure a dynasty that does not fracture at the first sign of weakness, I require more than luck. I require strength. I require heirs who command loyalty before they can speak.”
“Yvara is with child,” I say.
“I'm aware,” he replies evenly. “But I will not stake the future of this throne on a single pregnancy.”
His eyes return to Colsar. “She would make an extraordinary queen. You know it as well as I do. And it is wasted on a man who will never sit where I stand.”
Colsar does not rise to the insult.
“We need this done quickly, since I am sure your tryst in the countryside may have resulted in conception. I would prefer the marriage secured before any question of pregnancy complicates matters,” Sevrin continues. “There will be whispers, but they will fade.”
“You assume I would agree,” Colsar says.
“I assume,” Sevrin replies, “that you did not value her when she was given to you. You prefer solitude. You prefer distance. This would correct an error. This marriage should never have happened.”
His voice softens as he looks at me again, and that softness is far more dangerous than anger. “No matter what I attempt, I find myself drawn back to you,” he says quietly. “When you were taken from this palace, I did not sleep. When you nearly died, I realized how much I would lose.”
He steps closer, closing the last of the distance between us.
“I promised to help you understand your power. That promise remains. With me, you would have every resource this crown can command.” He takes another step.
“I would be attentive,” he says. “Affectionate, even.” A faint smile touches his mouth.
“And I assure you, a feeder does not leave his queen wanting.”
For one suspended moment, it seems possible that Colsar might answer him with words.
Instead, the air around Sevrin tightens without warning, compressing so violently that the King’s body lifts and slams backward into the carved wall behind the throne.
Gold rattles in its settings. A chair overturns.
The tapestries tremble as if something unseen has struck the room itself.
Sevrin’s boots scrape against the floor, useless against the invisible force holding him there. His throat strains against pressure that is not a hand but something far more humiliating. The very breath in his lungs refuses him.