Chapter 63 The Broken Chair #2
Colsar approaches slowly. There is no wildness in him. No loss of control. He looks measured, almost serene, as though this is the most natural thing in the world. “I will pretend,” he says evenly, “that this conversation never occurred. For the sake of this kingdom.”
Sevrin’s eyes turn crimson and his canines begin to jut out of his mouth, but he cannot draw in enough air to speak.
“Be clear on this,” Colsar says, his voice smooth.
“You will never have her.” He tips his head slightly.
“She is mine.” A faint smile touches his mouth.
“Dog or not, there are few more powerful than me. Not even you.” He steps closer, almost conversational.
“Let me remind you, dear brother, that you sit on that throne because of me.” A pause. “And you do not touch what is mine.”
I try to hold onto that thought. What does Colsar have to do with Sevrin sitting on the throne?
Colsar's voice lowers. “Perhaps I did not want her before. Perhaps I was a fool.” The words do not sound like regret so much as recognition, as though he is naming an earlier version of himself and dismissing it.
“But now we are bound,” he continues, the air tightening further around his brother.
There is no heat in the next declaration, only certainty.
“She will never be your wife.” A quiet, incredulous laugh leaves him then, edged with something darker.
“I understand why you are upset. Truly. You have lost out.”
For an instant his expression alters, and something older than rivalry surfaces there, something weary and long endured.
“We have spent our lives as nothing more than pieces arranged for other hands,” he says.
“For our parents. For this throne. For a realm that has always demanded and rarely given. Everyone wants something from us.”
He steps closer, and the invisible pressure around Sevrin deepens until the torches along the wall tremble in their brackets. “So here it is,” Colsar says quietly. “If you believe you can win this war without me, then I will take my wife and we will leave.”
The chamber falls into a silence. “But consider this carefully,” he adds, his tone softening rather than rising. “Wherever we go, loyalty will follow.”
At first, Sevrin seems on the brink of collapse, his body straining against the force closing around his throat.
Then something within him hardens. The crimson in his eyes deepens, the floor beneath him shuddering with a low, uneven tremor.
The air itself seems to recoil as he pushes back.
Inch by inch he forces himself upright, blood slipping from his nose, his frame trembling yet unyielding as he drives through the pressure by sheer will alone.
When he finally drags in a full breath, it is ragged but defiant. “I am the one,” he gasps, “who always wanted company. Companionship. Not you.”
Colsar explodes. “You have it,” he roars. “You have a palace full of people. Advisors. Courtiers. Willing women.” His voice cracks through the chamber like thunder. “Why try to take what is mine?”
Sevrin straightens fully now, stepping forward through the remnants of Colsar’s power as if pushing through a current.
“I wish I could tell you it was her mark,” he says, dragging the blood from his lip with the back of his hand and glancing at the stain as though it belongs to someone else.
“Or politics. Or legacy. Something rational. Something a king could defend.”
His voice lowers. “But the truth is that I do not know.” He looks at me then, and there is nothing calculated in it, nothing strategic. Only an intensity that feels older than this room. “I only know that she cannot be taken from me.”
Colsar lets out a quiet laugh that carries no humor in it at all. It is the sound of disbelief curdling into fury.
“She is not—”
I move before he can finish, stepping into him and seizing his face in my hands as I kiss him.
The kiss is unrestrained, stripped of court polish and diplomacy.
My fingers sink into his hair and I press my mouth to his as if the throne, the crown, the fury in the room have already dissolved into nothing.
He freezes for half a moment, and then his hands close around me as though he has been waiting for permission to claim what is already his.
He answers me with equal force, his mouth claiming mine in a way that leaves no room for doubt.
The kiss deepens, not for spectacle, not for defiance alone, but because something in him refuses to be divided in front of his brother.
I am aware of the King watching. Of the violence that has not yet cooled in the air. Of the broken table, the throne, the blood at his mouth. And yet none of it matters, only my overwhelming need to be consumed by the only person I would ever choose.
Let him see.
Behind us, Sevrin wipes blood from his nose. “I command you to stop,” he says hoarsely.
Colsar pulls back just enough to look at me. “Are you with me?” he asks under his breath.
“Always.”
That is all he needs. He lifts me effortlessly and carries me from the throne chamber into the adjoining council room, leaving the King standing amid overturned furniture and pride.
“Everyone out,” he commands.
The guards do not hesitate.