Chapter 16
SIXTEEN
The council’s voices carried faintly down the marble corridors, muted and sharp, but Jesenia kept walking without joining them, her soft sandals whispering across the polished stone as she slipped through the quieter halls of the palace.
She needed air. Distance. Silence.
Ever since the attack in the plaza, Val-Theris had been…different.
He sought her out more often, though he rarely said why.
Sometimes he’d ask her to walk the quarter with him, sometimes to sit with him in the small private library above the grand halls.
Today, though, she’d chosen to avoid him, needing space to gather her thoughts before stepping into another room where his gaze would find her and undo her without meaning to.
But when she turned the corner into the high atrium, he was already there.
Val-Theris stood by the tall arched windows, the late sun setting behind him, throwing pale gold across the edges of his wings and the marble floor beneath his boots.
He wasn’t armored, wasn’t draped in ceremony—only a simple crimson tunic, loose at the throat, and his hair unbound, falling across his brow in soft waves.
He looked like something mortal and infinite all at once.
“Val-Theris,” Jesenia said softly, startled, stopping halfway across the room.
He turned his head slightly, his gaze finding hers with the quiet inevitability of a tide drawn to shore. “Once more, you weren’t at the session today,” he said, his voice calm but carrying something softer beneath the surface.
“I…” She hesitated, drawing her shawl closer around her shoulders. His eyes caught on the wrapping around her hand. “I thought it better to let things settle first.”
“You thought it better to stay away from me,” Val-Theris said.
Jesenia stilled. “I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
The silence stretched, taut and unyielding, filling the wide atrium like a storm. She wanted to speak, to tell him the distance was for his sake, for her people’s safety, for her own sanity—but the words wouldn’t form beneath the weight of his gaze, caught in the dry cowardice of her feelings.
He took a step closer, and then another, until the warm glow of sunset caught in his shimmering feathers.
Val-Theris spoke softly, his voice low and roughened at the edges, “I haven’t stopped thinking about how close I came to losing you.”
Jesenia tried to steady herself beneath the gravity of his words, but the space between them had grown too narrow, her pulse too loud beneath her ribs.
“Val-Theris, it was hardly a close call. I think you are letting this get to you.” She paused for a moment, and then looked up at him with an ache in her chest. “You should let me go,” she said softly, almost pleading.
“You should let me fade back into the shadows. It’s safer there. ”
“No.”
His voice was quiet, but there was steel in it, something unmovable, absolute.
He stopped close enough now that she could feel the faint heat radiating from him, close enough that the soft arch of his wing brushed against her shawl as though drawn in by her elegant gravity.
“I’ve been fighting this,” Val-Theris said, the confession breaking from him in a voice quieter than breath. “Every day. Every time you look at me. Every time I hear your name on someone else’s tongue.”
Her hands trembled faintly where they clutched the folds of fabric draped across her shoulders, her heart stuttering against her ribs. She breathed his name, unsure and aching.
His hand rose slowly, hesitating just before it reached her face, his fingertips hovering like a promise he’d sworn to himself never to make.
“I can’t fight it anymore,” he whispered.
Jesenia’s breath caught, the air between them collapsing into something smaller, denser, electric.
And then his hand touched her cheek.
It was soft, the barest graze of fingertips along her skin, but it sent her pulse surging, the world narrowing until there was nothing left but the sound of his breath and the weight of his gaze.
Then Val-Theris lowered his forehead until it brushed hers, his thumb stroking faintly along her jaw, the heat of him grounding her while something in his chest trembled.
“Jesenia,” he said softly, her name breaking against his lips like prayer.
She answered without words, her hand rising to his wrist, her fingertips pressing lightly against his pulse where it thundered beneath her skin.
The kiss…simply happened. The tension broke, and everything that had been building, pulling them together, finally collided.
His lips brushed hers, soft and unsteady, almost as though he feared the world might shatter if he pressed harder.
It was quiet and fragile. And in that fragile infinity, Val-Theris saw it all fall apart.
The touch of her lips sent light flooding into his mind—but it wasn’t solace. Flashes of imagery struck sharp and brutal.
His own blood staining broken stone. Smoke rolling through Solmiris’s streets. Jesenia on her knees, her hands red where they clutched his feathers, her mouth shaping his name. A blade plunging deep beneath ribs, light scattering through his wings like glass shattering in sunlight.
And then there was silence. But it wasn’t the silence of death; not that cold certainty of the end. It was worse than that, but he could not put a name to the dreadful feeling—at least not yet.
He broke the kiss sharply, his breath ragged, his hand tightening faintly against her jaw before he forced himself to let go. He touched his face and felt the smear of blood from his nose paint his fingers.
Jesenia stepped back a half-pace, her brows furrowing and her voice uneven. When she saw the blood, she reached out for him again. “Val-Theris?”
His chest heaved once, twice, his wings trembling faintly behind him as though from strain, but when he looked at her again, his expression had softened into something unbearably tender.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, though his voice carried the weight of too many meanings. “I just…couldn’t wait anymore.”
“You’re bleeding,” she said softly, brushing away the blood with her own fingers.
And though he didn’t say it, though she didn’t know it, the truth burned behind his ribs like fire. He wasn’t afraid of loving her anymore. He was afraid of running out of time.
The world changed after their kiss.
Not visibly. Not to anyone else. But Jesenia felt it in the spaces where silence hung heavier than before, where the air between her and Val-Theris seemed to hum with something alive.
He had not spoken of it. Neither had she. But he came to her more often now, seeking her presence without explanation, as though drawn by something he couldn’t name.
Three days had passed since the attempt in the plaza when he found her in the gardens just before dusk, perched on the low stone wall beside a bed of white blossoms. The wind tangled faint threads of her shawl as she glanced up, startled, when he stepped into view.
“Val-Theris,” Jesenia said softly, rising automatically, smoothing the folds of her skirts.
“You don’t have to stand,” he murmured, his voice quiet, the late light catching faint gold along the edges of his feathers. “Stay.”
She hesitated but sat again, her fingers brushing petals from her lap. “I thought you’d be with the council,” she said after a pause, keeping her gaze on the darkening sky.
“I was,” Val-Theris said simply. “I left.”
Her brows knit faintly as she looked up at him. “You left a council meeting?”
“I had no interest in listening to what they had to say.”
It was the truth. They had said her name too many times, and he grew tired of the bickering. Everything now was a race against time he wasn’t sure he had to spare, and those moments in the chamber seemed so insignificant now.
Jesenia glanced at him sharply, but his expression was unreadable. “You’ve…changed,” Jesenia whispered finally, hesitant but steady. “Since the attack.”
Since the kiss, she wanted to add, but didn’t have the strength to. His lips parted slightly, but he said nothing, his silence speaking louder than denial could.
“It feels like you’re trying to be…closer,” she said, her voice catching faintly on the word, “but somehow you only seem farther away.”
Val-Theris’s gaze softened then, his jaw shifting slightly as he lowered himself onto the stone wall beside her.
“I see things differently now. The time I have. The choices I make and the consequences that follow.”
Jesenia turned toward him slightly, her brows knitting faintly. “I don’t understand.”
“I know,” Val-Theris whispered, his gaze fixed on the slow darkening horizon. “And you don’t have to. Just…stay.”
For a long moment, they sat in silence, and then Val-Theris reached out, slow and deliberate, letting his hand rest atop hers where it lay in the folds of her skirt. Jesenia stilled, her breath catching sharply at the warmth of his touch, her pulse tripping unevenly beneath her ribs.
“You’re holding something back,” she said finally, her voice low but steady, turning her hand slightly beneath his until their fingers touched along the edges.
“Yes,” he admitted softly. “But not this. I don’t want to hide this.”
His thumb brushed faintly along the inside of her wrist, his touch feather-light, reverent.
When Jesenia glanced up, she found his gaze fixed on her.
Steady, burning. Unguarded in a way she’d never seen before.
Her lips parted, but before she could speak, a sharp rustle of movement drew her gaze—a servant passing the archway, pausing just a breath too long, their expression unreadable before hurrying away.
Val-Theris’s hand slipped from hers slowly, his composure sliding back into place like an assassin’s blade sheathed in silence.
Jesenia’s heart ached with confusion and rejection. Just moments before, he claimed he did not want to hide, but closed off the moment someone saw him with her.
His hand lingered close to hers on the stone, so near their shadows almost touched in the fading sun. They both knew what it meant for them to care for each other. The council would grow bolder. The citizens more divided. The knives would sharpen, waiting for the first slip, the first weakness.
Neither of them were strong enough to let go, nor were they brave enough to face it without the other.
And Jesenia did not know the truth of what haunted him. She didn’t know that every time Val-Theris looked at her now, he wasn’t seeing possibility.
Only their tragedy.
Val-Theris left in silence, only pressing their foreheads together once before standing and walking away. When he was gone, the quiet of the courtyard pressed into her like a weight on her chest she was unable to lift.
She continued to sit at the edge of the fountain well into the night, her shawl pulled loosely around her shoulders, staring at the mirrored surface of the water.
“Your voice carries further than you think.”
Jesenia startled slightly, turning to see Rohannes leaning against a carved stone column nearby, his helm tucked beneath one arm, his crimson-plumed crest billowing slightly in the breeze.
“I didn’t hear you approach,” she said softly, gathering her composure.
“You weren’t meant to,” he replied, crossing the courtyard until he stood opposite her, his moonlit shadow falling across the tiles. His armor caught faint glints of gold where the light broke between the trees, but his expression was unreadable.
“You’ve unsettled the council,” Rohannes said simply.
Jesenia smoothed her shawl, her gaze falling to the slow curl of water against stone. “They resent me for speaking,” she said. “And my people will resent me if nothing comes of it. Either way, I lose.”
Rohannes tilted his head slightly, studying her. “And yet you speak anyway.”
Jesenia met his eyes steadily, refusing to shrink beneath the gaze of him. “I cannot be silent while my people starve.”
For a moment, neither of them spoke, the sound of trickling water filling the space between them. Then Rohannes stepped closer, resting his helm lightly on the low stone ledge of the fountain.
“Do you believe he favors your people above Solmiris?” he asked, voice low, even.
Jesenia hesitated, fingers curling faintly into her shawl.
“I don’t know what I believe,” she admitted.
“I think he wants my people to thrive here, but won’t use his authority to make it so.
I think he sees too much, tries to carry too much.
No matter what he decides, someone suffers for it.
He is consumed by trying to determine whose suffering is easier to swallow than the other. ”
Rohannes studied her for a long moment, his dark green eyes narrowing faintly as if weighing his words. When he finally spoke, his voice was quieter than before, lower, almost conspiratorial.
“You should trust him.”
Jesenia blinked, surprised by the firmness of it. “Trust him?”
“Yes,” Rohannes said softly. “Even when you don’t understand him. Especially then.”
Her brows drew together faintly. “You speak as if you know something I don’t.”
“I know my king,” he replied simply, leaning one hand against the fountain’s edge, his armor whispering faintly as he shifted closer.
“I was a soldier of Korvath, you know. I defected and came to him, ashamed of what I had done in his brother’s name.
He never held it against me, and I’ve earned my place at his side.
I’ve stood by him through many things and watched helplessly as that crown weighed him down.
I know this with certainty, Jesenia: every choice he makes costs him something. Sometimes everything.”
She looked at him, quiet, searching his face for something he wasn’t saying.
And then, softly, she asked, “How can I trust him when I don’t know his heart?”
Rohannes held her gaze for a long moment, the silence stretching thin between them before he finally spoke, his words careful:
“You should not mistake his silence for indifference. You are not wrong to care for your people, but Val-Theris carries burdens you cannot see.”
Jesenia stilled, her breath catching faintly at the weight in his tone. “You speak of his foresight.”
Before she could press further, Rohannes pushed off from the fountain’s edge, sliding his helm back beneath his arm. He paused at the threshold, his back half-turned, his voice carrying softer now, almost as if to himself.
“Sometimes, Lady Jesenia, the path ahead isn’t chosen. It’s endured.”