37. Chapter 37 #2
"Resurrect my dead son? Yes. Quite the story, isn't it?
" His eyes glittered. "The prince who sacrificed himself for his kingdom, returned from the grave to heal what was broken.
The people will weep. They'll fall to their knees.
They'll believe, because they need to believe, that the gods haven't abandoned them. "
He'd been ahead of me the whole time. Every step. Every move.
"You think you've exposed a secret?" The King tilted his head. "You've merely announced the main event."
A volatile snarl ripped from my core.
No.
I lifted my hand.
The old magic answered before I'd even finished the thought—rising from somewhere deeper than the Marks, stronger than Suppressors. I felt it surge through my veins, felt the air bend to my will, and pulled.
Metal shrieked. Leather grips ripped from palms as fifty spears launched upward in a violent, reverse rain.
They slammed into the vaulted ceiling with a crack that shook the floorboards.
Stone dust drifted down like snow, the shafts quivering overhead—an inverted armory waiting for the order to drop.
The court had gone tomb-silent. Guards stared at their empty hands.
Eryndor pushed himself to his knees. His gaze locked on the forest of steel blooming overhead. Then me.
My blood sang with the hum of absolute authority vibrating in my fingertips.
The King tilted his head. He studied the quivering shafts, then lowered his gaze to me. His lips twitched—a mild, academic interest.
"Even if I don't have your secret," I said, "I have power you don't. Magic outside the Marks. Magic you can't suppress, can't control, can't—"
The King raised one finger.
And the world went black. Nothing but absence was left.
No sight. No sound. No smell. No sensation of the floor beneath my feet or the air against my skin. I existed in a void so complete that I couldn't tell if I was standing or falling, breathing or drowning.
I tried to scream. Couldn't find my breath.
Tried to move. Couldn't find my limbs.
Just void. Endless. Suffocating. Swallowing me whole—
The world slammed back.
Color. Sound. Weight. I staggered, gasping, hand clutching my chest. Bile flooded my mouth.
Three seconds. Maybe less.
The King hadn't moved. His finger still raised. Casual. Like swatting a fly.
"Did you think," he said softly, "that I haven't spent centuries preparing for someone like you?"
My legs wouldn't stop shaking.
"The old magic." He lowered his hand. Resumed his slow pacing, stepping over guards still scrambling for weapons embedded in the ceiling. "Yes. Impressive. Unbound by the usual rules."
He stopped in front of me.
"But power without knowledge is just noise, girl.
A child banging on a drum." His eyes were cold, examining me not as a person, but as an equation that refused to balance.
"I have been studying those techniques for decades.
I felt the moment you touched them. Felt the Veil shiver when your power woke. "
The shaking wouldn't stop.
"You have raw strength," he acknowledged. "Remarkable raw strength. But I have refinement. Precision. And—" He smiled. "—a great deal of practice breaking things that think they cannot be broken."
His gaze landed on Maxx and Serenya.
"Your allies?" He turned his attention behind me, dismissing what I'd just done like it was a parlor trick. "The burnt-out seer and the glamour artist?" He gestured at Maxx and Serenya. "Impressive company for a tavern brawl. Less so for a throne room."
"We got in, didn't we?" Maxx's voice was sharp. Defiant. But I heard the tremor beneath it. He'd seen what happened to me. "Your guards didn't exactly put up a fight."
The King's smile widened.
"Yes. You did get in. Remarkably easily, in fact." He paused. Let the implication settle. "Almost as if someone wanted you to."
The doors. The scattered guards. The chaos I'd wrought.
Too easy. It was all too easy.
"Did you think I didn't know where my own son was?" The King's voice dropped. Soft now. Almost gentle. "Did you think I wasn't watching every step of your journey? Every night you spent learning magic you barely understand?"
He stopped three feet away. Close enough to see the threads of silver in his beard, the slight yellowing of his teeth.
"You haven't crashed my party, girl."
My lungs forgot how to work.
"You are the guest of honor."
Behind me, Maxx shifted. Serenya's breathing quickened.
"You simply arrived sooner than I could have dared dream. But this—" He gestured at the ruined doors, the scattered guards, the chaos I'd wrought. "This works just as well."
No.
I'd blown the doors off the hinges. Scattered his guards. Walked in like the storm I thought I was.
And he was smiling.
The King stepped closer, eyes narrowing.
"Interesting," he murmured.
He prowled around me. His gaze kept drifting to my Marks and where the tether hummed.
"My son’s SoulBinder Mark," he said, almost to himself. "I always wondered when it would latch onto a willing host permanently."
The air went cold.
Eryndor's head snapped to something behind me and he lunged. Bound, bleeding, still on his knees on the dais—he threw himself sideways off the platform. Not toward me. Not toward his father.
Toward Serenya.
He hit the marble wrong, shoulder-first, the impact jarring a grunt out of him. But he was already rolling, already positioning his body between her and the guards who'd been drifting close—the ones I hadn't noticed, the ones he had been tracking since the first sword fell.
A guard's boot caught him in the ribs. He folded around it. Made no sound.
"Grab her," the King ordered.
I raised my weapons—
But two guards seized Serenya.
She screamed. Thrashed. One wrenched her head back by the hair. The other pressed a blade to her throat—close enough to dimple the skin.
Maxx lunged—pure fae reflex—and Dreadscale caught him.
One arm across Maxx's chest, hauling him back before his momentum could get Serenya killed.
Maxx fought the hold for a single, terrible second, his face wrenched in terror.
Then Dreadscale's grip tightened—calm and certain—and Maxx went still.
His eyes never left the blade at her throat.
Behind me, the sound of rope dragging on stone.
Eryndor—hauled back by his bindings, knees leaving red smears on the marble—was still straining toward her.
Not toward me. Not toward his father's voice.
Toward the blade at Serenya's neck, like a chained animal that hadn't learned yet that the chain was shorter than the want.
A second boot landed. His face hit the stone. He stayed down.
"Be still."
The King's voice cracked like a whip. I froze.
"It's just a test." His tone was almost bored. "Let me confirm what I suspect, and she goes free. Unharmed."
"If you hurt her—"
"I won't need to. If you cooperate."
I didn't move.
"Good." He nodded to a guard beside me. "Take her to the alcove. Slowly."
A hand closed around my arm. Yanked me backward.
"Wait—"
The guard dragged me toward the far wall. Ten feet. Twenty. The tether in my chest pulled taut—a physical sensation, like a rope being stretched to its limit.
Thirty feet.
Pain shot through the tether as Eryndor convulsed on the floor, hands clawing at his chest, a strangled gasp escaping him. It mirrored through my own body—fire ripping down my spine, and glass exploding in my lungs.
"Stop!" I fought against the guard's grip, my legs buckling beneath me. "You're hurting—"
"Forty feet," the King observed calmly. "Interesting threshold."
Fifty feet. Eryndor's back arched off the marble, blood trickling from his nose. I could taste copper flooding my own mouth—the tether screaming between us, every inch of distance flaying the nerves raw.
The world was narrowing, darkening at the edges.
"Please—"
The King raised a hand, and the guard stopped.
I wrenched free and ran back toward Eryndor without thinking, dropping to my knees beside him. The moment I was close—twenty feet, fifteen, ten—his breathing eased. The tension drained from his body, and the tether settled like it had never been stretched at all.
I looked up at the King. His expression was unreadable.
"As I feared," he said quietly. "They can't be separated."
He gestured. The guards released Serenya—she stumbled into Maxx's arms, gasping, hand clutched to her throat.