Chapter Thirty-Three #3
“Alright,” she said softly. “But breathe smart, okay? Not dramatic.”
I gave a laugh that didn’t reach my chest. “Dramatic? Me? I think you’ve confused me with my brother.”
“You have a terrible card face,” she said, echoing Gideon’s words the day before.
Then she let me go.
I didn’t head toward the gardens. Not the stables. Not even the chapel.
Instead, I wound my way through the lower halls, each footstep louder than the last in the hush of polished marble. I passed servants who barely looked up. A figure in soft shoes and gray lace. No one is worth stopping.
I reached Kaelen’s wing as the bells chimed once overhead, marking the hour like a warning.
My palms were slick, my heart in my throat.
I raised a hand to knock, but the door opened before I touched it.
Kaelen stood in the doorway, his silhouette outlined by velvet and firelight. A flicker of surprise crossed his face, quickly replaced by a satisfied smile.
“Well, well,” he said, his smile slow and practiced. “Are you finally going to sign the contract? Or hoping to get a round in before the wedding?”
His eyes glanced over me, uninvited. “Because I’m not opposed either way.”
“I…I—” I cleared my throat, trying to shove down my trembling voice. “I need to speak with you.”
Kaelen stepped aside with a sweep of his hand, and I entered before I lost my nerve.
The heat hit me first.
Not the comforting warmth of a hearth, but a suffocating heat, heavy and close. The fireplace crackled too high for morning, and the drapes were drawn against the sun. The walls pressed in with velvet and stone, and something in the air smelled sweet, like wine gone sour.
The soft click of the door latch was a period on the suffocating quiet that filled the room. Kaelen strode past me, his attention already elsewhere, and positioned himself at the far end of the solar, methodically adjusting his cuff.
“I was wondering if you’d finally come to your senses,” he said casually.
My stomach twisted into a cold, hard knot. My feet were fixed to the ground just inside the doorway, fingers tightening around the forbidden letters hidden in my sleeve like they might anchor me.
“I want to know,” I said, my voice quiet but sharp, “why you ordered it. Why you wanted me dead in the forest.”
He turned slowly, his smile spreading like oil over water.
“Wynessa,” he murmured, his voice a low, poisonous drawl. “Do you truly think you were ever meant to arrive here?”
I stiffened.
He laughed—a sharp, humorless sound—and stepped forward.
“You were never a bride. You were a message. The quiet one, the obedient one, the girl they swore would bend like reedgrass in the wind. Easy to lose in the Wildervale. Easy to blame on wolves, or raiders, or a vanished escort. A runaway princess. A broken treaty. And war would come neatly wrapped.”
My chest tightened. “You tried to kill me.”
He stopped close enough that the gleam of his rings caught the light between us, his smile thin as a blade. “I tried to save us all the tedium. Elyrien is weak—fields and farmers playing at crowns. I wanted its end.”
His hand rose suddenly, tucking a loose strand of hair behind my ear. I flinched at the touch, bile rising in my throat.
“But my scouts saw the way the trees bent toward you,” he whispered. “The way the forest failed to claim you. The way your magic hums, even when you don’t mean it to. The wilds love you, Wynessa. That’s what ruined it.”
I stumbled back until my shoulders struck the door.
He only smiled wider, calm as still water. “But I adapt. The forest failed. The mercenaries hesitated. You survived. So now”—his gaze raked over me, heavy, possessive—“you’ll serve another purpose.”
His hand dropped to my arm. His tone shifted; it was lower and more intimate.
“You know, most girls go mad when fire touches them. But you…you glowed. You were always intended for more. And now I get to keep you. So why not make it official?”
He moved to the desk.
There it was. The contract. Waiting. A fresh ink pot and quill beside it.
“Sign it,” he said, like it was nothing. Like it wasn’t my life laid bare on that page.
Suddenly, I became immobilized, unable to budge.
Kaelen looked up at me and narrowed his eyes. Then he smiled. Not a kind or amused smile, but one of possession.
“Don’t tell me you’re nervous. Is it the wedding night?” he asked, stepping closer again. “You can tell me, you know. I like innocent things. For a little while. Are you still a virgin, Wynessa?”
I gave him a blank look.
His eyes darkened with amusement. “We can fix that, you know. Sooner rather than later. Make this whole union feel more official.”
He reached out, hand gliding down my arm and settling on my hip.
“I hear fire-women are warm all over.”
I recoiled, stumbling back. My arm knocked the glass, and it tipped, shattering on the floor. Wine spilled like blood across the marble.
He caught my wrist before I could pull away.
“Don’t run,” he murmured. “You’ll make it worse.”
His grip was bruising and practiced. I could feel every ounce of control in his fingers.
“You can scream,” he said again. “But no one here will help you. Not in my kingdom.”
“Don’t touch me.”
He laughed. “Not yet? Fine. But you’ll learn. The crown doesn’t make requests; it makes heirs.”
My breath started to come faster now. I stepped backward, and the papers in my sleeve shifted.
Kaelen’s eyes dropped. Then narrowed.
“What are you hiding?”
I shifted my body away from him.
But he lunged at me.
In one brutal motion, his hand closed around my throat and pushed me against the desk. Hard enough to choke and sufficient to make my breath catch. Enough to remind me how little space there was between power and pain.
“You will sign,” he growled. “Because if you don’t, I’ll tell the entire court what you are.”
He leaned closer, brushing my nose with his, the anger in his eyes burning.
“I’ll say you’re cursed and that the fire inside you is false. A stolen gift. Do you know what they do to false-gifted here, my little peace offering?”
I tried to pull free. But he held fast.
“They hang them. Strip them bare in the square. Burn them, like that sweet little priestess you passed on the road. I’ll put your pretty head on a pike and call it justice.”
Tears slipped down my cheeks.
“You’re not a queen,” he hissed. “You’re a fragile little flame flickering in my hand. And I’ll snuff you out if you ever try to burn me.”
He let go.
I stumbled, coughing and gasping.
He shoved the quill into my hand. Pointed.
“Sign it.”
I looked at the page. My vision blurred.
“Do it.”
My hand shaked uncontrollably.
His voice shattered the air.
“SIGN IT!”
His fist crashed against the desk, and behind me, crystal shattered like ice beneath a boot.
I jumped and I cried out. Hot, quiet tears rolled down my cheeks as my hand moved with trembling fingers. My name came out jagged, like a wound bleeding across the page.
A crooked line. A shaking hand. The name Wynessa of Elyrien was scrawled in ink and grief.
Before I could step back, Kaelen dipped a thin, black-handled spoon into the flame, letting crimson wax melt until it shimmered like blood.
With eerie precision, he tilted the spoon over the parchment.
The molten wax dripped in a slow, deliberate stream beside my name, thick and glossy, a perfect circle blooming across the page like a wound.
The scent of it rose; sharp and sweet like burning rose oil.
Then he pressed the seal down hard.
The hiss of cooling wax filled the silence, the sigil of Caerthaine stamping itself into the soft red. He held his terrifying gaze, a relentless pressure against me, whilst pinning me between his body and the solid barrier of the desk.
When he lifted it, the mark remained. It was clean, deep, and final.
Kaelen’s lips curved, a slow, possessive gesture like a man who’d claimed a kingdom.
He reached down, gently wiping a tear from my cheek with his thumb.
“There now,” he said softly. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
My head bowed, and a fresh wave of tears slipped from my eyes, falling silently to the floor.
The wax seal still gleamed beside my signature. My name burned into the page like a grave marker. The ring he’d pressed into it still sat cooling on the table, the sigil of Caerthaine smirking up at me in silver relief.
Kaelen leaned in closer now, one hand braced beside me on the desk, and the other trailing too close down my arm. I couldn’t move. I wasn’t sure my legs would hold me.
“You did well,” he spoke softly, the words a calm but undeniable command. “You’ll be beautiful in the palace portraits. A touch of fire in your eyes. Enough to keep them guessing.”
His hand slipped lower, brushing the curve of my waist, then resting deliberately above my hip. His breath grazed my ear.
“I’m tempted to keep you here,” he whispered. “Wouldn’t that make the gods blush?”
I flinched and turned my face away, barely breathing. “I’d like to go now.”
He laughed softly out of amusement.
Instead of stepping aside, he reached out and picked up a lock of my hair, twisting it between his fingers. “They said healers made good lovers. Gentle hands. Open hearts. Easy to control.” His smile curved wider. “We’ll see, won’t we?”
I swallowed a sob. “Please.” My eyes fixated on the door.
That word caught him, not in pity, but pleasure. Slowly, leisurely, he stepped aside.
“Go on then,” he said. “Run while you still think you can.”
I didn’t thank him. Didn’t bow. I turned and bolted, skirts tangling at my knees as I wrenched the door open and nearly collided with a startled servant. I didn’t stop to explain.
The marble corridors blurred as I ran, tears slipping past my lashes, unacknowledged.
No one stopped me. No one followed.
My lungs burned by the time they reached my chambers, a frantic, desperate hunger for air. My hands were not just shaking, but quivering uncontrollably, and every beat of my heart was a sharp, jabbing ache in my chest.
The door shut behind me like a blade sheathed. I didn’t light a candle.
I just stood in the center of the cold, perfumed room, shivering under the suffocating weight of it all. My consciousness felt as though it was floating above the scene; I couldn’t feel my body. I wasn’t even sure if I was breathing.
I stared at my wrist. A red mark illuminated where he’d gripped me, like a bruise still deciding whether to bloom.
My other hand trembled as I reached beneath my sleeve and withdrew the letters I had hidden away earlier.
The pages crinkled softly, stained at the corners where I’d clutched them too tightly.
I should have screamed.
I should have run.
But I didn’t. I signed it.
I crumpled onto the edge of the bed and finally let out the full force of my tears; hot, silent, helpless. They slipped past my lashes and fell against the marble-white fabric of my sleeves, soaking into someone else’s idea of royalty. This wasn’t my life. This wasn’t my crown.
The flame inside me flickered but didn’t catch. I signed the line. I let Kaelen win.
Or maybe…he thinks he’s won.
The tears stopped, but the burn behind my eyes remained. I sat in silence until the bells tolled midnight and the last of the warmth left the hearth.
Then slowly, I walked to the hearth and tucked the letters back into my hiding space. If anyone searched, they’d find nothing. Not unless they knew exactly where to look.
My signature may have been on the page.
But my will was still my own.
I crossed the room, drawing the curtains tighter over the window, sealing out the fading light. Then I sat, with my back pressed against the cold stone, a quiet fortress built against the world. No more tears came, no sleep offered refuge, only the cold, hard clarity of a plan taking root.
To be Continued in
Book Two of The Oathfire Saga