Chapter 28 Malachi #2
And now, staring at Aurelia, I felt it rise again.
Hope.
“She wears the past like it remembers her,” I said finally, voice low.
Seraphine’s expression shifted slightly before she masked it again. “Poetic. Brooding. Predictably you.”
I huffed, offering her a mock bow. “My thanks.”
She waved a hand, turning away. “Go. Before your hesitation gets mistaken for rebellion. Again.”
I gripped the glasses tighter, the delicate stems biting into my palms as I turned back toward the dais.
The crowd had shifted again, parting just enough for me to see her.
Aurelia sat beside Kaelith, perched on the smaller throne to his right. Her posture was regal but wary, hands folded loosely in her lap. She didn’t fidget. She didn’t smile. She wore that dress, that pendant, that impossible gravity.
Kaelith lounged beside her.
As I approached, Kaelith lifted his goblet lazily in greeting, eyes gleaming with that same infuriating, knowing smile.
“At last,” he drawled.
I handed him one glass without a word, eyes still locked on Aurelia’s.
And then—because the gods are cruel, and because Kaelith loved nothing more than twisting the blade—he turned to Aurelia. "For my nychta," he murmured, offering her the glass.
Aurelia hesitated.
I saw it—the flicker of distrust in her eyes before she masked it behind a careful, cool smile.
She accepted the glass with a slight incline of her head, her fingers brushing Kaelith’s just long enough to appease him.
The knot that had begun forming in my chest only tightened.
Kaelith watched her for a moment longer before settling back into his throne.
"Sit, Malachi," he said, gesturing to the vacant seat at Aurelia’s other side. "Enjoy that glass in your hand. We have much to discuss before the night ends—before I allow you to escort our queen to retrieve her brother."
Aurelia’s hand tightened around her glass.
And across the vast expanse of space between thrones and crowded dance floors, Seraphine’s voice echoed faintly in my mind:
"Go. Before your hesitation gets mistaken for rebellion. Again."
I sank into the seat beside Aurelia, the cool metal humming beneath me.
I hadn’t even had a moment to taste the wine in my hand before the ballroom doors creaked open.
All motion ceased. Conversation died mid-breath. Even the music faltered—strings shuddering to a halt.
King Talon Velshyre.
Talon had once been a titan of a man—unyielding, brilliant, feared. But immortality had not spared him from the centuries of blood his house carried. His body endured; his memory eroded. That was the curse of Velshyre: never dying, but slowly breaking under the immortality they had stolen.
Immortality preserved their bodies, but not their minds.
Centuries of memory calcified into something brittle, fraying the edges of sanity.
Every heir of Velshyre lived long enough to feel the weight of every life they had taken, until the mind cracked beneath the strain.
It was House Velshyre who led the Blood-Oathed Forging of Nyxarra.
Not an act of devotion, but a ritual carved from brutality: entire villages pressed into service, families torn from their hearths to feed the Veil with their lifeblood.
The goddesses demanded offerings to bind the world as it was.
The Velshyres delivered those sacrifices without hesitation.
Some said they drowned Sylvara’s river seers to still their warnings.
Others claimed they burned the forests of Kaerani’s followers when the wild gods resisted the forging.
And when the last threshold was sealed, when the Veil finally bent to Nyxarra’s shape, a thousand names vanished from the records in a single night—purged under the pretense of “stability.”
Talon walked without guards. Without servants. Without ceremony.
The crowd parted instinctively, as if the air thinned around him.
Aurelia stilled beside me. Kaelith did not rise.
The king climbed the dais step by careful step, each movement a quiet betrayal of the power he once commanded. When he reached the top, he stood between Kaelith and Aurelia, his gaze sweeping the ballroom like he was searching for the last pieces of a life that no longer belonged to him.
When he finally spoke, his voice was gravel-edged and thin, but sharp enough to slice the hush clean in two. “I am no longer fit to rule.”
A collective inhale rippled through the room.
“My blood grows stale,” he continued, raising one trembling hand to his temple. “My memories heavy. The throne demands a vessel who can still carry its weight.”
He turned to Kaelith, old fire flickering once—just once—in his eyes.
“My son. My legacy. Take it.”
Gasps rippled through the room. I felt Aurelia tense beside me.
Kaelith blinked, then slowly stood. He reached for his father.
"This is madness," someone whispered.
Kaelith ignored it. He looked down at Aurelia. "My gift for you," he said, voice honeyed with power. "An early throne."
Then, without hesitation, he sank his fangs deep into his father’s neck.
The sound was obscene. Wet and slow. Talon did not cry out, only clutched his son tighter. Gasps echoed across the ballroom. A woman screamed. Kaelith drank. And drank. Until the king’s knees buckled, until his hands slipped down his son's arms.
Kaelith let him fall.
The body hit the floor with a dull thud, robes sagging around him, hollow as the shell he’d become.
Then the change began.
Kaelith’s eyes darkened. First to coal, then to pitch, until the irises vanished entirely. His pupils devoured all light.
He staggered, shoulders tensing, hands clenched into fists as something surged within him. Power. Memory. Madness. It was hard to tell.
He looked at Aurelia. And for the briefest of moments, he looked afraid.
Then, as he turned to me, I saw a look on his face I’d never seen.
Recognition. Regret. Rage. All warring in his gaze. Kaelith shook his head once, violently.
When his eyes opened again, they had returned to their usual deep, ambered bronze.
"All hail King Kaelith," Lady Thena proclaimed, voice clear and unwavering. "Firstborn son of King Talon and Queen Sushay—rest her soul. King of the Night. Sovereign of Nyxarra."
As one, the court bowed. Silks rustled. Jewels caught the light. I dropped my gaze and bent my knee.
Beside me, Aurelia sat frozen. Her hand trembled against the stem of her untouched glass.
She looked at me. And I gave her the only thing I could offer. A small, steady nod.
She rose. Her movements were slow. Controlled. Distant. And then she bowed.
The room exhaled.
But the air felt colder than before.