CHAPTER FIFTEEN #3
Callum didn’t so much as twitch, just cleared his throat and slid papers down the line, as methodical as ever.
I leaned back, kicking my boots onto the table, and crossed my ankles. “So that explains the mud.” My hand reached for an apple, crunching into it, juice running down my chin as I gestured with the fruit, pointing it straight at Ford. “And the blood?”
Red streaks marred his cheek, his collar, the shoulder of his shirt.
“Gods, mother f—” He stumbled to his feet in search of a reflection.
The table hushed into silence then, Callum’s face remaining unreadable. It was that cold, calculating stillness that wasn’t new for meetings.
But tonight, it didn’t feel like focus. It felt like something gnawed at him.
My attention turned to Duke. “Report.”
It was a practiced voice that came from me. Authority had never come easily, but to Callum, it lived in his bones. He spoke, and people followed. He was a leader.
No one looked at me that way.
Duke’s eyes moved to Callum, who gave one nod, barely a hint of movement, but enough to say everything. Permission granted.
My jaw tightened and I swallowed the sting, not letting it bleed across my face as Duke unrolled the map in one swift motion.
“Obrann has stationed troops at two territories due south.” Duke tapped two dots just shy of the Ryuu border.
“Silverwilde and Sunhaven. Neither has means of defense. He won’t want it to appear as though they’re threatened, it’s just surveillance.
But they’re searching for the heir and anyone who might know something. ”
Duke was a statue in the palace, silent enough to hear things he shouldn’t.
When Ford returned, he slumped back into his seat, mud half smeared from his shirt, blood still crusted along his jaw.
He caught my eye and I gave him a thumbs up.
Duke kept going, rubbing at the smooth skin lining his jaw.
“They’re also asking about dragons. Likely suspicious of their sudden appearance.
” His focus swept the table, pinning us each in turn before settling on Rook.
“They don’t know your name. To them, to the guards, you’re just an unknown rebel who got lucky. Still,” his voice sharpened, “lay low.”
Rook inclined his head, his newly shorn hair and restructured face catching in the candlelight. The baneleaf had done its work, clever bastard’s idea.
When touched to skin, it warped features just enough to erase recognition. Briefly.
“Obrann’s furious about it falling through,” Callum murmured, eyes still on the papers. “He’s not being awfully vocal about it, but you can feel it. Along with stationing soldiers south, he’s asked me to prepare a team.” A tap of his fingers. One. Two. “He’s not posturing anymore, he’s hunting.”
Everyone’s eyes shot to him.
“Hunting what, exactly?” Gus asked. “The heir?”
“And the stones,” Callum answered. “We know he has two for certain, the ones from Luamis. He thinks he has a third.” A humorless laugh. “He doesn’t.”
Ford sprawled back against his chair, raising a brow. “Do we get to ask how sure you are of that, or do we just pretend you’re never wrong?”
Callum ignored him. “He’s convinced the two from Nyctom are all he needs.
He knows the last stone from Ryuu was destroyed shortly after being forged so he’s not wasting time there.
He thinks darkness bends easier than flame.
” A tic in his jaw. “He’s wrong. But he’s close enough that he believes he’s already won. ”
My shoulders rolled back, a shadowed heat uncoiling with the motion.
The message was clear enough. We needed to find the missing heir, the one meant to stand in the dark kingdom’s place, before Obrann did.
“Stick with your stories,” Callum went on, flipping another page. “If anyone asks, we’re loyal citizens. There’s no reason for suspicion.”
The words were mostly for the newer ones. Their legs knocked against the table, rattling the wood. They hadn’t yet learned the trick of how to live with the knowledge that you were already a traitor, and still believe you were safe.
Duke shifted, shoulders tight, a hand scraping along the column of his throat, like he could stall the words there.
He gave a slow inhale that we all felt before he spoke. “The king,” his voice came quiet, almost reluctant, “is planning to invite Prince Ronan to Perseus and Elvira’s pre-wedding ball.”
Callum didn’t move at first.
Then there was a resounding crack as papers slammed to the table, their edges snapping into perfect alignment beneath his fists.
He laid the pile on the table without looking up, placing his intertwined hands on them, rubbing his thumbs against one another, likely hoping the motion could grind the news into grit.
My own blood iced at the news.
I had prayed the next time I saw Ronan it would be on my terms. My blade, my vengeance. Not some gilded ballroom crawling with Obrann’s sycophants.
The chair screeched across the floor as I rose. Air, I needed air.
“Sit,” Callum commanded. “This meeting is not over. You are not dismissed.”
The words pinned me in place, hands shaking against the chair’s spine. Equal, yet addressed as less.
Anger curdled with a colder pulse—
Until comfort was offered against my knuckles.
Ford. His hazel eyes lifted to mine, saying what no words could: I see you. I see him. You’re not alone in this.
My lips moved into a thankful smile, my hand finding the top of his. And still, I couldn’t stomach it.
Not Callum’s strike across my cheek, but Ronan. That he would be there.
“My guess,” Callum said, voice roughened by restraint, “is Obrann wants assurance the dragons aren’t circling his throne. Or that there are no lingering debts, no unsettled scores.”
Thread frayed against his nail as he dragged a thumb, tracing it across the lion stitched into his coat. The emblem now looking more fragile than fierce.
“I will meet with the king tomorrow about Ryuu. I’ll press for more.” He slid the map across to Duke, the parchment catching the light as the candle guttered beside the window.
Time pressed thin. Shadows tapering toward dawn.
Callum’s jaw worked once before he forced the rest out. “If Ronan has sense, he won’t make a deal with Obrann. Not when he knows what we hold.”
The chamomile tasted stale now, bitter on my tongue, as I drained the last of my tea.
“Not unless I stab him first,” I muttered into the rim.
Callum’s eyes flicked up, warning layered over sympathy. I knew he could read the grief braided under my mask.
A gentle brush against my shields, regret pressing soft against my mind. I’m sorry, Verena.
My chest clenched. This wasn’t only about me. Not entirely.
He’d watched the woman he loved be shackled, manipulated, paraded. Forced to shine for a crown that dimmed her until there was nothing left but hollow light.
And now, marriage to one of Selvarra’s vilest sons.
I would lash out too. I would shatter the world, burn it to nothing. I’ll do worse, actually.
I forgive you, always.
The bond eased, its strain unraveling as relief bled through.
Callum reached across the table, his hand closing over mine. The pressure loosened something in my ribs.
Then his voice turned steel. “If the dragons betray us, Verena,” the look in his eyes was unnerving when they caught mine, “Ronan is yours.”
I smiled. A slow, gleaming thing. It was all I’d wanted, all I’d dreamed, for two days. Or what felt like a lifetime.
Duke spread a new map across the table, parchment cracked at the edges, its surface creased with travel.
Callum wasted no words. “Five of you leave tomorrow night. It’s a day’s ride to Sunhaven’s territory.
” His finger drew a path along the map. “You’ll arrive just as Obrann's men depart. Find what they asked, what they sought, what they left behind. Trade supplies for answers if you must. Remind them that unity is still possible.”
Duke’s nod was crisp, already folding the corner of the map as he rose.
“Stick to the dusk—” Callum continued. “Then return. Avoid soldiers. Don’t engage unless you must. They don’t know you wear Csolenia’s mark.
This is not a strike; it’s a shadow’s work.
Track and return.” He stood, the weight of his motion lifting the rest of us in turn.
“If you receive a letter by dawn, you’re on the mission. If not, training tomorrow. Rook leads.”
The candle sputtered by the window, the first grey light rising toward us.
Some of the newcomers jittered with restless energy, tapping the table as though anticipation itself might sign them to the mission.
Their first assignment, and a dull one at that.
Callum scanned the rest of us, the stare slipping past Ford and me entirely. We were locked in the final throes of a brutal thumb war, cutthroat strategy required when the subject of killing was off the table.
“You’re dismissed,” he said, just as the candle nearly guttered entirely, flame quivering against its wax prison.
Twenty minutes. That was all the dark we had left today.
The others filed out, their boots fading down the steps as Callum moved past the table, eyes fixed on the window where a pale light had already blurred across the lake.
It was the kind of false dawn that fooled the world into thinking it was awake. Moonless grey. Neither night nor morning. The hour when dreamers lingered and fighters sharpened their blades.
His hand slid into his pocket, knuckles twitching over something small, unseen, before drawing it back out and snapping his fingers. Every candle in the room died at once, plunging us into a velvet-dusk.
The door slammed shut, and Callum led us out of the cabin, boots crunching over roots and damp soil as the forest welcomed us.
No stars. No sliver of moon. Not even the promise of sun.
His shoulders tensed with every stride, hand still lingering near his pocket, where whatever he hid waited.
I had seen him break. I had seen him blaze. But this, this simmering quiet, this was new. Worse.
We all felt it. Like walking beside a fire that hadn’t chosen yet whether to warm or burn.