Two Hundred Years of Night
CAELAN
The throne was too comfortable. That was the problem.
Dark stone, cushioned in midnight velvet, angled just enough that a man could sit for hours without noticing.
I had been sitting for hours. My elbow rested on the carved arm, my chin propped in my hand.
I was fighting the fifth yawn since court had started, and the throne was doing its best to lull me into public disgrace.
The relic expert entered with the caution of someone who had heard stories about me and believed most of them to be true.
Maelor stood to my right with his arms crossed. He had been mid-report on the border rotation when the expert arrived.
My back ached. It had been aching since before dawn.
The kind of strain that sat along the spine and didn't ease regardless of posture.
I had no reason for it. The border had been quiet for fifty years, yet every time I shifted, it felt as though I had just returned from war. A memory I preferred to leave buried.
I had not slept well.
Although the fire had burned high, I had spent the night freezing in a way that had no sensible explanation.
The expert bowed, stiff as a board.
“Your Highness.”
I gestured for Maelor.
Maelor stepped forward and unwrapped the dagger from its velvet, holding it out with the energy of a man who suspected it might curse him too. Commander of my army, afraid of a dagger.
The expert approached with the same caution. His fingers hovered over the hilt before he lifted it and turned it once. The gold caught the charmed sunlight filtering in from the glass ceilings and threw it back with a blinding vengeance.
“This is ancient magic,” he said, astounded.
“What kind?”
I had not missed the way my jaw had ached when Riven hit her. Phantom pain from a blow that hadn't landed on me. I had pressed my fingers to it three times before I stopped bothering.
The expert turned the blade again and studied the bare hilt.
Both serpents were gone. One was wrapped around the arm of the assassin currently occupying my dungeon.
She had pretty eyes, but they looked at you like they were calculating the fastest way out of the room.
She smelled of honey and citrus, a detail that I didn’t need but remembered anyway.
She had also gifted me a cut along my forearm that I had not expected.
Impressive, if I were being honest. The first human to make me bleed in decades.
“It does not curse,” the expert said. “It does not possess.” He set the dagger down carefully. “It binds. Two life forces linked. Physical sensations transfer.”
The ache along my spine offered its opinion on the matter.
Maelor shifted.
“Does distance weaken it?” I said.
“Distance compounds it. The farther apart the bonded individuals, the more the connection resists.” He paused. “It manifests as physical discomfort.”
“How much discomfort?”
“Every nerve, Your Highness. Simultaneously.”
The hall went quiet.
I had designed this estate myself. I knew precisely how cold that cell got, the same way I knew it now, sitting in a heated throne room with a fire at my back.
Twilight did not traditionally pamper prisoners.
We were going to have to reconsider that.
“How do we break it?” I asked.
He inclined his head. “There are rumors of a witch who has taken up residence in Twilight. Granted residency under Your Highness's new law. A covenant weaver who specializes in untangling magical contracts and blood vows.”
That was something worth mentioning to the council the next time they questioned the law. Look at the talent it was bringing in.
“Rumors,” Maelor said.
“Reliable ones,” the expert replied brightly. “She also tells fortunes.”
Maelor cursed under his breath.
The expert handed the dagger back. Maelor took it between thumb and index finger as if it might bite him.
“One more thing.” A pause. “The bond is not static. It deepens with time, and the longer it sits, the more likely it becomes permanent.”
He let that land where it would.
“You will be paid,” I said.
He bowed and exited the room twice as fast as he entered.
Riven walked in as the doors were closing and waited until they shut.
I looked at the far wall for a moment.
“Remove her from the cell,” I said.
“And?” Maelor said, carefully.
“South wing. Guest quarters. Increase the rotation.”
Maelor looked at me with the expression he used when he disagreed with something and was calculating whether it was worth saying.
“That human attempted to kill you,” he said finally.
“Yes.”
“And you're rewarding that.”
“No.”
The honest answer was that her discomfort was mine, and the stone floor was doing neither of us any favors.
“I'm stabilizing a liability,” I said, and moved down from the dais before he could argue it. “Find out which syndicate she's from,” I said to Riven.
By the time I turned, he was gone.
Maelor looked at the dagger. Then at me. Then apparently decided it wasn't worth it and followed me out.
I took my whiskey to the balcony off my study and looked up at the sky.
Two hundred years and it still unsettled me.
Not the dark itself, but the stars that weren't stars, reflected in the canals below as if everything was fine. As if this was simply how night looked and not a permanent record of one evening when I couldn't hold myself together.
It was noon somewhere above that sky. Magic kept it bright down here, but up there it was always dark.
Always my fault.
The whiskey was gone before I was ready for it to be.
I was ushered back inside by a biting gust of winter wind.
A stack of correspondence sat on the desk.
I picked one up, skimmed it, and started a reply.
Writing a refusal to a marriage alliance with careful wording that wouldn't damage my reputation was more difficult than it should have been.
I considered the many alternatives to the word no and different variations of never and settled on a mix of both.
It was refreshing, I supposed. That someone wanted their daughter wed to a terror of the realm.
I moved to the window and opened the latch. The air carried a faint sweetness of elerith blooms. The vines were thick against the estate walls, covered with white flowers pale against stone. They attracted a very specific kind of moth.
I extended my fingers and waited. A scriptmoth with wings that caught light in iridescent green and gold landed on them. A delicate thing, as weightless as a held breath.
The scriptmoth stayed perched as I moved carefully back to my desk. When I lowered my hand, it fluttered to the freshly written correspondence and moved across the parchment, drinking up the ink.
“Lord Valmont of Tide,” I said to it.
Once it was finished, it flew out through the window. The correspondence lay blank on my desk. Lord Valmont would have my response in a day’s time. The moth would land, and the words would come back out onto his parchment intact.
A knock sounded at the door.
Maelor walked in before I answered. Formality between us had been dead for decades. The report he hadn't finished in the throne room was tucked under one arm.
“What's the plan?” he asked.
“We go see the witch.” I crossed back to the desk and sat down. “Riven will find her.”
Maelor shifted. The particular shift that meant he had opinions and was deciding the order in which to deliver them.
“Spit it out,” I said without looking at him.
“She's leverage. What they couldn't do to you, they do through her. You're untouchable. She isn't.” He let that sit. “We are comprehensively screwed.”
“We're fine.”
“We are screwed,” he said, with the patience of a man who had been having this conversation with me for decades in various forms.
He wasn't wrong. I needed to keep her alive in order to keep myself alive. Simple. She needed to be kept close until the bond broke. Practical. Important, even.
The corner of my mouth moved.
“Why are you smiling?”
“I'm not.”
“You are,” Maelor said. “Which part of this amuses you?”
All of it. The way she had spent the entire masquerade surveilling a room she thought contained her target while sitting a foot away from him. The way she had looked at the ballroom with such focus and looked at me like a distraction.
“I'm not amused.” My lip disagreed with my words. “Why are you here?”
He produced the report and handed it over.
“New recruits. Training starts tomorrow.”
I nodded.
He left with a lazy wave.
Fifty years of peace did not mean a lowered guard. It meant people forgot why the guard existed in the first place. Maelor didn't forget. Neither did I.
I looked over the report. A new battalion of twelve. Numbers were never our strength. Skill was, and Maelor made sure each soldier had it.
Luceris hadn’t been wrong. My army was Primorian, but they were mine. Men I had bled with and held the line with for over a century.
I set the report down.
My mind drifted back to her. Whoever had hired her had come the closest to succeeding, and had been the most creative by far. I needed to know who, and I suspected it would not be easy to find out.
My guest and I were going to become very well acquainted.
I found myself looking forward to it.