Chapter 8
Kaed
before I could build, I had to kneel,
and turn my eyes from sin.
I rest my temple on my fist. Eyes fixed on a distant point beyond the walls.
My jaw flexes, betraying the storm brewing inside me.
The air hums with hushed voices and hurried footsteps as light from the hallway slices in through the gap under the door.
Sharp angles cut across the floor and the percussion of iron-on-iron carries faintly through the walls. The door opens. Not again.
“Theron. Leave.” Despite the consequences, I launch a goblet at the door. I’m losing my grip. I must bridle the beast.
“You will want to hear this, Captain.”
It isn’t Theron, it’s Vale. A short, slimy male with a gut revealing his lack of self-control.
He is lucky the goblet did not catch his head.
It’s now wedged into the splintered wooden doorway.
Though if I knew it was him, I may not have dared.
As powerful as I am, I wouldn’t provoke the magic that emits from him.
The wards he has around himself, the palace, are stronger than anything I could dream of conjuring.
Vale is unmatched. His beady eyes inspect it carefully, and his tone changes into something almost respectful.
“The Seers have found your betrothed. She is alive, after all. The King announced it to the court. We have a location, and the Chasm will be opened tonight. Theron, Nykholas, and I are putting plans in place, but for obvious reasons, you must be the one to retrieve her and bring her back here. Despite your current state.”
My legs force me upright before my mind can catch up.
My body is rigid, my magic depleted, but my soul is full of fire and pressure.
The hurricane inside me is picking up speed.
Fast. A bond suppressed springing to life, and with it, a need to protect her that feels like instinct. That feels innate.
Alive? The word slices my chest. It burrows into my ribs, settling in my heart.
The heart that has beat for her since its first. Every inhale now feels as if the air is being taken from my lungs.
Against all intuition, I had trained myself over the years to reject hope.
And yet, some part of me, something that has been too stubborn to die, has always known.
Feeling her like a phantom limb. Even when it was unclear which of our Kings would bear the Black Flame, I knew what she would be.
Mine. To serve. To protect. I remember the day they told us of her existence and her death in the same breath.
How the jet black fire she started tore through a street in London.
How the disgraced, exiled Prince, of all people, was the one to beget the key to our freedom. And how she had died with him.
“What new trick is this, Vale?” I spit with the inevitable malice of an incoming tide. I am not in the mood. I will finally leave this room. I will get to her.
“No trick. Just ensuring you do your job.”
I cock my head when he peers up at me, sweat forming on his balding head. Foreign words fall skittishly from his lips as he removes a small bottle from his robes. It detonates at my feet. And everything goes black.