Chapter 8
Kess
I couldn't kill him.
The thought follows me through dark corridors as I make my way back to his chambers, my bare feet silent on cold stone.
I left the dagger on his floor when I ran—stupid, careless, the kind of mistake that gets people killed.
But I couldn't stay in that room with his blood on the blade and his eyes full of something that looked too much like disappointment.
The memorial hall offered no comfort. Forty-seven names staring down at me while I apologized for my failure, for my weakness, for whatever broken thing inside me stayed my hand when I had him right there, arms spread, heart exposed, practically begging me to end it.
I don't know how long I sat there. Long enough for my legs to go numb. Long enough for the candles to burn down to stubs and the shadows to shift and settle into new shapes. Long enough to realize I have nowhere else to go.
So I came back here. To his chambers. Because where else would I sleep—the floor of the memorial hall, curled up beneath the names of women I failed?
The door is unlocked, same as I left it.
I push it open expecting his golden eyes in the darkness, expecting his scent and his presence and maybe another confrontation I'm not ready for.
Instead I find it empty. The fire has been built back up, flames crackling cheerfully in the hearth.
Fresh candles burn on the mantle and the desk.
The bed has been made with clean linens, turned down at the corner like someone is expecting me.
And on the nightstand, placed with deliberate care: the dagger I dropped, its blade cleaned of the blood I spilled.
Beside it, a folded piece of paper.
I cross the room and pick up the note, which is written in a sharp and angular hand, the penmanship of someone who learned to write centuries ago and never updated his style.
I've moved my sleeping quarters to the east wing. This room is yours for as long as you need it. The blade is yours too. Keep it close.
—R
No admonishments for trying to kill him. No demand that I never do it again. No mention at all of the fact that I held that blade to his chest and couldn't finish what I started.
Just... space. Given freely, without asking for anything in return.
I don't know what to do with that. It doesn't fit what I know of the Beast King and his many kills, what has been whispered about him in the village my entire life.
This doesn't fit with the angry man who slashes open the throats of omegas who displease him.
Nothing I've experienced from him fits the legends at all.
I set the note aside and pick up the dagger instead, turning it over in my hands. He cleaned it thoroughly—the blood is gone, the steel gleaming in the firelight. There's no evidence of my violence or my failure at all.
The blade disappears back into my boot. Its weight is familiar now. Comforting in a way it probably shouldn't be.
There's a copper tub in the bathing chamber, and when I check, the water is still warm—heated by some mechanism I don't understand, pipes running through the walls that must connect to a furnace somewhere below. Another small kindness I didn't ask for and don't know how to repay.
I strip off the nightgown and my worn-in boots, then lower myself into the water, hissing at the sting where heat meets healing wounds. As the warmth travels through my body, I use it to carefully unwrap the linen bandages wrapped around my hips.
The lantern light is dim but enough to see by as I examine what he did to me.
The puncture wounds on my hips have closed faster than they should have—pink and puckered, the skin around them tight and shiny with newness.
I press my fingers against one and feel the wrongness of it immediately.
The flesh beneath is harder than it should be.
Tougher. Like scar tissue, but denser, almost like—
Like hide. Like dragon hide.
I pull my hand away and stare at the wounds in the flickering light. They don't look infected. Don't hurt more than they should. If anything, it hurts less than a wound this deep has any right to hurt after only a day of rest.
But it's not healing normally. Something is happening beneath my skin, something I don't understand, and the not-knowing is worse than the wounds themselves could be.
I scrub myself clean with soap that smells like pine and some kind of floral herb like lavender.
Wash the sweat and fear and failure from my skin until the water goes tepid and my fingers prune.
By the time I climb out and wrap myself in a thick linen robe, exhaustion has settled into my bones like lead.
The bed is too soft. Too large. Too empty.
I sleep anyway, because my body demands it even if my mind won't quiet.
The dreams are fragmented and strange—blood on stone, golden eyes in darkness, my aunt Isla's face dissolving into mist when I try to look at her directly.
I wake twice gasping for breath, once with tears on my cheeks that I don't remember crying.
The fire burns low and the candles gutter and somewhere in the castle, separated from me by stone walls and locked doors and whatever distance he thinks will keep me safe, Rhystan is probably not sleeping either.
I can feel echoes of him through the bond, which I push away and ignore, not wanting to acknowledge that it even exists.
Dawn comes gray and cold through the narrow windows.
I dress in the practical clothes someone left folded on the chest at the foot of the bed—simple trousers, a linen shirt soft from washing, boots that fit better than the ones I wore to the altar. The dagger goes back in my boot. The note goes in my pocket, though I couldn't say why I'm keeping it.
I need answers.
That's what I tell myself as I slip out of his chambers and into the maze of corridors beyond.
I couldn't kill him last night, couldn't make my hand complete the motion that would have ended three hundred years of murder and bloodshed, three hundred years of omega lives being treated like wheat for the harvest. So if I can't kill him yet, I need to understand him first. Understand the curse, the god who made it, the blood that carries it.
Understand why so many others died and I simply. .. didn't.
The castle is quiet at this hour—servants not yet stirring, guards stationed at distant posts, the whole fortress holding its breath in the thin light of early morning.
I move through empty hallways, following instinct more than any clear sense of direction, letting my feet carry me where they will.
I find the library almost by accident.
A door standing open where others have been closed.
Warm light spilling into the hallway like an invitation, golden and flickering, nothing like the gray dawn filtering through the windows.
The smell of old paper reaches me first—dust and leather and ink gone dry with age—and beneath it something else.
Smoke, maybe. Or the memory of dragon fire, burned into the stones themselves.
The room beyond steals my breath.
Three stories tall, the space soars upward into shadow.
Balconies circle the upper levels, accessed by a spiral staircase that looks grown from the stone itself rather than built by human, or rather dragon, hands.
Shelves cover every wall from floor to ceiling, stuffed with books and scrolls and loose papers weighted down with smooth river stones.
A fireplace big enough to roast a whole boar crackles in one corner, throwing dancing shadows across spines stamped in gold and silver and faded copper.
His scent is everywhere in this room, layered into the leather and the paper and the smoke from countless fires.
He's spent years here. Decades. Maybe centuries, sitting in that worn chair by the window, searching for.
.. something. Whatever it is that a dragon king wants when eternity greets him and the world itself bows beneath his massive wings.
But he's not here now. The bond sits quiet in my chest, no tug of proximity, no prickle of awareness. I'm alone with all this knowledge and no idea where to start.
I start with genealogies.
The Vhal'kar dynasty takes up an entire shelf—thick volumes bound in leather that's cracked with age, spines stamped with the family crest in gold that's worn to bare impressions in places.
Rhystan said his family name brings up nothing but bad memories, and it's not hard to imagine why.
The Vhal'kar dragon shifters are the strongest and most powerful of all the dragon-ruled kingdoms, and they've expanded their borders with merciless bloodshed for generations.
His given name may not be well-known in my village, but everyone knows that we're ruled by a Vhal'kar king and have been as long as anyone anywhere can remember.
I pull down the largest tome and carry it to the table near the fire, settling into a chair that's seen better centuries.
The family tree sprawls across two facing pages, four generations of Beast Kings laid out in careful calligraphy. Each name annotated with dates and details, the cold facts of lives lived under a curse.
Thorian Vhal'kar (First Generation): Bonded to Omega Lysara after one death. Ruled 247 years. Killed in battle expanding the northern border.
Gareth Vhal'kar (Second Generation): Bonded to Omega Meira after three deaths. Ruled 198 years. Died of natural causes.
Valdris Vhal'kar (Third Generation): Bonded to Omega Sera after seven deaths. Ruled 391 years. Abdicated throne to son. Currently living in self-imposed exile.
I pause on that line. His father is still alive. Somewhere out there, in self-imposed exile, the previous Beast King still draws breath. I file that information away—not sure what to do with it yet, but certain it matters.
Rhystan Vhal'kar (Fourth Generation): Unbonded. Forty-seven deaths over 300 years. Current ruler.