Chapter 15 Rhystan
Rhystan
The summons catches me off guard.
I'm in my study surrounded by crumbling texts and cold tea, the same place I've spent every evening for the past week, searching for answers in fragments that refuse to coalesce into anything useful.
The afternoon light has gone gold and thick through the narrow windows, and I've lost track of time the way I always do when I'm buried in research—when I'm trying not to think about what I'm doing to her.
"Your Majesty." The guard hovers in the doorway, clearly uncertain whether to interrupt. "Lady Kess has requested your presence at dinner. The main hall. Sunset."
I look up from the text I'm not really reading. "She requested?"
"Yes, sire. Said she's tired of eating alone."
Something shifts in my chest, a knot loosening that I didn't know I was carrying.
We've been circling each other for days now—polite, careful, maintaining the fragile truce we built in the training yard.
She drinks her tea every morning. I watch from doorways and balconies. Neither of us pushes for more.
But she's asking for dinner.
"Tell her I'll be there."
The guard bows and retreats, and I sit in the dying light of my study, trying to remember the last time anyone requested my presence for something other than matters of state.
The main dining hall is absurd for two people.
It was built to host a hundred courtiers, back when the Vhal'kar held court in the old style and visiting dignitaries came to bend the knee.
The vaulted ceiling soars high enough to accommodate dragons in their half-shifted forms, and the massive hearth at the far end burns with dragonfire instead of common flame—blue-white and eternal, never needing wood or tending.
The table could seat fifty and still have room for servants to move between the chairs.
I stand at its head and feel ridiculous.
Should have suggested somewhere smaller. But she chose here, and maybe she wanted the space, the formality, the safety of neutral ground.
I'm considering sending word to move the meal when she appears in the doorway, and every thought in my head scatters like startled birds.
She's wearing a dress.
I've never seen her in anything but training leathers and borrowed sleep clothes, practical things that let her move and fight.
This is something else entirely—dark green fabric that flows like water when she walks, clinging to the curves of her hips before falling loose to the floor.
The neckline dips low enough to show the shadow between her breasts, the slope of her collarbones, the claiming mark I left on her throat still visible as a silvered scar against her brown skin.
My mouth goes dry. Lower, something tightens with sudden, urgent heat.
The dress moves with her instead of restricting her, and I find myself tracking every shift of fabric, every glimpse of the body underneath.
Her hair is braided back but loose strands have already escaped, framing her face in dark wisps that make me want to brush them back, tuck them behind her ear, trace the line of her jaw down to her throat.
Her feet are bare against the stone floor.
That detail undoes me more than the dress itself—the defiance of it, the wildness she refuses to surrender even when she's trying to be civilized.
I think about those bare feet wrapped around my waist in the armory, her heels digging into the small of my back while I drove into her.
Think about the sounds she made, the way she bit my throat hard enough to scar, the hot clench of her body around mine.
The bond hums between us, and I feel it like a physical pull—her presence tugging at something deep in my chest, my beast stirring with interest, wanting to close the distance between us and bury my face in the curve of her neck.
"You came," she says, and her voice carries across the empty hall.
"You invited me." I have to clear my throat before the words come out steady, have to force my eyes to stay on her face instead of wandering down to where the fabric clings to her waist. "I wasn't expecting—you look—"
"Like I lost a fight with a wardrobe?" She crosses toward the table, bare feet silent on the stone, and I track her movement like a predator watching prey.
Or maybe like prey watching a predator. I'm not sure which of us is which anymore.
"Bessa insisted. Said if I was going to request a formal dinner, I should dress for one.
" She tugs at the fabric, and the motion pulls it tighter across her chest in a way that makes my hands ache to touch. "I feel ridiculous."
"You look beautiful."
The words escape before I can catch them. She stops mid-step, and I watch color rise in her cheeks, watch her breath catch just slightly.
"I look uncomfortable," she corrects, but her voice has gone slightly rough, and I can smell the shift in her scent—something warmer underneath the blood and wilderness, something that makes my beast want to purr.
She takes a seat in the middle of one side of the table, and I'm grateful for the massive oak between us.
Grateful for the distance it forces, the barrier it provides.
Without it, I'm not sure I could keep my hands to myself.
Not with her looking like that. Not with her scent filling the hall like an invitation.
I take the chair across from her, and even in the middle of the table we're too close. Too far. Both at once.
Servants appear with food—roasted game birds, root vegetables, fresh bread, wine the color of garnets. They withdraw quickly, leaving us alone with the meal and the vast emptiness of the hall.
We eat in silence for several minutes. Not uncomfortable, exactly, but weighted. Like two people who know they need to talk but haven't figured out where to start.
She speaks first.
"The memorial stones." She doesn't look up from her plate, her voice carefully neutral. "You carved all of them yourself?"
"Yes."
"Why? You could have ordered servants to do it. Commissioned proper stone masons."
I set down my fork, searching for words to explain something I've never had to articulate. "Because I needed to remember. Every name. Every face. If I let someone else do it, it would become too easy to let them fade. To let them become numbers instead of people."
"You told me about Sina. About your mother." She looks up, meets my gaze. "Tell me about the others. Not all of them—just... help me understand who they were."
I don't want to do this. But she asked.
"Lysa was sixteen," I hear myself say. "The youngest they ever sent me.
Her mother begged the council not to choose her, but the lots fell where they fell.
She lasted four hours." I pause, swallow against the tightness in my throat.
"She spent those four hours telling me about her younger brother.
How she'd taught him to fish. How she was worried no one would remember to check his snares while she was gone.
She was more concerned about him than herself, even at the end. "
Kess is quiet, listening.
"Rhaine fought back," I continue. "Like you. Had fire in her, a wildness that made me hope—" I stop, shake my head. "She broke my nose before my beast took over. Three hours, and then she was gone. But those three hours, she made me work for every inch. I respected her for that."
"Good," Kess says quietly. "She deserved to be respected."
"Thessa was a healer. Came to me with herbs in her pockets, convinced she could find a cure if she just had enough time to study the curse up close.
She lasted six days—longer than most. Spent every conscious moment taking notes, mixing tinctures, trying to understand what was killing her even as it happened.
" My voice cracks. "Her notes are still in my study.
I've never been able to throw them away. "
"Maybe they'll help. Someday."
"Maybe." I don't believe it, but I appreciate her saying it.
"One more," she says. "Tell me one more."
I think for a moment, sifting through three centuries of grief for a story that matters.
"Neve," I finally say. "She was the thirty-second.
Came to me already dying—she'd been sick for months, some wasting illness the healers couldn't cure.
Her village sent her as tribute hoping the claiming would either heal her or give her a quicker death than the one she was facing.
" I pause. "She lived for two weeks. Longest anyone ever survived.
She said the curse burned away her sickness, gave her more time than she would have had otherwise.
She spent those two weeks teaching me to play chess. "
"Chess?"
"She was very good. I never beat her." A ghost of a smile crosses my face, there and gone. "When she finally died, it was peaceful. In her sleep. The only one who ever went that way. I carved her stone with a chess piece—a queen. It's the only one that has anything other than a name."
Kess is quiet for a long moment, turning her wine glass in her hands.
"They weren't just victims," she says finally. "They were people. With brothers and notes and chess games."
"Yes."
"And you remember all of it."
"Every detail. Every conversation. Every moment." The words come out heavy as stones. "I won't let myself forget."
She sets down the glass with more force than necessary. "Has it helped?"
The question catches me off guard. "What?"
"The remembering. The guilt. Carving stones until your hands bleed." She looks up, and there's something fierce in her expression, something almost angry. "Has any of it brought them back? Changed what happened?"
"No." The word comes out hollow. "Of course not."
"Then maybe it's time to try something else."
"Like what?"