Chapter 44
KAELERON
Shadows swept the ring Saphira had launched at me like a dagger from the floor where it had landed, devouring it as I strode after her, the drumming of her rage and her pain that shook me to my core luring me after her.
“Saphira,” I barked.
“Fuck off,” she spat over her shoulder. “Asshole.”
She pulled another blade from her collection and hurled it at me with all the spite I could feel in her as I closed in on her heels. I slapped it away from me, uncaring of the stinging of my palm as the blade caught it, slicing into my flesh. All I cared about was running away from me.
When she neared the doors, I slammed them shut in her face with magic.
She growled and grabbed the handles, twisting and pulling on them, muttering angry things about me beneath her breath that I deserved.
“Saphira.”
I summoned the teleport and stepped through it, severing the distance between us and coming out right behind her.
She pivoted on her heel, snarling at me through her fangs, and shoved her right hand towards me.
I caught her wrist, stopping her before she could plunge that small blade into my side, a blow I knew she would come to regret even if it would make her feel better.
A moment later, I released her, willing to let her make her own decisions. If she stabbed me, so be it.
I would do anything to make her feel better.
Take every blow.
Give every drop of my blood.
I would die for her if she willed it.
But she did not stab me.
She stood there, breathing hard, anger flashing in her sapphire eyes, that blade poised to strike but unmoving. War danced in those rage-filled eyes, a battle I wanted to sway the course of, directing it towards my own victory.
I lifted my hand, gently gripped her chin and tilted her head back, making her look at me.
“You are more beautiful.” I gazed down at that beauty she was blind to because no one had ever made her see it, not as I wanted her to see it now. “There is no one in all the realms as beautiful as you, Saphira Harper. You are the only one who can make me happy—who will make me happy.”
That blade edged closer to my ribs, pressing lightly against my flesh.
“Liar,” she hissed. “You’re betrothed to another and I won’t be your mistress. I won’t be your whore like you want… like he wants. I’m… I’m worth more than that.”
I glanced down at the blade that trembled in her hand and back into her eyes, pleased that she was beginning to see it, to realise who she was and her true value, rather than basing it on what others had told her all her life.
“You are worth more than that,” I agreed. “It is something I have no intention of doing to you. This female is… my agreement with her father was made at a time when I needed a powerful ally.”
She tried to wrench free of my grip so I tightened it, seizing hold of her wrist again to lock her in place, because I knew that if I let her go now, I would lose her forever.
“You took me to a ball… where your betrothed was waiting. You danced with her. Smiled at her. And then you came to me and… you made me believe I had imagined that connection between the two of you and how you must have found it so amusing when I had stupidly believed you.” She yanked on my arm, trying to break free. “Let me go.”
“No,” I barked, and the ground beneath us trembled, the thick columns that supported the towering vaulted ceiling of the great hall quaking as I thought of her leaving me.
Not again.
Never again.
“Let me go.” She shoved her hand forwards instead, and froze, her eyes going wide as she looked down in horror at what she had done. “Oh gods… Kael. I—”
In her anger and desperation, she had forgotten she gripped a blade.
I looked at the point where her hand met my tunic jacket, at the crimson that stained her pale skin.
She released the blade and sank back against the door, stricken and silent, her blue eyes locked on the small knife protruding from my side. I gripped it and she flinched as I tugged it free, and grimaced as I offered it to her.
“Do it again. Do it as many times as you want, because I deserve every blow you want to deal to me, and I will take them all if it would make you feel better.”
Rather than taking the blade, she struck my hand, sending it tumbling away from us, and released a shaky breath as it clattered into the shadows.
I placed both of my hands against the door on either side of her head, leaning my weight on them as my side burned, hemming her in and holding her attention, because she needed to hear this.
“I was a coward,” I husked. “I tried to tell you. I should have tried harder. I should not have taken you to that ball without you knowing, subjecting you to those whispers about me… knowing you would piece together what I had failed to tell you—that I am promised to another, even when I do not love her, when I could never love her. For the second time in my life, I was a coward, and it might cost me dearly once again. I should not have done it that way. I should have confessed everything to you that night in my room, when you came to ease me from my nightmares.”
I lowered my right hand to her face, brushing my knuckles across her cheek, relishing the feel of her skin beneath mine and hoping this would not be the last time I felt it.
“But I will confess it now, will explain everything if you will allow me, and hope you will offer me absolution once again.” I searched her damp eyes, seeking a glimmer of something that would give me hope, aching to hear her tell me that she would at least give me a chance to explain.
When she said nothing, I croaked, “Please, Saphira. Please just… stay with me long enough to listen to me… long enough for me to make you see beyond your anger to the truth of things.”
“I see the truth pretty clearly, thank you very much, and it’s damning,” she snarled. “I have no absolution to give you. You lied to me. This whole relationship… it’s a lie.”
“It is not a lie!” I barked.
“Any other secrets you’re hiding? Maybe a mad wife in the attic?” she snapped, her eyes flashing bright blue as fur rippled over her skin.
I felt that was a reference to something, but was not sure, so I shook my head. “I have no mad wife. I have no wife.”
“No, you just have a fiancée.”
“Did she act like my betrothed?” I snapped back at her and then grimaced, reining in my anger and frustration, because she had every right to be angry with me and I had no right to be angry with her.
“Well… no… but that doesn’t mean anything.”
I had never been happier than when Vaeleryn had expressed how happy she was that I had found someone. I had thought it would make it easier to make Saphira see the truth and that I had no intention of marrying her, and that she viewed me only as a friend.
Apparently, I had been wrong about that.
“I have no romantic feelings towards her.” Words that felt as if they were a shovel and I was digging myself into a deeper hole.
Thankfully, she continued as if I hadn’t even spoken. “And I don’t believe you’re willing to go to war with the high king to prove—”
“I would go to war with this entire realm if it meant I could have you, Saphira,” I interjected, my growled vow echoing around the great hall as the ground trembled beneath my boots and my entire court quaked with my rage and my pain.
“Ask it of me, and it is done. Do not leave me. Give me time to explain. And if you still hate me, if you cannot believe I have been truthful about my feelings for you, then you can leave. I will not stop you.”
But by the Great Mother, I might try.
“Please, Saphira,” I whispered as my brow furrowed, as I waited for her to announce her verdict—offer me a chance at redemption or condemn me to the shadows, to that dark hollow place where I had existed before she had stormed into my life. “Saphi.”
I dared to stroke her cheek, afraid that touch would be my last and all I had to carry me through an empty eternity without her—a hell of my own making.
“Fine,” she bit out.
I was quick to wrap her in my shadows, in my arms, and teleport with her, carrying her far away from Falkyr, to somewhere private where we could be alone.
To that spot on Dagger Overlook where I had sat so many times to gaze at my beloved court.
I strode to the edge of the narrow plateau high on the black rockface of Noainfir, eased to my backside and dangled one leg over the drop to the sharp rocks below, bending the other at the knee so I could rest my arm upon it as I studied the Shadow Court.
It swept below me as far as the eye could see, all of it visible to me, from the dense woods that filled the foothills below me, to my castle and the waterfalls that thundered into the lake before cascading down to the bay.
In the distance, Belkarthen formed a bleak spot on the coast, shadowed by mountains, and I looked away from it, to my right and the western Wraith Wood, and the fiery peaks that cast an amber glow across the sky beyond it.
It was beautiful.
And dreadful.
I felt the weight of it all as I sat there.
I loved my court deeply, but right now all it caused me was pain.
“Beneath where I am sitting, in the heart of this sacred mountain, is my sanctuary. A place only I can go.” My voice came out steady despite my nerves, but distant to my ears, as if another spoke the words.
I could not tear my eyes from my court, even when something more beautiful demanded and deserved my attention.
It was safer to look at it, even when it pained me.
“I wanted to take you there, and it is difficult to resist that urge, but resist it I will because to take you there right now would be to cage you, and I will not do that. Even when I do not want you to run from me.”
Her pretty face was a picture of darkness as she came to stand near me and gazed down at the lands of my court, wrapping her arms around herself and rubbing them. “I appreciate that, but maybe we could go somewhere warmer? Like the cottage?”
Great Mother, that was tempting.