But tonight, in the darkness of my chambers with a scroll about ancient magic spread before me, I let myself feel something I haven't felt in months: hope. Not the desperate, grasping kind that Yasar offered. But the quiet, steady kind that says healing takes time, and time is something I still have.
The woman I was before the loss isn't dead. She's just buried under grief and rage and pain. And maybe—just maybe—I can find my way back to her.
Or find my way forward to someone new. Someone who's survived the unsurvivable and learned that love and loss can coexist. That trust can be rebuilt. That even broken things can be made whole again.
I don't know if I believe it yet. But I'm willing to try.
And for tonight, that's enough.
CHAPTER 14
THE COMMON PEOPLE'S PLIGHT
Kaan
I runmy hand across my jaw, feeling the raised edges of healing cuts and the deep bruise that throbs with each heartbeat. The healers could fix this in minutes—smooth away every mark of my fight with Yasar until my face returns to its usual perfection. I've refused them three times now.
Let the bruises stay. Let the cuts ache.
Every time I catch my reflection, I want to remember what it felt like to beat the truth out of my cousin. To feel his blood on my knuckles. To see the smug superiority crack in his eyes when he realized I knew everything—the binding, the kiss, the way he'd positioned himself as Nesilhan's savior while I played the monster.
The marks are a reminder. Of my rage. Of my failure. Of the fact that I can't simply kill the man who dared touch my wife because doing so would kill her too.
Three days since that fight. Three days of Yasar making himself scarce, slipping through corridors like smoke whenever he senses me approaching. Smart of him. The urge to finish whatI started in the training grounds hasn't diminished—if anything, it's grown sharper with each passing hour.
The screaming reaches me long before I arrive at the lower districts. It carries on the wind like a death song, voices raised in desperation and fury mixing with the crash of breaking stone. From the high balcony of the palace, the riots look almost beautiful—tiny figures moving in chaotic patterns below, fires blooming like deadly flowers in the darkness.
Almost beautiful. If you're the sort of person who finds beauty in complete social collapse.
Which, admittedly, I usually am. There's something deeply satisfying about watching people tear each other apart over resources while I sip wine from a crystal goblet worth more than their annual income. Call it a character flaw, but I've always enjoyed the theater of human desperation.
Today, however, the screaming is annoying me for entirely different reasons. Probably because it's interrupting my brooding schedule, and I had important sulking to accomplish before dinner.
"Three thousand refugees have arrived over the past three days from the border villages," Emir reports, his voice cutting through the distant sounds of violence. He stands beside me at the balcony's edge, his face grim as we watch another building catch fire in the merchant quarter. "The Light Court forces burned everything—homes, temples, even the communal ovens. They left nothing. We've also had to relocate two Obur packs that were feeding on the chaos, plus there's been a surge in shadow-wraiths drawn to the despair. The city watch reports at least three minor demon incursions in the refugee camps alone."
"Efficient," I murmur, actually impressed despite myself. "Lord Taren always was thorough in his campaigns. Though I'm mildly offended he didn't leave the ovens—destroying a person's ability to make bread is just petty. That's my signature move."
"The situation is deteriorating rapidly," Emir continues, apparently immune to my attempts at dark humor. "Food stores ran out yesterday. The refugee camps are overcrowded beyond any reasonable capacity. People are sleeping in the streets, in doorways, anywhere they can find shelter. A family of hedge-witches from the Crimson Valley are camping in the old cemetery because the shadow-ghouls there give them some protection from the desperate crowds. Children are going hungry while their parents fight over scraps."
I watch a group of figures below throw rocks at what appears to be a grain merchant's shop. The windows shatter, glittering like fallen stars in the firelight. "And now they're taking their frustrations out on our own people. How wonderfully predictable."
"The rioters aren't just refugees," Emir says carefully. "Our own citizens are joining them. They're angry about the increased taxes to fund the war effort, angry about the rationing, angry that we're housing Light Court refugees while Shadow Court families go without."
Below us, a woman emerges from a burning building carrying a small child. Even from this distance, I can see her desperation as she looks around frantically for somewhere safe to go. There is nowhere. The entire block is chaos—people pushing, shoving, fighting over whatever resources they can find. I catch glimpses of others in the crowd: a few elderly border-fae with their distinctive silver-streaked hair trying to ward off a pack of hungry shadow-hounds with failing glamour magic, some half-blood children whose mixed heritage shows in their unnaturally bright eyes as they huddle together for protection, even a handful of purely mortal families who fled the Whispering Marshes when the trading posts were destroyed and the bog-spirits turned cannibalistic.
"They have a point," I admit, gesturing to the chaos spreading through the square below. "We're asking our people to sacrifice for a war they didn't start, to feed and shelter the same Light Court citizens whose lords are trying to destroy us. It's like asking someone to house the relatives of their attempted murderer. Noble in theory, absolutely fucking insane in practice."
"You're considering helping them," Emir observes. It's not a question. He knows me too well after all these centuries.
"I'm considering preventing a complete social collapse that would interfere with my war efforts," I correct, though we both know there's more to it than that. "Riots destabilize the realm. Unstable realms lose wars. Losing wars leads to uncomfortable conversations with headsmen and a significant decrease in my quality of life. You see the logical progression."
"Of course, my lord. Pure strategic thinking."
"Precisely. It has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that watching children starve makes me feel like a monster, which is frankly insulting since I've worked very hard to be a monster by choice rather than circumstance." I step back from the balcony, gathering shadows around me like a cloak. "Besides, Yasar's been giving me the most insufferable lectures about leadership and compassion, so I figure I'll show him how it's done. With more flair and significantly better hair."
"Summon the healers to prepare for casualties," I command. "And send word to the treasury—we'll be opening the emergency grain stores. Also, dispatch a team to deal with whatever supernatural nasties are taking advantage of the chaos. I saw at least two shadow-wraiths circling the market square, and if there are Obur feeding on the despair down there, I want them relocated to somewhere more appropriate. Like the dungeons. Or preferably, the afterlife."
"All of them? The grain stores, I mean, not the Obur. Though I suppose we could discuss the Obur situation as well."
