But because Kael had lived thirty-four years without ever knowing he had been loved at all.
Yet I was not the one who should tell him.
“He deserves to know,” I said.
Lionel sighed deeply and brushed the tears from his cheeks. “I wish I could tell him.”
“You can,” I said again, firmer this time.
Lionel’s hands trembled where they rested upon the carved armrests, his gaze drifting toward the distant columns as though the truth might be easier to bear if it were etched in stone. When at last he looked back at me, his eyes were a father’s, not a king’s, wide, afraid, drowning in a sorrow he had carried too long. “If I tell him,” he whispered, “he will be gone.”
The words hung between us, heavy as iron.
I stepped closer to the foot of the dais, not out of boldness, but because I could not speak this truth from a distance. “If you do not,” I said softly, “I will. He deserves nothing less. And you know I speak true.”
He flinched as though struck. “Magister Corvo, please... You do not understand. Kael is loyal to me because I gave him a place. A home. If he learns what truly happened… if he learns what my family allowed…” His breath fractured. “He will walk away. He will never look at me again.”
I shook my head. “No. You are wrong.”
He searched my face, desperate for a lie he could cling to. I offered him none.
“He will not leave you,” I said. “Because here, he has a name. A purpose he has spent a lifetime carving into stone. And because Kael does not give his devotion lightly. Once given, it is absolute. He would scorch the world before breaking a bond he chose.”
Lionel stared at me as though he were seeing Kael through different eyes, through mine.
“You think he will forgive me?” he asked, voice thin, almost childlike.
“No,” I answered honestly. “Not at once. Perhaps not for a long while.” I drew a slow breath. “But he will not turn from you. His loyalty is bone-deep, Your Highness. Forged through hardship, not comfort.”
He closed his eyes. Tears escaped again, but this time something in them had shifted, fear loosening, clarity taking its place.
“And if I stay silent?” he murmured.
I held his gaze. “Then he will discover it another way. And that would break him far more than the truth spoken by your own mouth.”
Silence settled, thick, weighty, and sacred.
Lionel bowed his head like a man choosing the harder path. “Very well,” he whispered. “I will tell him.”
“Good,” I said softly.
Lionel released a long, trembling breath, as though bracing himself for a storm of his own making.
And I knew, in that moment, that the world would shift when Kael heard the truth.
But at last, it would shift in the right direction.
The king wiped the last of his tears, and I bowed, knowing what must come next. The truth would soon shake the foundations beneath both the king and his court wizard, and Kael would at last learn the shape of the shadow cast at his birth. But the man he had become, the man I loved, was stronger than any storm. Strong enough to weather the truth, and strong enough to choose what came after.
Kael awaited me beyond these doors, unaware that the world was already shifting beneath his feet. And when the storm finally met its origin, I would be there beside him, unshaken.
We would stand in its eye and face it. Together.
Epilogue
KAEL
Ihad never expected to find peace. That the shadows might one day soften into light, making room for forgiveness and quiet. That the storm inside me could become an ally rather than the enemy clawing at my ribs.
