As Tomas had said, I would wager the mountain too. My gaze settled on the dark woodland rising at its base, climbing higher until it thinned into cliffs of jagged rock, rising like broken teeth against the clouds. The vines in their garden were not reaching for it but spilling out from it. Something at the root of that mountain moved, and something deep in my gut whispered that I should go there and investigate.
I would have to report to Bram. And we would have to act quickly. The sense crawling under my skin was not just dread. It was the certainty of a beginning. The beginning of something far worse.
And I prayed to the gods we did not have another plague on our hands.
Chapter 6
Kael
Lionel, salt-and-pepper hair now more salt than pepper, sat on the dark oak chair at the head of the table in the Council of the Crown’s central chamber. He never wore his crown when we met in private. The blue of his eyes had dulled with years, but they still held the kingdom, and they carried a peculiar shadow whenever they rested on me.
Chancellor Bramwell Alderholt of the Council of Farming stood behind him, gazing up at a portrait of Lionel’s ancestor hanging sternly on the wall. Across from me sat Chancellor Veyric Dornfeld of the Council of Justice and his magister, Isolde. They’d been wrangling with me over the riots festering in the gutters. Thalen, the old battlemage of the Council of War, who had begged me more than once to teach his adepts in the barracks, had not been invited. He was too bound to his emotions to offer anything but steel, and I needed calm minds.
I’d asked for Bramwell’s presence to discuss the grain caravans I intended to send to Bretannia as a token of gratitude—or, in my language, mercy. Perhaps the true reason was that I had half hoped his little magister would accompany him. But she had spent her dayin the farming village. I would have to wring information from Loren, who seemed to know her well, because ever since the last council I’d not been able to banish the image of Evangelina Corvo and her sweet lips. That scent of roses, that brief flash of doe eyes meeting mine… It had lodged itself like a thorn in my mind.
Even here, in the presence of my king, I found her shadow in every mention of fields and harvest. No one noticed the storm unraveling in me at each small reminder.
Lionel cleared his throat, the sound pulling me back from the image she’d left in my head. He watched me a heartbeat longer than courtesy demanded, an old, unreadable softness flickering in his gaze before he masked it.
“Two years it’s been,” His Highness began, voice warm but rough. “It’s over now. These winter coughs are nothing. The cure is out there, and the Council of Commons continues to carry it to the faraway corners of Vanhaui.” His gaze flicked to me. “Kael, what will it take for Bretannia to calm down?”
A hard question, but as I’d said before, I’d long since learned to play the game that is politics.
“Most in Bretannia have accepted the cure and begun to move on from those dreadful years,” I said. “The groups who still scold the Crown will die out if we do not abandon the people and continue to feed them.”
“You talk about these groups like they are mere ants,” Isolde said, arms folded. Always contrary. “We are speaking of militias whose doctrine has reached the capital’s gutters.”
“They have broken a thousand laws and are poised to break more,” Veyric added, eyes sharp as chisels. He was old, always angry, yet his hair was still improbably black. He remembered every law ever inked, and in their matching black tunics, they looked more like father and daughter than chancellor and magister.
“If we acknowledge them, we grant them the power of existence,” I said. “We keep our forces protecting the people, we watchthe threat they pose, but we do not cast off an entire state because a handful howl at the Crown.”
My words landed. Silence, for a heartbeat. “Bramwell,” I said, and he straightened at once when our eyes met. “How stand the caravans of grain?”
“Almost ready to depart, Magister.”
“Have them leave at dawn.”
I turned to Lionel. Concern was etched across his features. It was the kind of concern he rarely showed in public, sharpened, almost personal when directed at me. These days, most councils with magisters were guided by me. Lionel was the hand that stamped the decisions. We had that kind of bond; my judgment was his, my orders were his orders. But now he looked as if something weighed against it. I needed to know.
Our eyes met. He leaned back, drawing a long breath. “Those years, Kael… We fought so hard against the Breath of Death. We won. But sometimes I wonder just how much we lost.”
I recognized that tone. Not weakness, but the private weariness of a king who had bled for his people. No one else ever heard it. Only I did, in moments like this. And I knew what I ought to do.
“Those years were ugly,” he continued. “We all made sacrifices, choices we are not proud of. Do you think we chose rightly?”
I knew what he sought. People saw kings as marble, but they cracked like clay. All they had was a crown, a title, and the weight of a realm on their shoulders. In moments like this, my task was simple. He needed reassurance that the things he did, the orders he gave, were the right ones.
“You made the only choices you could,” I said.
And with that, the council broke. Chairs scraped, and the others shuffled out one by one. Lionel remained seated a moment longer, eyes distant. His hand lifted a fraction, as if he meant to touch my arm before he thought better of it. For a breath, I wondered what words he had almost spoken, but I let the thought pass. I stood, thestorm banked within me, silent but felt, the true power in the room even as I bowed to my king.
Outside the chamber,Selena waited for me. I had no time for her. I wanted to check Bramwell’s caravans and request a battlemage or two from Thalen to guard them. Her gloved hand brushed my arm to catch my attention.
“You know we have the magisters’ dinner tonight, Kael?” she asked with that tone of hers that always grated.
I turned. When our eyes met, she flinched.
“I’m preparing the seating chart,” she added, recovering quickly. “I thought placing Magister Corvo between us could be… interesting. For her, I mean. She could learn much from you.”
