“First, I must thank you. For what you did at Drachenfels Keep. And I trust you know the importance of silence.”
I nodded.
“Now,” he continued, “I know of your power all too well. I take it you have seen things.”
“I indeed have.”
“Will you tell me what you saw?” There was fear in his voice. Fear of the truth I might utter.
I wasn’t going to wait any longer. “I saw royal guards abandon Kael in the forest.”
That was what I’d seen in the echo, a fleeting glimpse of a faraway past. Royal guards carrying a babe, Kael, and laying him on the wet ground of the woods. And in that moment I had understood, Kael was not no one. And the king alone could tell me who he truly was.
He closed his eyes and leaned back on the throne. When he opened them again, all that remained within them was sorrow.
He said nothing, so I pressed gently, “Why were royal guards carrying an infant into a forest only to leave him to the wolves?”
“You already have the answer,” he said softly, wistfully.
“But I want to hear it from you,” I said. “Your Majesty.”
He sighed deeply, resigned. “The late queen, my mother, may she rest in peace, was a powerful mage. She taught at the academy before she became queen. At that time, my grandfather sat upon the throne, and I was but a young prince, a Valdum with no power, born into a line of mighty light magi. Do you know the history of my family, Magister Corvo?”
I nodded. “Of course. The Valdum lineage descends from the union between an elven queen they called the Queen of Light and the first King of Vanhaui. Magic has run in your blood since the beginning.”
“It was a shame I possessed no such power,” he said. “But I cherished watching my mother teach. I was young, not older than fourteen, when I met Eireann. She was my age, with long ash-blonde hair and eyes of a deep winter sky blue. And she was much like you. Misunderstood at first, but revealed in time to be capable of echoing not only memories, but magic itself. My mother called hermirror-mage. As far as we knew, academy and court alike, she was the only one of her kind. She received private tutelage and soon joined us in the castle.”
Another echomage, or whatever they called it?
Another… like me?
“I fell in love with Eireann and we… had a story. But Eireann came from nothing. She had grown up not knowing her parents, raising herself in the gutters until the academy took her in. When my mother discovered our bond, she sent Eireann as far from the castle as she could.”
I knew there was more. And I knew what it was.
The king continued his tale, each word seeming to wound him afresh. “But from our story, a seed had grown. She left the castle with life in her womb. My mother continued to teach her, and eventually… it was discovered. A child.Ourchild. Eireann died in childbirth, all alone. No family, no midwives, no one.”
A tear rolled down his cheek, and if I had never known what a sobbing king looked like, I did now. I simply stood there, silent, and listened.
“My mother wished to hide the child, but my grandfather wanted rid of it. And he was the king, after all. He ordered the guards to take the infant into the woods, to a wolf’s den, and let the beasts take their due. That was thirty-four years ago.”
He paused then, catching a breath he had been holding far too long. I felt his pain, his grief for the mysterious mage who had claimed his heart and whom he clearly had never forgotten. And as his features cracked, I saw something achingly familiar. I could not believe I had not noticed it before. The way he frowned. The way his lips bent when he remembered sorrow. He looked exactly as Kael did in those quiet, unguarded moments.
“Henrich Eisenberg told me of power never seen before. I learned of a blond boy who could not only wield the magic of light, but carry it beyond known limits and conjure storms. A boy with immense power, raised in a Fae village so close to Befest and yet so far from me. I knew it could only be him, my son, who had miraculously survived nature itself. I sent for the boy. Henrich advised that he needed training, so I agreed. I did everything to keep him near, even with my wife beside me and my daughter just learning to walk. And when my old court wizard retired, I chose him to bear the title.”
For a long while, I could only watch him speak and listen. The King of Vanhaui, framed by marble and gold, sorrow carved intoevery line of his face. His regret was real, so real it made my throat sting. Part of me wanted to shout at him, to ask how he had allowed a single life to be cast aside. Kael’s life.Hisson. And another part of me wanted to weep for the young man he had once been, who had lost both his love and his child in the same cruel breath.
But I did neither. I remained rooted where I stood, while he shed tears for a son who would never return to him in the way he longed for.
Because none of this changed the future. Kael would never be recognized as the king’s blood. He would never sit on a throne, never wear a crown that should have been his by birth. And gods, knowing him, he would never desire such a thing. That life had never belonged to him, buried long ago beneath wolf-song and stormlight.
Still, he deserved to know.
He deserved to hear that his life had not begun in abandonment, but in the cruelty of circumstance, in the absence of choice.
As the king’s voice faded into silence, a heaviness settled in my chest—no longer anger, no longer simple grief, but a painful, solemn understanding. Whatever came next, whatever I decided to do, this truth belonged to Kael.
Not because I wished to unburden myself.
