Lightning still laced across his brother’s shoulders, crackling with restraint that would not hold forever. His chest rose and fell in trembling bursts, as if the act ofnotlunging forward was tearing him open from the inside.
Ashterion felt it then, the fractures forming in the façade he’d spent centuries constructing.
Because this was aproblem.
He had made sure the worst of it remained hidden.
The humiliations? Those were public. The whispers of his obedience, of his usefulness in bed, of the leash Xyliria wrapped around his throat and yanked whenever the court grew too quiet.
But the blade? The bindings?This?
No one had ever seen that.
And now Merrick was standing in the doorway, fists clenched, lightning licking at the air like a living snarl. His eyes burned with something ancient. Righteous. Wrathful.
And Ashterion knew Merrick would kill her. The first opportunity he had.
The male had never been one to forgive cruelty, especially not when it touched family. And he could do it. Ashterionknewthat. Knew how lethal Merrick was when he was angry, how sharp his instincts became when the people he loved were hurt.
But if he struck while she was consort… if he moved against her now…
Ashterion’s jaw flexed.
“Merrick,” he said again, low and sure. “Go.”
A muscle in Merrick’s jaw twitched, his throat worked around a word he didn’t say. His lightning flickered, then vanished.
But Ashterion saw it on Merrick’s face, clear as daylight. Every moment of the last four centuries folding in on itself. Every quiet question, every tense silence. Every time Merrickhad pressed him, asking things he shouldn’t have noticed, things Ashterion had been so sure he’d hidden.
Every time, he had dismissed them. Deflected. Smiled. Lied.
“Merrick.” And fuck, his voice cracked. “Please.”
Agony flashed across his brother’s face. It came closer to breaking Ashterion than any blade Xyliria had ever pressed to his skin.
But then, with hands that trembled far more than they should have, Merrick reached for the door. Pulled it shut. And the room was silent once more.
Xyliria sighed as she resumed her work. “Well done,” she purred, dragging the blade lightly across his collarbone. “I thought for a moment Merrick had forgotten his manners.”
Ashterion hissed through his teeth, not from the pain, but to fill the sound where a scream might have gone.
Because he was already planning. Merrick wouldn’t let this go. He would kill Xyliria the first chance he got. And Ashterion couldn’t risk Merrick. He refused to lose him—not when he’d already lost so much.
He needed to protect him. There was only one way to do that.
The irony nearly made him laugh. Because the answer… the answer was already in Xyliria’s hand. It was one of only a handful of weapons in the world that could kill a High Lord like him.
Ashterion closed his eyes, just for a moment.
It would be difficult. But not impossible.
He’d already been considering it. In stolen moments. In the dead hush of sleepless nights when guilt curled tight in his gut andherface haunted him. He hadn’t been able to protect her. Not fully. But this… this he could do.
The power tethered to him—his hold over the Nyxarian lands—could be transferred. Xyliria had never been made High Lady, only consort. And that made things… simpler.
He could bind the magic to Merrick instead. Quietly. Finalise it the moment before?—
Ashterion swallowed down the thought.
