She smiled reaching out a hand to him.
In a blur of shadow and steel, Kael drove his blade through Elenwe’s chest. No words. No warning. As if fate had whispered death into his hand. The music stopped. The room screamed. Swords were drawn.
Alarik tore through the chaos, his breath a ragged thing, half scream, half prayer. Elenwe crumpled like a flower cut too soon, and when he fell to his knees beside her, the world narrowed to the blood blooming from her chest.
"No," he rasped, voice breaking as he gathered her into his arms, his hands already stained with her blood. Her eyes fluttered, unfocused, lips parting to speak — but the wound was too great, blood greeted him instead of her soft voice.
He shifted his stare onto Kael’s deadened eyes and let a curse fall from his lips like a blade forged in vengeance.
“I swear on the bones of the gods themselves,”he spat, voice a tremor of thunder,“I will take what you love most and break it until even your shadows weep.”
Zairon had pulled him back that night, ebony skin splashed with Elenwe’s blood, golden eyes full of fury, and sorrow carving hollows into his face.
“Don’t do this,” Zairon had begged. “This wasn’t Kael's choice Alarik — you know it wasn’t.”
He did, but the gods had already turned the wheel and Alarik would not forgive. He couldn’t.
Not when the Veil bled nightmares into their sky.
Not when his people fell sick beneath crimson moons.
Not when Elenwe’s voice came to him in dreams, whispering, breathless in agony —
Now Kael had something. A mortal girl.
A girl whose name already rode whispers across the borderlands like smoke: Maris. Alarik exhaled, the wind rattling the stained glass beside him as he turned from the window of his war room.
Zairon stood arms crossed.
“You’re going to attempt to bring her here aren’t you,” his old friend said flatly.
“I’m going to give Kael a taste of what he took from me.”
“It won’t avenge Elenwe.”
“No,” Alarik said quietly. “But she will be his ruin.”
Chapter twenty-one
Crown of Ashes
-Alarik-
The war room of Calanthe was carved from bone and stone. Not metaphorically. Black stone fused with the remnants of beasts long extinct, their rib-like arches coiling high above the table where maps bled ink and ancient runes pulsed softly from the stone like old scars refusing to heal. Alarik stood at its center, a ghost in light silk. He wore light like a weapon. Not radiant, reflective. Untouchable.
To the kingdom, he was a lightless sun. To his enemies, a king of impossible stillness, lethal grace, and sharpened edges. But only one in the room knew the weight behind the mask.
Zairon leaned nearby, polishing a blade he didn’t need to sharpen. He was all contrast: warm bronze skin, tight braids twisted back at the nape of his neck, and eyes like golden honey. His voice had calmed rebellions, but his fists had ended far more.
“They’ve seen movement along the borders,” he said, gesturing to a silver-tipped map. "Kael knows you're up to something Alarik."
“Let him piece it together, he will be too late.” Alarik murmured, eyes fixed on the runes.
Zairon’s brow lifted. “You’ve been playing this game for too long. Tell me it’s more than a whim now.”
Alarik didn’t look up. “It was never a whim.”
He unrolled a scroll beside the map. Not a battle plan. A page from a tome, copied in his own hand.
