Maris glanced up, then away just as fast. “No.”
He let the silence linger. Then, at last, he said lowly, “Astrielle is dead.”
Her eyes snapped up. “What?”
“She was found,” he said, voice even. “Drunk, facedown in a gutter of the capital. Took three guards to drag her ass to the dungeons. She’d been slipping information southeast for weeks. About you. About me.”
Maris’s breath caught.
Kael’s knuckles whitened where they gripped the edge of the table. “She begged for mercy. Claimed she’d been groomed for me since birth. That she only wanted you gone. That you were an infection. A mistake.”
He leaned forward, voice like glass. “She was a poison, and she paid the price.”
Kael had ended her life with his own hand, no hesitation or mercy. Her betrayal still echoed in his mind, but it was her screams — brief and burning — that haunted less than the silence after. He'd cast her body into the pyres himself, watched the flames devour what was left of her treason.
Maris held herself in absolute stillness.
“I tell you this,” Kael said, “because I will not let anyone take what is mine.”
"You say that like love and possession are the same Kael." She said indifferent. "However, I won't lie — I'm glad she's dead."
-Maris-
She’d begun to feel like she belonged.
The thought had crept in quiet as moonlight, unspoken, barely dared but it lived there, curled beneath her ribs like the first spark of spring.
Not long ago, she had been a seamstress’s ghost. A girl lost in soot and sorrow.
Now, her days began with sparring in Kael’s ring, where sweat slicked his skin and their bodies met in controlled violence —fast, fierce, hungry. The twin generals barked corrections from the sidelines, but Kael sparred with her himself more often than not, matching her movements. And every graze of skin, every shared breath, left her dizzy.
Afterward, he’d often draw her close, press her against the stone walls or collapse with her across silken sheets, leaving her trembling and worshipped.
The pleasure was not just frequent, it was all-consuming. A ritual between them, wordless and burning. He learned her with his hands. She gave him her body and something quieter, something more dangerous — her trust.
The nights were warm, spent tangled in Kael’s bed. He didn’t say it aloud— the word love had not passed his lips, but he held her like he did —protective and comforting.
Her magic had grown, too. Surged, at times. As if the more she gave herself to him, the more the power within her responded, like a song remembering its melody.
But a dream had ruined it all.
It had stolen her breath with its beauty, not its terror. It was the first time since Kael had claimed her that her sleep was haunted by someone else.
A nigthbound cloaked in light.
Where Kael was storm and stone, he was soft gold and silver flame. His hair gleamed like starlight; his voice was made of music and secrets. Eyes like violets, strange and soft.
He had spoken her name like a vow.
She had woken trembling, not with fear, but with a terrible ache. As if she had found something long forgotten, a new part of herself.
Kael had been next to her that morning, sleeping still. She had touched his jaw to ground herself. Told herself it was nothing. But she couldn’t stop seeing violet eyes behind her eyelids. Couldn’t stop hearing that name.
Veil Breaker.
Her magic had flared stronger since. The one name her magic was desperate to hear spoken into existence.
It came in waves now, like tides pulled by a second moon.
