Kael stood and stepped down from the dais, moving to stand before her, so close she could feel the icy aura of his magic.
“You will learn our ways, you will learn to defend yourself,” he murmured, low so only she could hear. “Fail, and I cannot protect you.”
Maris’s heart stumbled in her chest.
“I don’t even know why I’m here,” she breathed.
Kael’s jaw tightened, his eyes held her own.
“In time.”
He faced the court again, a predator at ease in his domain.
“You will show her respect,” he said, his tone brooking no argument. “She is mine.”
Mine.
The word made her knees weak, not in a way that was sweet, but terrifying, because it was as final as a locked cell.
As the court watched with shining eyes and hidden daggers, Maris wondered if she would ever leave these walls again, or if she had stepped into a cage she could never escape.
The beginnings of a feast stirred as soon as Kael took her hand and led her up the dais to perch at his side.
Servants emerged from hidden passages, carrying trays of meat gleaming with dark sauces, jewel-toned fruits piled high, goblets of black blood wine so rich it stained the lips of the passing nobles. Every movement was graceful, eerily perfect, as if they were trained more like living marionettes than people.
Maris tried not to gawk.
Laughter rang sharp as knives, and every so often a noble would lift their glass and let a red tongue flick across a fang before they drank.
It was monstrous, yes, but also horrifyingly beautiful.
Maris was guided by Kael from the dais once the nobles had taken their seats at banquet tables. He placed her once again at his side at a smaller table that had been set for the king alone. Dishes far more familiar to her — roast fowl, bread, stewed greens — had been arranged there as if to spare her from the nightbound fare.
Kael sat in a high-backed obsidian chair crowned with hammered silver. From there, he commanded the room with a simple flick of his hand, a tilt of his head, a silent monarch who did not need to raise his voice.
Yet his eyes, gods, his eyes never left her.
Every time she shifted, when her eyes swept the hall in fear, Kael was watching. Like a wolf, half-possessive, half-patient, tracking prey or protecting it. Maris could not tell which.
She tried to sip her water, but it felt like swallowing stones under his gaze.
The nobles spoke around her in musical, poisoned tones, dropping barbed compliments, gossiping about skirmishes at the Nythran borders, exiled noble houses, mortals they’d hunted for sport, and about curses they’d survived.
Once, a tall noble with hair like spun silver approached their table, bowing with mocking grace. His eyes glowed faintly blue, and Maris felt his stare slice across her skin like a blade.
“My King,” he purred, “I had not heard you kept mortal pets. How… quaint.”
Kael’s eyes snapped to him, the faintest twitch of a smile on his lips, though the smile never reached those winter-cold eyes.
“Quaint, you say?”
The other noble’s grin faltered, reading the danger in Kael’s tone.
“Merely an observation.”
Kael leaned back in his throne, never looking away from Maris, as if staking a claim for the entire court to see.
“Observation can get you killed,” he said softly.
