Like a knife had been slid beneath it, careful and precise.
A knot formed in his throat, slow and terrible. His steps faltered as realization dragged sharp claws through his thoughts. His fingers curled into fists. Shadows began to coil around his arms like smoke drawn to blood.
He stopped in the middle of the corridor, closing his eyes, stretching his magic toward the tether that connected him to her.
He reached.
Maris.
Her name echoed in the hollow of his mind.
No answer. No flicker of warmth. Just the faint echo of apprehension and underneath that something familiar.
Wrong.
Not hers.
Alarik.
Fuck.
He didn’t wait. His body snapped into motion, magic exploding in a roar of shadow and fury that sent the nearby sconces flickering and the walls trembling.
If Alarik had touched her,
If he had taken her from their bed, from the protection of his court, from him,
Kael would tear the Veil down himself and throw the bastard into it and drown Calanthe in his ashes.
“Sound the alarms,” Kael barked the moment he stepped back into the throne corridor. “Summon Corin. Riven. Draeven. The council meets now.”
Kael stood at the head of the obsidian table, arms braced, voice like a blade across the chamber.
“Maris was stolen.”
Gasps. Tension. Serya’s hand found Leneth’s. Valea paled.
Corin’s jaw flexed. “How?”
“I don’t know,” Kael admitted, fury spiking in his chest. “But I will find out.”
A messenger burst in moments later, panting. “Your highness… reports from the city perimeter. Over a dozen massacred. Guards stationed at the south wing tower were slain. Quietly. Efficiently.”
“We have eyes watching the western edge of the border,” Riven said. “If the bastard moves, we’ll catch his shadow.”
Kael shook his head. “No. He's already gone.”
He turned to the scribe. “Prepare a formal correspondence. I want it sent west across the sea to King Thauren of Virellia.”
Gasps again. Even Draeven raised an eyebrow.
“The sea-King?” Valea said cautiously. “You would ally with him now?”
“He owes me a debt,” Kael snapped. “And he wants Alarik’s head more than I do.”
Thauren. The storm-crowned ruler of the island kingdom of Virellia. Master of fleets, bearer of tempest-forged steel. And, once upon a time, an almost-brother to Kael. Hiskingdom, far out beyond the jagged cliffs of the western coast of Calanthe, where the sea turns black and the wind shireks in pain, an island the maps often forgot or chose to look over. It rises like a wound from the water: sharp, crooked, cloaked in mist that never lifts. No birds circle it. No uninvited ships return from its shores. Its land filled with ruthless warriors.
“He will come,” Kael muttered. “And when he does we’ll have two armies at Alarik’s doorstep, one from the western sea, and our marching to the river's edge through the borderlands.”
