Xeni squeezes my hand once, hard, before releasing me and striding forward with deliberate calm. The light catches his hair and turns it silver-white, and exposes the sneering smile that’s so foreign on him.
Another mask.
One of defiance, carved from years of practice.
“Your voice is a little rough, Father,” Xeni says, tone deceptively casual. “Are you under the weather?”
Zadeus steps into the light with a sneer. “It's nothing I can't handle, I promise you that.”
His calculating eyes fix on Xeni with the same possessive scrutiny that once shaped him, and the air is dense with the unspoken history between them.
One of his guards steps closer, hand tightening on the hilt of his sword, but Zadeus halts him with a single raised palm.
“This is between me and my son. You will not interfere.”
“But, High Commander, sir—”
“Stand down,” Zadeus orders.
The guard drops to one knee, head bowed low in perfect, mechanical subservience.
Xeni watches it with a bored tilt of his head. “Is this what you’ve resorted to? Forcing others to bend the knee because it’s the only way they’ll do it? You really have lost your touch, haven’t you?”
“Insolent child!” Zadeus storms forward, the air around him crackling with unrestrained power.
Xeni matches him step for step until they stand barely a foot apart, close enough to feel the heat of each other’s rage.
“You never learned to respect your elders,” Zadeus sneers.
Xeni’s smirk is deliberate, and his gaze drifts up and down his father’s frame with mocking appraisal. “No weapon?”
Zadeus tilts his chin in challenge, horns catching the light. “Iamthe weapon.”
Xeni’s hand slithers to the knife at his hip, fingers curling around the hilt.
His father’s smirk mirrors his own, tracking the movement with cold amusement. “Now, son, I taught you better manners than this. We must keep our hands to ourselves.”
The command rolls out like silk, and Xeni’s fingers freeze mid-motion, muscles straining against an invisible tether. His jaw clenches, the fight in him obvious in the flare of his nostrils and the subtle tremble in his arm.
Zadeus steps even closer, voice dropping to a velvet murmur. “You always did have trouble following orders, didn’t you? That’s why you’re here now. You never learned to behave.”
Xeni’s eye flashes with something dangerous, but his hand remains still, trapped by the compulsion.
The silence between them thickens like it, too, is waiting for the next move.
This is a game, after all, though it's been rigged since the beginning.
Zadeus swipes his thumb over Xeni’s cheek. “This fight isn’t with you, son. It’s for you to watch.”
He glances over his shoulder at his entourage. “Hold him.”
A group of soldiers move to grab Xeni, gripping his arms and neck. A punch lands on his ribcage, and a kick knocks his knees out from underneath him as he hits the ground.
I lunge forward, but Zadeus lifts a hand in my direction, and I freeze as Xeni screams my name. His father reaches with those long, elegant fingers that are so much like his son’s, and he tilts my chin higher.
“Release me!” Xeni bellows with a shockwave of power, and the guards fall aside. Some hit their knees while one falls on his ass and another slams against the wall.
Xeni’s rage makes his limbs quake as he storms closer, but Zadeus doesn’t pay him any attention.
