The silence that follows is heavy, broken only by the crackle of the lanterns.
Elandor blinks, scandalized by Ronyn’s simplification. Teddy shakes his head, muttering a curse, but the tension softens—if only slightly.
Seren doesn’t laugh. She sits rigid, her gaze fixed on the Codex as if it might offer another answer she’s not ready to face. Her lips part, the words barely audible. “My blood helped him.”
And no one needs to ask who she means.
Mavyrn’s smirk fades, just a flicker, but enough for me to see it. Seren turns to her sharply. “What does that make me?”
The old woman exhales through her nose, slow and deliberate. “It makes you dangerous,” she says, her voice low. “And powerful beyond measure. You can sharpen it into a bladeof your own making, or blunt your edges until you do nothing but resent it. So don’t waste your breath wishing for anything else.”
Seren swallows, shoulders squaring as though she’s bracing against the weight of responsibility she never asked for. “Am I… evil? An abomination?” she asks, her voice fragile and fractured.
Mavyrn lets out an aggrieved huff, as if this is a waste of her time, but behind it, I can feel the way she softens. “The witches did not pride themselves on moral absolutism, girl. They were complicated, ambiguous. Some good. Some bad. The rest of them were scattered somewhere between. And you? What will you do with all that power?” Mavyrn asks, and somehow, it feels pure. Compassionate, despite her sharp edges.
Elandor clears his throat, eager to escape the mounting storm. “Perhaps we… ah, adjourn for the morning? The Queen has arranged a banquet in your honor. A moment’s reprieve may do more for clarity than a hundred scrolls.”
His words hang like a lifeline in the charged air.
Kael’s hand brushes mine under the table, steadying, grounding. “A banquet,” he mutters, though his eyes never leave mine. “Let’s see what truths the night brings.”
Between my sister’s bloodline and my lover’s vow, I feel the world narrowing to a single, inevitable point. The night will break us open.I can feel it.
I rise from the table on legs that feel borrowed, the Codex’s silver veins still burning in my mind.
My blood. Her blood. Dragons in chains. Witches in shadows. And now a banquet, as if a meal could soften the taste of history.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
KAEL
The hall isa cathedral of light—crystal chandeliers burning like fallen stars, long tables laden with silver and silk. Music hums soft and measured, the kind of thing meant for quiet toasts and dignified conversation, perhaps a slow, modest dance at the end of the evening.
And then she enters, and every other sound in the world dies.
I forget how to breathe.
Gold silk clings to every line of her body, the slit up her thigh so indecent I want to thank and curse the gods in the same breath. The bodice frames her breasts like temptation incarnate, every embroidered Star daring me to fall. She doesn’t just look like a queen—she looks like a sin I’d gladly be damned for.
The hall hushes, eyes dragging over her like vultures, and it makes my blood run sharp and hot. These men see a beautiful woman in a gown. I see divinity draped in silk, a tether thrumming between us, my own undoing wrapped in gold. They don’t get to imagine what I do. Her knees pressed to the edge of my shoulders. Her lips gasping my name into the dark. Her body breaking apart on mine while I whisper vows she’ll pretend she doesn’t believe.
And yet—here I am. Standing straight, face carved into cool composure, because I am a king in a room full of allies who are not allies at all. Politics, restraint, the façade of patience. It’s a good thing my mask is well-practiced, because beneath it I’m a starving man watching the only meal I’ll ever crave glide just out of reach.
She meets my eyes at last, and I know she feels it—my hunger, my reverence, my worship. The sin in me that belongs only to her.
And I smile, because not a single noble in this room will ever know that the most dangerous weapon here isn’t my crown or the blades across my back.It’s her.
Because she’d start and end wars, bring men to their knees, command war rooms and battlefields—not a queen on a throne, but a warrior with a crown.
She holds my gaze across the banquet hall, and the tether hums like it’s alive, like it knows I’d rip this golden dress off her body if we were anywhere but here.
“Your Majesty.”
Ilyra slips to my side like a whisper of parchment turning, quiet as the halls of her mountain libraries. Her voice is soft, cultured, measured—so different from the storm of debased thoughts rioting through my head.
“You should know,” she murmurs, low enough only I can hear, “our Shades will stand with you. Our knowledge. Our eyes. Our secrets. But not our steel.”
I school my face into polite neutrality, nodding as though this doesn’t gut me. As if secrets are enough to face Maldrak and bring down The Decay. “Why?”
