Bells clanged.
Guards shouted.
The Senate groaned open again behind them, but Amerei did not look back. She pressed herself into Viktor’s hold.
They rode as one—west, into the waiting dusk.
Into whatever came next.
Chapter Seventy-Five
Not King Yet
He stood in the storm, beads rattling, mask unbroken. Not king. Not yet.
Xavien stood at the chamber’s center. Waiting in the storm.
He would not move. He would not break.
His breath became his anchor.
In—two, three, four. Hold—two, three, four. Out—two, three, four.
The rhythm steadied his pulse, masking the restlessness that clawed beneath his skin. His fingers itched to straighten the fall of his sleeve, to trace the beads at his shoulder, to count each one until the chamber blurred away. But he forced his hands still. He would not show them his cracks.
A voice broke over the chaos.
“You offend this chamber, Xavien! Dangling the halfling on your arm.”
The prince shifted only his eyes to spy his opponent—an elf older even than King Yethule.
Senator Idrel.
“Where is your wife, Xavien?”
The room hushed, every gaze cutting toward him.
Xavien lifted his chin, speaking to the mass.
“Would you show no mercy to a homesick bride—torn from her children, self-exiled by the very compulsionsyouforced us to obey?”
“You are not free to arrange your next marriage,” Senator Idrel warned. “You bury the body before it is even dead. Shalorien ven dravak. Shalorien ven kin.”(Shame on your soul. Shame on your line.)
Xavien strode up the steps, each movement precise, every twitch of his hands buried in the sweep of his mantle. At the top he turned sharply, a practiced flourish.
“Will we truly let a decree of marriage—a single piece of parchment—threaten the safety of our realm?”
He descended again, steps striking like drumbeats.
“Casqadia will fall. There is no stopping it now.”
His arms flung wide, as if to show the chamber the ruin he alone could see.
“Our own soldiers defy the stubbornness of this council. More every day leave our ranks to join Commander Storne at Fort Sevrak.”
He pressed his hand to his heart, a gesture both vow and restraint.
“Let me ease our suffering. Let me elevate the impressionable halfling to her rightful place as queen. From the rubble of her ruin we shall fashion a Casqadia prostrate before Elváliev.”
