Val-Theris swallowed heavy. It was at the forefront of his mind too—his prophecy of death and the dread of knowing he was unable to escape it. He did not want to share that dread with her. Not now. So instead, he whispered:
“The future can change.”
It was a lie.
Solmiris’shigh corridors were silent, lit only by the faint blue glow of lanterns lining the marble walls. Rain pattered softly against the towering stained glass windows, catching on the intricate carvings of Seraveth’s winged saints.
Rohannes found Val-Theris where he often did when the weight of visions pressed hardest—standing alone at the eastern balcony, wings drawn close, his gaze fixed on the sleeping city below.
The gardens beneath were silver in the rain, gold-veined spires cutting against the clouded night.
“You called for me, sir,” Rohannes said quietly, stepping into the cool wash of lamplight.
“Indeed,” Val-Theris murmured, his voice soft but hoarse from silence.
“Something has changed in you.” Rohannes moved closer, boots steady against the slick marble, until he stood a few paces behind him. “You’ve tripled the guard around the palace and the terraces without explanation.”
Val-Theris’s grip tightened on the carved railing, knuckles pale against gold-inlaid stone.
Rohannes waited. Val-Theris’s wings shifted, feathers catching faint threads of lantern light. “It’s about the unrest in Solmiris. In a way,” he said with a particular sharpness, as though willing Rohannes to leave it at that.
“I know you better than that.” His voice remained steady, low enough to keep the words beneath the veil of rain. “You can tell me.”
The king said nothing for a long moment, his jaw squared and his eyes reflecting the restless lights of Solmiris below.
Finally, softly: “Jesenia carries my child.”
The words hung in the cold air like fragile glass. Rohannes stilled, the sheer weight of those words holding them both frozen in place. “I see.” He recovered quickly, as he always did, but his voice was lower now, edged with careful weight. “That is…dangerous knowledge, my king.”
“I know.”
“The council cannot learn of it.” Rohannes’s tone sharpened, footsteps drawing closer, the faint rasp of leather shifting as he rested a gloved hand against the railing. “You’ve seen how they already speak of her. Of her people. If they believe the bloodline of Solmiris will carry Lunareth in its veins?—”
“They will not touch her,” Val-Theris said flatly, his voice cutting like honed steel.
Rohannes’s hand dropped back to his side. “I know you believe that. But you cannot fight them with words in this. They will call for your abdication, or worse—civil war. They’ll–”
“Rohannes.”
For the first time, Val-Theris turned toward him, pale gaze bright beneath the shadows, his voice a whisper carrying too much weight.
“I’ve seen my death.”
Something unreadable passed across the Angelicus Prime’s face, his hands curling loosely at his sides, but he said nothing.
Val-Theris stepped forward, closing the distance until they stood shoulder to shoulder, his wings drawn wide enough to catch the lamplight, shadowing the space between them.
“I’ve seen it,” he said again, softer now, almost a confession. “Blood on marble. My body broken beneath the throne. I thought I understood it and could accept it as destiny. But now…” His voice faltered, breath uneven. “Now all I can think of is Jesenia and our child. If I die, they’ll be left alone in a city that wants them gone.”
“You don’t know that’s what the visions mean for certain," Rohannes said, though his voice carried none of his usual surety.
“Yes I do,” Val-Theris murmured, his gaze lowering to the sprawling lights of Solmiris below. “I feel it like I feel the air in my lungs and the heartbeat under my chest. This is not a fate I can escape.”
Rohannes studied him for a long moment, reading the tension carried in every line of him—the king who was also a man, the angel who feared not his own death, but rather, losing the one tether still grounding him.
“I’ll keep them safe,” Rohannes said finally, voice low and steady. “Even if you fall, I swear it. I will take them from this city and find sanctuary far away from here where they cannot be harmed.”
Val-Theris’s jaw tightened. He could not ask that of Rohannes, but neither could he bring himself to reject it. Neither spoke again. They stood together in silence, Solmiris’s restless spires rising before them, the rain falling soft against his wings and the stone. And though neither said it, both men understood the same unspoken truth:
