His grip grew firm around her hands. “Who knows what?”
“The council. About the baby.” Her voice cracked, thin and broken. “They said—” She faltered, swallowing hard beforeforcing the words out. “They said that I had to leave Seraveth before I began showing or else?—”
“Theythreatenedyou?”
She nodded, breath shuddering, trying to steady her hands against his.
Val-Theris’s chest rose sharply, once, as though the air itself had turned against him. Slowly, carefully, he lifted her chin, forcing her tear-bright gaze to meet his steady one.
“No one,” he said dangerously, “threatens you.No one.”
“Please don’t do anything that will make them hate us more,” she begged, but Val-Theris could not grant her that wish—too blinded by fury and the desperation to protect his growing family.
The council convenedat dawn the next day by emergency order of the king. But only two councilors arrived, Varin and Gena, for they were the only ones to receive the summons.
In the gilded chamber beneath Solmiris’s high dome, their murmured voices were already restless when Val-Theris entered.
“Your Majesty, what troubles you?” Varin asked smoothly, as if he didn’t already know.
“You summoned Lady Jesenia without my knowledge.” His voice cut through the chamber, quiet but unyielding. “Youthreatenedthe mother of my child,” Val-Theris said evenly, though his wings flared faintly behind him, casting long shadows across the marble floor.
Gena rose, chin tilting defiantly. “We sought only to protect Solmiris’s sovereignty.”
“By promising the death of a woman and child?”
“She is no mere woman! She is the face of Seravath’s weakness! We cannot allow it!”
Val-Theris stepped forward slowly, his eyes sharply cutting across the marble table like drawn blades. He stopped in front of Varin, his expression unreadable, his hands relaxed at his sides—and then, in a single, controlled movement, he drew a narrow dagger from its scabbard. Before anyone could speak, before Varin could even inhale, the blade slid clean and silent across his throat.
He collapsed soundlessly, blood spilling blackened red across the polished marble. Val-Theris looked down at him as if someone had spilled wine. Gena sat unmoved, but when the king’s pale gaze met hers, the facade broke and fear shown in her eyes, her lips parting in silent horror.
“Let you both be a lesson to the rest of my Council. If any one of you ever so much as breathes her name again…it will be the last thing you do.”
Then, his narrow blade met her throat as well. Gena fell limp to the table next to Varin’s body.
Val-Theris turned sharply to the Angelicus Prime, who had been watching from the shadows. “Take care of them,” he commanded, then strode from the chamber without another word, leaving the blood behind him.
While the Council dared not speak Jesenia’s name again, they had already set plans into place that extended far beyond the deaths of Varin and Gena. The cost of their deaths was now etched into Solmiris’s bones: the city would never forgive its king for spilling its own blood.
TWENTY-EIGHT
By nightfall,the markets of Solmiris were thick with whispers.
“The refugee carries the angel’s bastard.”
“They’ll put Lunareth blood on our throne.”
“Blasphemy. A curse on us all.”
The words spread like rot, carried by merchants, servants, priests. By morning, graffiti marred the marble arches of Solmiris: crude smears of paint depicting broken wings, crowns cracked in half.
By the next morning, the unrest boiled over. Crowds filled the lower terraces, shouting, hurling stones at theHastati, tearing banners from their poles. In the chaos, voices rose sharp and merciless:
“Down with the half-blood!”
“Purge the Lunareth filth!”
From the palace balcony, Val-Theris watched the riots churn like a sea of flame below. His wings snapped wide, his voice cutting across the roar.
