A feeder. She stares at him with something that does not belong to an infant, something that meets him rather than recoils, something that recognizes. Then she smiles. Small, barely there, and yet unmistakable, as though in that instant she understands something no one else in the room does. As though she sees him and understands that they are the same.
Sevrin should feel anger. He should feel the weight of everything that has led to this moment, the betrayal, the insult, all of it pressing down on him at once.
Instead something else rises. Quieter and more dangerous. It slips past reason, past restraint, past everything he has trained himself to hold in place. And against his better judgment, against all the fury that still burns in him, against every instinct that should turn him away from this room and everything in it?—
He smiles back.
A Change in Plans
NOX
Nox enters the palace as if it belongs to her, and in every way that matters, it does. The banners along the walls bear King Fyris’s crest, the sigil carved into every arch as if the place had been cut to fit him. The moment she crosses the threshold, her magic unravels around her, a slow, suffocating dark that seeps along the walls and climbs the high arches, gathering in the corners and along the vaulted ceilings until the air itself seems to recognize her, to bend and thicken beneath the weight of her presence.
“Where the fuck is he?”
Her voice carries through the hall, not raised, yet impossible to ignore. A servant breaks from the line along the wall, already trembling. “In his chambers, Your Highness.”
She moves before the words have fully faded, her path already decided, her body following a route it knows without thought or hesitation, because this place has never been foreign to her, not truly.
“Iva fucking Noxa,” a voice calls after her, bright with irreverent amusement.
She does not slow as Avaneer falls into step beside her, his presence as careless as ever, his grin audible even before she turns her head just enough to acknowledge him. “Fuck off, Avaneer.”
He only laughs, unbothered, keeping pace with ease. “Always so mean. Always so rude. My cock’s bigger than my cousin’s, you know.”
She does not give him more than a single glance before her hand lifts, the motion almost lazy, almost absent of effort, and the power that answers her surges outward in a violent sweep, catching him mid-stride and sending him crashing into the far wall hard enough to rattle the corridor and pull gasps from the servants who dare to watch.
His laughter follows her anyway, unbroken, as if the impact means nothing at all.
Nox continues forward without looking back, the palace shifting around her as she moves deeper into it, the halls drawing tighter, the light dimming where her magic lingers, her presence alone enough to part the space ahead of her without a word. Guards begin to fall in behind her out of instinct, drawn to her as everything in this place is, but she cuts the movement off with a single command, her voice low and final as it threads through the corridor.
“Go away.”
They stop where they are, as if the air itself has turned solid around them, while she continues on, unimpeded, her focus pulling inward, her anger refining into something far quieterand far more dangerous than the edge it had been when she entered.
By the time she reaches his chambers, it has become controlled, patient, something that waits rather than burns.
She does not knock. She steps inside.
Teorin is not where she expects him to be, and the absence of him at the desk, buried in maps and half-truths, feels wrong in a way that unsettles her more than if he had been there pretending.
He stands near the bed instead, already dressed in travel leathers fastened with care, blades arranged within reach as though he has been preparing for departure long before she ever stepped into the hall, his movements controlled in a way that immediately grates.
He looks up when she enters, and there is no flicker of surprise, no shift to suggest she has interrupted anything, and that quiet certainty presses at her patience.
“You lied to me.”
The words leave her easily, though there is more behind them than she intends to show.
He does not answer.
She moves further into the room, the door closing behind her with a soft, final sound that seals the space around them, the airthick with something unspoken that neither of them moves to break.
“Teorin,” she presses, her voice tightening despite the control she reaches for, “why did you lie to me?”
“I don’t need to explain anything to you, Nox.”
“A decade,” she says, and the word catches in her throat before she can shape it into something smoother, something less revealing. “A decade of my life, and you lie, not about something small, but about everything. Our plan. Our future?—”
