“Don’t do anything stupid! Godsdammit, you know how the king is,” Sam, his first mate, added as he ran alongside Atlas.
But Draevyn wasn’t listening. He couldn’t. There was a roaring in his ears that he knew would never cease for as long as the king breathed.
His father had killed Cyrus Blackwood.
King Rowe had killed Esmyra’s father.
And it was all Draevyn’s fault.
After everything, after all the warnings, after all the lines drawn in the sand, his father hadstillcrossed it. Draevyn never should’ve left the king alone with Blackwood. He anticipated the man to be tortured and wanted no part in it. But an execution?
A chill ran along his spine, knowing exactly what Esmyra would do when she found out.
And, gods, he didn’t blame her.
Gods. That was who got them all in this disaster in the first place. For if Irah, Vydenne, and Villaem never betrayed Kaelypso and Naerysa nearly a thousand years ago, they wouldn’t be in this fucking disaster.
Draevyn would still have his Wildfire.
Or… or perhaps she never would’ve existed to him at all. He hated how the thought of that somehow stung more than anything else.
Turning a sharp corner, he shoved past a pair of startled servants. He barely heard their yelps, barely felt the burn in his muscles as he pushed forward, aiming for the throne room.
“Brother, listen to me!” Atlas’s voice finally broke through the haze. “You can’t go charging in like this. We need to think?—”
“There’s nothing to think about!” Draevyn whirled on them so fast they both nearly slammed into him. “The king is a murderer! I don’t give a damn that Blackwood was a criminal. Our father took something that wasn’t his to take, and now he’s sitting on that damned throne like it was nothing. Declaring himself a fuckinghero!”
Sam stepped between the brothers, trying to push them apart. “We know, Drae. But you need to be smart about this. Barging in there, shouting accusations… It won’t change what’s done. Blackwood is dead, regardless.”
Draevyn’s jaw clenched so hard it ached. “No, but it might stop him from bragging about his death. I need to buy us time before her fury reaches our shores.”
Because he knew the king would twist the knife deeper, ensuring the damage was irreversible. His father would likely announce Blackwood’s death to the realm immediately, demanding the respect he thought he was owed when all he did was hold an illegal, private execution in his castle’s dungeon.
And if Esmyra hadn’t already learned of it, she would soon. Then there would be no stopping the storm that followed.
Both Atlas’s and Sam’s eyes widened at what Draevyn declared, but he turned before they could argue, shouldering open the massive doors. They didn’t understand the ramifications of it all yet. They had no idea.
And there he fucking was.
King Rowe sat lazily on his throne, swirling wine in his goblet as his face wore a wicked grin. His father looked down at him and smirked. “Ah. The coward returns.”
The fire raging in Draevyn’s chest threatened to consume him whole. The world around him blurred, drowned in a haze of red. His blood thundered deafeningly in his ears, and before he could think—before he could stop himself—he was moving.
Draevyn stormed up the dais, his lip curling back as a growl erupted from him. The king barely had time to straighten before Draevyn’s hands were around his throat.
There was yelling, muffled bellowing voices surrounding him on all sides, but he couldn’t make out a single word. Truthfully, he didn’t want to. They were likely telling him to stand down, and he had no fucking intention of doing so.
Heat flared beneath his palms, his fury barely contained as his grip tightened on the king’s throat. His father let out a strangled noise, his goblet slipping from his fingers and crashing onto the floor with a loudclang; dark wine spilled across the stone.
“You murdered him,” Draevyn snarled, his voice unrecognizable. His flames begged to be unleashed, desperate to consume the realm’struemonster before him. “You condemned us all.”
The king gripped his wrist in a struggle. But when Draevyn expected to find fear in his eyes, he instead found something else.Amusement. Even with his throat constricted, his father’s lips curled in a slow, smug grin.
“You foolish fucking boy,” he rasped, voice strained but mocking. “You’re finally showing somerealfire.”
Draevyn squeezed harder, his hands trembling with the effort to hold back the inferno roaring inside him. His vision swam, his breath comingin ragged gasps. He wanted to end him. Wanted to burn the king from the inside out. And more than anything, he wanted to make him suffer the way Esmyra would suffer when she found out?—
“Let him go!”
