The king’s expression doesn’t change. “No,” he says in perfect English. “I was absent.”
Aelith’s laugh is short and ugly. “How convenient.”
Varek steps forward then, not enough to crowd the space, but enough to make the balance of authority in the clearing shift from old monarchy to present command. “If you wish to stand within Dathanor,” he says, his voice carrying low and clear, “you will explain your presence.”
The king turns his head towards him. It’s a small movement. It shouldn’t feel like a challenge. It does anyway.
“You are Varek Zathrian,” he says.
Not a question.
Varek doesn’t answer.
Good.
The king studies him for a heartbeat longer, then inclines his head once, the gesture too measured to count as respect and too deliberate to be ignored. “I have heard of you.”
“Explain,” Varek says again.
The king’s gaze flicks briefly towards the sentries on the perimeter, then back to us. “Not here.”
“That depends on what you intend,” Shanae says, her tone dry as old bone.
“Survival,” he replies.
That almost makes me laugh because it’s the kind of answer that says everything and absolutely nothing. Judging by Sonny’s expression when he appears at my shoulder a second later, he’s thinking the same thing.
“Wow,” Sonny mutters under his breath. “He really is related to Aelith.”
Aelith hears him. Under any other circumstances, he’d probably snap back. Now he barely seems to register it. His entire focus is fixed on the male in front of us, and there’s something deeply unsettling about seeing the prince—vain, reckless, impossible Aelith—look uncertain.
Varek doesn’t relax. “You enter my settlement unannounced,” he says. “You arrive after an attack by the Queen’s forces while your son’s mate remains her captive. You claim survival and ask for privacy.”
The king’s face hardens by a degree. “I claim necessity.”
Kael speaks for the first time, his voice clipped and cold. “We have no reason to trust you.”
The king looks at him fully then, and some recognition sparks there too. “Kaelor.”
Kael goes still in a way I don’t like. “Do not call me that.”
Aelith’s head turns quickly towards him, like the old name means something larger than offence.
The king’s expression shifts, not in apology, exactly, but recalibration. “No,” he says. “I suppose I do not deserve that.”
For the first time since he arrived, something close to emotion flickers through him. Regret, maybe. It vanishes almost as quickly as it came.
Varek doesn’t let the moment soften anything. “You will speak now,” he says, “or you will be removed.”
The clearing tightens.
The king’s gaze returns to Varek, and for a second, I honestly think he might refuse on principle alone. Then his shoulders settle by a fraction, the kind of adjustment that looks small until you realise it’s the first concession he’s made.
A deeper fracture shifts through the king’s expression, not fresh, not sudden, but old and worn thin from being carried too long.
“I was searching,” he says, voice quieter now, but no less controlled. “For something beyond what we understood. Not power. Not conquest. More.”
That earns him an intense look from Aelith, but the king doesn’t pause.
