Marin ignores him.
She unsheathes her sword from the scabbard strapped across her back.
Her weapon is curved. Traditional Caelorian weaponry that the Royal Guard no longer work with—too difficult to learn with, they say. Not for Marin. She stretches it out, letting it come to rest beneath the King of Zerynthia’s chin. Close enough to end him. Close enough to test if he’d stop her.
“My mother would like you to kill for us, Kael. Is that something you can do?” Marin asks, testing him again.
He does not flinch. Only presses forward, letting the tip of the blade pierce the skin of his neck. Like pain is the only thing he still understands.
“I was born to kill,” he croaks weakly, though she can still hear the promise in his voice.
She nods her understanding.
He strains against the chains, the barbed wire, and black blood drips from his skin and spatters across the stone floors of the vault. He is not in control.But something is.
But she has to hope that somewhere, deep under the hold the Decay has on him, that he is still there. Buried, she hopes, but not lost. Because if he isn’t, they haven’t captured a king—they’ve unleashed something worse.
“I need you to do something else, Kael,” she says, voice stronger now.
Kael lunges forward, dragging the barbed wire through flesh. He gnashes his teeth at her attempt to control him, and a vicious growl rips from his throat.
Marin reaches into the pocket of her leather pants, and pulls out a small square of fabric.
“Elyssara,” Marin says quietly.
Kael’s eyes flicker ocean-blue for less than a heartbeat, silver threaded through them as undeniable as Azhareth’s sun. Like a memory fighting its way to the surface.
Something in him recognizes the name.
“This is from her tunic. You remember her, yes?” Marin ventures, inching closer still.
Kael doesn’t gnash or fight or surge. He stills, breaths still rushing in and out between his teeth.
“You must hold on for her, Kael. And when you see her on the battlefield of Virellin… your love for her must be stronger than the Decay’s hold on you,” Marin commands, desperation creeping into her tone. It’s the first time her voice has faltered.
He does not fight. But black ichor still snakes through his veins like hunting serpents, and his eyes are still pools of depthless obsidian.
Marin inches closer. She holds out the strip of fabric, drenched in the scent of his Starbound.
He closes his eyes, recognition registering somewhere beneath conscious awareness. He sucks in her scent, and the set of his jaw softens slightly. Almost imperceptible. But real.
“She will meet you there,” Marin adds. “And you must remember who you are, Kael. Starbound to Elyssara Dawnmere. King of Zerynthia. Leader of the uprising. You must remember, Kael.”
Behind his glassy eyes, something flickers, but he says nothing. Offers no confirmation. Just keeps breathing against the pain that tears at his body.
And Marin prays to every god that ever lived, because every instinct in her screams to kill him now.
Before he destroys them all.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
The cruelest theft is not of gold
But all the stories no longer told
The Perils humquietly around them, The Widow’s Waters resting peacefully like liquid glass. It feels almost still here—deceptively so. Like the world is holding its breath before it breaks.
Rubi is not still. She paces the edge of the cavern, boots grinding against damp stone, fingers stained faintly with residue from the ironsap, the dragon’s blood.The antidote.
