Page 56

I promised them peace, the voice inside him whispered. I promised to protect him.

The nobles began to whisper, and at the back of the throne room, dust caught the sunlight, a glimmering sparkle that churned beyond space and time, and from it, memory overlapped reality, sliding into place alongside the scent of soot and fire, dais rising into a stage, swaying beneath him with the force of an eruption. While Orpheus was out there, somewhere, being stolen away.

“Mum,” Fenrir breathed, soft enough only Vera could hear.

“Requests for an audience will be received at scheduled hours. We’ll work out a calendar and have it distributed as soon as we can. Until then, you’re all dismissed.” Vera barked out the command as naturally as any captain, the gathered nobility barely hesitating before rising to their feet.

Fenrir stood his ground up until the very moment the last noble slipped through the closing double doors—every noble but one.

Fenrir sighed, lowering to sit on the dais’ stairs. “You must be Mercer.”

He was hardly a big man. Short. Compact. Wide through the shoulders with a roundness to his stomach that spoke of his age more than his health. There was gray through his beard and short-cropped black hair, cheeks ruddied by long days spent before a hot fire, but his clothes were well-kept. Not ostentatious by any means but not impoverished either. Well made, tailored to fit.

“Where’s Red?” Mercer asked without fanfare. Beside Fenrir, Vera went stiff.

“Leading the mission into the Rim with the army.”

This seemed to surprise him. “Red? The Rim?”

“Believe me, I tried to convince her not to. I’ve been told to make sure the tower’s completed before she gets back.”

“Told, eh?” Mercer looked Fenrir up and down. “Who’s in charge here again?”

Great question. “A good politician knows when to pick their battles.” Fenrir’s smile must look as forced as it felt; Mercer snorted.

“You’re no politician.”

“Guess that’s why they call me king, huh?”

“You’re no king, neither,” pierced straight into Fenrir’s heart.

Yeah, I know. “Wanna go tell them that for me?” Fenrir gestured at the throne room doors and the nobles surely eavesdropping behind them, only noticing how his hand shook when Mercer’s eyes locked on it.

“Don’t think I need to,” Mercer said, a statement of fact rather than an attempt to demean him.

Fenrir snatched his hand back into his lap while Vera snapped, “Mister Mercer, if there’s something you need you can come back once the calendar is finalized.” A spot of sunlight burnished Vera’s hair platinum when she stepped between Fenrir and Mercer.

“I’ll be back tomorrow,” Mercer said, eyes not leaving Fenrir. To be fair, he didn’t look away from Mercer either and something about that gave the man pause. Fenrir watched his jaw work, eyes narrowing on Fenrir like he was something to pick apart but he couldn’t find a seam. He must be a person accustomed to being in charge. The kind of man who was used to his expectations of people being met, not challenged. The sort of man whose respect had to be earned, rather than lost.

Fenrir was off to a terrible start.

“Fenrir,” Vera breathed once the double doors closed behind Mercer. “You can’t let them walk all over you like that.”

“Yeah, I know. I’ll do better next time.”

Vera sighed. “Are you alright?”

Fenrir laughed, hollow and raw. “I won’t be alright until he’s home safe, Mum.”

Vera lacked a reaction, but Fenrir expected nothing less. This was the woman who had sold her first-born son off to a mine owner, then never came for him in the ensuing years. He didn’t expect her to understand. A person like her wasn’t capable of it.

The ringing returned, the light bleeding through the tall windows blistering to a burn while Lore’s throne cast a long shadow. He hunched against it, lowering his head to his knees and taking a deep breath, then another. Over and over until the ringing inside his head wound down to an echo, the pressure in his chest loosening enough he could feel Vera’s hand on his back.

Fenrir stiffened—what—

“It’s alright,” Vera murmured, touching him gently, a palm along his spine, fingers through his hair. “Hush now, it’ll be alright.”

The urge to shrug her off came and went, Fenrir instead breathing into his knees while he let his mum have this for herself, if not for him, while the shadow of Lore’s throne arced slowly in the late afternoon light like the slow creep of approaching doom. There was no dust to speak of. No explosion under his feet or screams filling the air. There was no enemy on their horizon. No assassin in the wings waiting to swoop down and dismember him.