Page 46 of King of Flames and Shadows

“I don’t know,” I whisper, feeling the tremor of uncertainty settle deep within me.

“You should know,” he says, almost harshly, though there’s a hint of something else there—fear, maybe? No. That would be impossible. Arvoren does not fear. “Is the prospect of being my queen so incorrigible? Did it seem so wretched a possibility? Speak, or I will take your silence for what it is.”

I bristle at the thinly veiled threat in his words, but I hold my tongue. I don’t know what to say, don’t know if there’s anything I can say to sate his rage, or even if I have the energy to do this, to tame him.

A long silence stretches between us. It seems to distance us from one another. Finally, after a long while, he rises, his movements measured, deliberate.

“Tonight,” he says quietly, “my advisors return to me. They will inform me of what they’ve learned so far. Of you, of your family, of what, precisely, was unlocked in the sanctum. I suggest you prepare yourself, Calliope. The truth is coming. We shall both have to face it.”

With that, he leaves, his footsteps echoing down the corridor, leaving me alone in the heavy silence of these chambers—hischambers, I realize now, with no small amount of breathlessness. I’m in his bed.

Somehow, it’s the least of my worries.

Night settles over the castle, its silence a momentary reprieve from the rain and storms which have plagued Millrath the whole time I’ve been here. Arvoren never returns to his bed. Is he sleeping elsewhere? Is he sleeping at all? Any moment now, he could join me in this bed. The thought should keep me awake, but it doesn’t. My exhaustion weighs on me like a shroud, and I doze, but cannot seem to sleep deeply. Every noise, every faint rustle of fabric or flicker of torchlight keeps my senses heightened, straining. It’s as though the very air is restless, vibrating with something beyond the human realm.

And then, in the stillness, footsteps echo outside the door. A murmur of voices. Commander Darian’s, low and intense, mingling with Arvoren’s.

I close my eyes, feigning sleep, though every fiber of my being strains to listen. I hear fragments, pieces that slip through the heavy wood.

“… Windwakers … powerful… a bloodline… the Gods themselves…” Darian’s voice trails off, a soft murmur that I barely catch.

Arvoren’s response is harder, laced with tension. “And if they mean to oppose us?”

Another murmur, a pause. “The Gods are … displeased,” Darian says. “They seek to extinguish her bloodline. If they are awakened now, they will not rest until they see Millrath burn.”

The silence that follows is deafening, thick with an undercurrent of dread. I don’t move, but the words cling to me like cold, wet cloth. The Gods themselves … against us? Againstme?

The voices move down the corridor, their murmurs fading, leaving behind an echo of their words in my mind.

Awake for good now, I turn onto my back, staring at the dark ceiling above, my heart thundering in my chest. The Gods—displeased, angered—seeking to end my line, to destroy my blood.

My mother’s blood. My grandmother’s blood.

A shiver runs through me. Suddenly, the power I’d felt, that violent surge of energy, seems small compared to what lies beyond, the weight of a realm that does not want me to exist. If Arvoren knows, if he truly understands what he now faces, he might not even need to kill me. The Gods, the forces of the dead … they will do it for him. It will not take them long.

But as I lie there, the terror shifts. I survived once, against all odds. If there’s anything I know how to do, it’s to keep fighting, to survive. It is the thing the women of my bloodline have always done best.

The night passes slowly, each hour stretching on as I turn the words over in my mind. By morning, a strange clarity settles over me. He won’t kill me. I’m certain of it. I know now that Arvoren and I are connected in ways neither of us could have anticipated. He might still be my enemy, but our enemies … they are greater than either of us. And, for the first time, the thought brings me a strange comfort.

I might be alone in my fight, but I am not alone in facing it. I know now that this is the beginning of a strange but necessary alliance of convenience.

Chapter 21 - Arvoren

The tower air is saturated in midnight stillness. No servants remain in the corridors, and most of the enchanted torches are out, leaving only a sparse scattering of light through the narrow windows from the central wing of the castle.

I sit alone in a guest room of my own tower, which is absurd. Yet, I could not stomach remaining in my chambers with Calliope asleep there, in my bed, caught up in powers she herself has yet to understand. Her presence, radiant and wholly foreign, sharpens each breath I take.

Varya’s absence gnaws at me. Without her counsel, the path forward has turned into an unknown forest, thick with bracken, the path through unclear. I turn toward my bed, her last words echoing in my mind, woven with warning and a finality I’m unwilling to confront. Her intent to vanish permanently was obvious, but I had hoped she’d return. The thought that she won’t leaves a hollow ache, though I cannot dwell on it now. I have other fires to extinguish, other demons to confront—starting with Calliope and the trouble that swirls around her like a storm ready to break.

She survived the sanctum, against all expectations. It seems somehow, her family survived centuries of ostracisation and violence by those who could not—or would not—understand them. If I make her my queen, if we bear an heir, it is certain that our child will be the most powerful being Kaldoria has seen in centuries. Even the prospect terrifies me, though I’ve never admitted it aloud. This girl, this woman I’ve dragged to my throne, who was supposed to be a pawn, a pliable piece—I can’t yet decide whether she is a weapon against me or the last line of defense.

My enemies close in. I feel them even now, as I move to lie across the unfamiliar bed. My wretched brother, Ulric, still takes his dues from the shadows. I recall the last time we spoke. It was a year ago, in the dark of the enchanted woods north of Millrath, where he told me plainly that his loyalty was to himself and that he had his own faction of mages to back him, to offer him security and power. He was bold then, his eyes glittering with something nearing amusement as he said it, as though he wanted me to feel this festering seed of doubt, a creeping realization that my throne is not untouchable.

My brother standing tall and unyielding before me, I keep my expression stony. “You wouldn’t dare to consort with magic, not after everything our family’s lost to it.”

“Wouldn’t I?” he murmurs, taking a single, taunting step closer. “I think you underestimate me, Arvoren.” His voice is a low rasp, quiet but potent, and he leans in, lowering his voice to a near whisper. “I’ve made my own alliances. I have my own mages, a loyal circle, trained and bound to my command.”

It takes every inch of my composure to stay steady, to hide the surge of shock and anger he wants to draw from me. Ulric, with his own troop, his own martial faction, as my brother—an offense so forbidden, so taboo, it reeks of betrayal. And yet here he is, telling me outright, as though daring me to challenge him.

---