Page 12 of Tempest Blazing
Kane
The summons came through official channels—a formal request to discuss Guild Trial logistics. I should have known better.
Silvius's office felt smaller than usual, the luminescent stone walls pressing in as I stepped through the doorway. He didn't look up from the papers scattered across his desk, letting me stand there like some first-year applicant waiting for acknowledgment. The silence stretched, deliberate and cold.
"You wanted to see me," I said finally, keeping my voice level.
"Sit." He gestured to the chair across from him without lifting his eyes. "We need to discuss the upcoming trials."
I remained standing. "What about them?"
That got his attention. Those piercing blue eyes—so like my own—fixed on me with the weight of centuries behind them. "The human girl's performance has been... adequate."
Adequate.The word scraped against something raw in my chest, but I kept my expression neutral. "Tess has exceeded every expectation. Her progress—"
"Is irrelevant." Silvius leaned back in his chair, fingers steepled. "What matters is the precedent her presence sets. The... complications it creates."
"Complications?"
"Don't play ignorant, Kane. It doesn't suit you." His voice carried that particular edge I'd learned to recognize—the one that preceded pain. "Your attachment to this human is becoming conspicuous. Concerning."
The temperature in the room seemed to drop. My elemental magic stirred beneath my skin, a warning I couldn't quite suppress. "My professional assessment of her abilities—"
"Has nothing to do with the way you look at her." Silvius rose from his chair, moving with that fluid grace that marked him as predator. "Or the way she looks at you."
I forced myself to remain still, even as every instinct screamed at me to step back. "I don't know what you think you've observed—"
"I think," he said, circling the desk with deliberate slowness, "that you've forgotten who you are. What you are." He stopped just close enough that I could feel the chill radiating from his skin. "The Ellesar bloodline has remained pure for over a thousand years. We don't sully ourselves withhumans."
The word dripped with disgust, and something hot and violent flared in my chest. "Tess isn't—"
"Tess." He repeated her name like it tasted bitter. "How familiar. How... intimate."
"She's a Guild member. A rider. She deserves the same respect—"
"She deserves nothing." The words cracked like a whip. "She's a political liability at best, a contamination at worst. And you—" His eyes narrowed. "You're defending her with the passion of a lovesick fool."
My hands clenched at my sides. The elements responded to my rising anger—air pressure shifting, temperature fluctuating. I felt fire gathering beneath my skin, water in the very air around us, earth trembling in the stone beneath our feet. "I'm defending a qualified rider from prejudice."
"Are you?" Silvius tilted his head, studying me like I was some fascinating specimen. "Or are you so blinded by whatever base attraction you feel that you can't see the damage she's already done?"
"What damage?"
"To you." His voice dropped to barely above a whisper. "To your reputation. To your future." He stepped closer, and I caught the scent of ozone that always preceded his magic. "To everything I've built for you."
"Everything you've built for yourself, you mean."
The words were out before I could stop them. Silvius went very still.
"Excuse me?"
I should have backed down. Should have apologized, deflected, played the dutiful son. Instead, I met his gaze head-on. "You heard me."
For a heartbeat, the office was silent except for the whisper of our breathing. Then Silvius moved—not the measured pace of before, but a blur of motion that had him across the space between us before I could blink.
The blow came open-palmed, elemental fire crackling across his skin as his hand connected with the underside of my jaw. Pain exploded through my skull, followed immediately by the acridsmell of scorched flesh. The force of it snapped my head back, but I didn't stumble. Didn't fall.
Didn't give him the satisfaction.
