The immediate familiarity he’d felt around her. The ease with which she’d entered his life. The inexplicable, unrelenting magnetism between them both.
Arken was his other half, in the worst possible way. A mirrored reflection of his crooked soul, and damning evidence of a fate he had fought so desperately to escape.
It had been so stupid of him, so incredibly naive, to presume that he had been successful. That he could have found something beautiful and holy that belonged to him—not that godsdamned prophecy. Several weeks had passed now, and the question still haunted him.
Had any of it been real?
“Your aura has not changed in all the years I’ve known you, Kieran,” Abraxas said slowly, eyes narrowing.
Kieran shrugged, donning the mask of the lax, arrogant princeling that his uncle expected him to be. It was a comfortable facade.
“My hair is also longer than it’s been in the last twenty-six years, if you’re collecting dull observations to bring back to the Crones,” he replied, sounding bored.
“The length suits you, my prince,” Abraxas replied, still eyeing him with suspicion.
He rolled his eyes. Of all the emissaries his father sent, Abraxas was the one who treated Kieran with the most undue reverence—the only one who seemed to respect his primogeniture. Abraxas was older than the others, and always spoke as if he had deluded himself into thinking that eventually, one day, Kieran would return home. He still seemed to believe that his nephew had some semblance of love left for the world he left behind. Abraxas still saw him as the promised prince. The Catalyst.
The others simply saw him as a traitor.
They stood there in silence for some time before Abraxas spoke again.
“I feel compelled to inform you that your father has fallen ill, considering you have reduced his missive to ash. The king is… quite unwell, I fear.”
Good, Kieran thought to himself.
“I suppose that would explain why Caen and his Ravenhounds have been sniffing around here as of late. Can none of Dagon’s advisors keep that little shit on a leash?” he asked sharply.
Abraxas Vistarii was one of said advisors on his father’s council.
“The other advisors see Caen as the most likely heir in your absence,” Abraxas replied, frowning. “Few would deign to condemn the actions of their future king, no matter how reckless they may be.”
“Even if he and his cadre are leaving traces of themselves everywhere? In Sophrosyne—within spitting distance of the Aetherborne? Even if they’re leaving half-open rifts between the realms, the very risk that damned Scáth Saoirái in the first place?” Kieran challenged.
“Krysx,” Abraxas swore, slipping back into their mother tongue.
Clearly, even the Council didn’t know what their presumptive heir had been up to as of late.
“I don’t know what any of you expected,” he replied. “Caen has always been foolish. A slave to his own impulses.”
“All the more reason for you to come home, Kieran.”
That was not an option.
“Or I could just kill him,” he replied, malice coating the dark prince’s tongue.
“Why are you so opposed to claiming your birthright?”
“Is it really so strange that I might be adverse to slaughtering millions of innocent people to save my abusers?”
He had never understood how men like Abraxas, who carried themselves with some manner of honor and empathy, could accept such a thing. All because three demented, accursed creatures claimed it to be the will of the Source.
“And what of the innocent lives in Scáth?”
“Last I heard, there were not many of those left, uncle. That blood is on Dagon’s hands, not mine. I am not the king who let Scáth fall to ruin through neglect.”
“No, you are not. But you could be the king that saves us. You could salvage our legacy.”
“No chance in Hel, Abraxas.”