Kiono POV
Castel didn't announce his departure.
One moment his presence still lingered heavy, watchful, pressing relentlessly against the stone bones of the palace and the next it was simply gone, like a blade pulled cleanly from raw flesh. The suffocating air in the throne room loosened.
Only then did I finally let myself exhale, the muscles in my back unlocking with a faint, painful stiffness.
Astelion remained standing exactly where Castel had left her. Her small shoulders were squared. She hadn't shifted a millimeter, she hadn't spoken. She was listening to the sudden, ringing silence to the absolute absence of his mind.
I rose smoothly from my knee and turned to her, my boots clicking against the dark floor. "You did well," I said.
She glanced up at me sideways, her brown eyes still sharp with defensive needles. "By kneeling?"
"By not provoking him further."
Her mouth twitched, a shadow of that infuriating, attractive arrogance returning to her lips. "I wasn't trying to."
"I know." I hesitated, looking down at the torn lavender silk of her gown before letting out a slow, rough sigh. "That's exactly what worries me."
We left the grand throne hall together, the massive doors sealing shut behind us with a heavy, pressurized boom that sounded like distant thunder. The moment we were entirely alone in the high, open-air corridor, my posture shifted.
Brother of the ruler or not, the phantom weight of Castel always clung to my skin like frost after an encounter like that.
Astelion arched a dark brow, tilting her head back to track my movement. "Am I being exiled already?"
"No," I said quickly, matching her pace. "Protected. For now."
We stepped off the edge of the palace platform, and my telekinesis caught us instantly, lifting our bodies into the crisp atmosphere without effort. As we flew through the shredding vapor, the suffocation of the high towers began to bleed away inch by inch. The kingdom below stretched wide, green, and quiet, the floating black fortress shrinking into the sky behind us.
"Castel will want to know everything about you," I spoke aloud, keeping my eyes fixed on the horizon but my awareness entirely pinned to her.
"And when he does?" she asked softly.
"It can mean life or death."
She threw me a skeptical look. "Death?"
I grimaced. "His version of it."
She waited, her silence demanding the truth.
"Painful, systematic torture," I continued, my voice flat. "He doesn't tolerate anomalies he can't categorize. But I can buy you time. If you can beat me, even once during our training sessions, I will use the leverage to convince him to let you remain in the lower palace as a maid. He won't look closely at a servant."
Astelion let out a soft, incredulous laugh. "A maid."
"He believes humiliation is a natural filter," I explained, looking down at her small frame. "If you accept the low status without breaking, he considers you worth keep. If your pride fractures and you rebel, you leave the world entirely."
"And you think I'll lose."
A faint, dangerous curve touched my lips. I let my eyes flick down to her, my gaze lingering on the line of her throat just a second too long. "I think," I murmured, "that no one has managed to beat me yet. Except for the King."
Her smile sharpened, competitive heat that made my blood run entirely too fast. "Then you should be very careful while training me, Captain."
The Welcome In lodge finally came into view below a massive, sprawling structure of blue stone and glass nestled high against the crags, its protective wards shimmering faintly in the midday light. It was meant to feel like a sanctuary.
It didn't.
The exact moment our boots touched the lobby floor, the atmosphere shifted. I felt it instantly dozens of eyes locking onto us from the balconies. Whispers. Sharp curiosity.
And then, a sudden, unnatural cold.
I stopped abruptly, my hand instinctively moving toward Astelion's shoulder to pull her behind me. She felt it too, her breath fogged instantly in the air between us. Heavy frost began to creep along the white marble floor, spreading outward from the center of the hall in jagged, skeletal spiderweb patterns.
Then the wind hit.
It burst through the central columns without warning a howling, violent, sub-zero gale. Thick, blinding snow swirled in from the doorways, slamming into the stone walls as everyone screamed in surprise.
"Get out!" someone shouted from the lounge. Chairs toppled over with loud cracks. Glass cups shattered. People scrambled for the side exits, ducking and covering their heads as sheets of ice crystallized midair and rained down against the floor.
Across the fractured hall stood Kris. Her eyes looked like frozen steel.
She stood entirely still in the center of the wreckage, her arms slightly outstretched, raw, undisciplined power bleeding from her pores without a shred of restraint. The white snow whipped around her head like a crown of blades. Her gaze was locked entirely on me. And then, slowly, venomously, it slid down to Astelion.
Pure, naked jealousy.
I swore under my breath, my jaw tightening until it clicked. "Not now."
Astelion turned to me sharply, her brown eyes narrowing. "Who is she to you?"
I didn't answer immediately. I couldn't. And that delay was answer enough.
"Who is she to you?" Astelion pressed, her voice dropping into a tight, demanding whisper.
"It doesn't matter right now," I said, my voice hardening into my commander's tone as I stepped out into the frost. "Kris, stop this. You're losing control of your core."
Kris laughed, the sound brittle and dangerous, like ice cracking over a deep lake. "Losing control?" she shouted over the roaring wind, her white hair streaked with black whipping across her face. "You bring her back here, you hold her hand in the street, and then you look at me and tell me I'm losing control?"
The wind surged harder, slamming a wave of frost into the support beams. The wood groaned under the weight.
Astelion stepped closer to my side, her voice entirely too quiet, entirely too perceptive. "You said it doesn't matter," she murmured, watching Kris's face. "That's not how she looks at you."
I didn't look back at her. I couldn't afford to let her see the rot in my past.
"Kris," I said, my voice booming through the hall with the absolute weight of my telekinetic authority. "Calm down. Drop the storm and talk to me. Not like this."
The howling snow slowed slightly but the frost didn't recede.
Kris's eyes burned through the white haze. "You don't get to dismiss me anymore, Kiono. You don't get to act like I'm a ghost."
I felt Astelion shift behind me, a cold understanding settling into her posture. Whatever this was past, unfinished, unresolved it wasn't over. And she knew I wasn't telling her the truth. Not yet. She lowered her hands completely and took a deliberate step back into the shadows, watching us both through the swirling white.
The storm hadn't reached its peak. And neither had the tension in the room.
Miles away, across the high peaks of the kingdom he had felt it the exact millisecond she lost control. Emotional power, undisciplined, loud and pathetic, screeching, rattling the edges of his perfect little city. He exhaled a slow, rhythmic breath through his nose. I could almost see it, I could feel it.
His telekinesis simply unfolded across the miles like a massive, suffocating shadow passing directly over the sun.
In the grand hall of the lodge, the violent wind suddenly stuttered. Then it stopped.
It didn't fade out. It didn't lose velocity. It simply stopped mid-roar.
The swirling snow froze instantly in the air, suspended in a perfect, terrifying stillness. Every shattered shard of ice hung motionless three feet off the ground. Every single breath in the crowded room caught in a collective throat.
Then came the pressure. It wasn't cold, and it wasn't heat. It was pure, terror.
The weight descended from nowhere and everywhere at once. The white marble floor cracked faintly beneath our boots under the invisible mass. The remaining stained-glass windows bowed inward, groaning against their lead frames.
Every person in the lodge felt it. He wasn't attacking them. He wasn't crushing their bones. He was containing them.
Kris gasped aloud as her storm literally imploded inward, every single thread of wind violently ripped from her neural control and bound in midair like a captured animal. Her power didn't just fail it was forcibly taken from her body.
The frozen snow collapsed straight down to the floor in a single, heavy, dead fall. The frost on the walls receded in a clean, mechanical sweep, like a line being erased from a chalkboard.
And then the pressure shifted, focusing entirely on the center of the room. For half a second, every bleeding heart in that building understood something with absolute, agonizing clarity, This is not your kingdom. This is his.
Kris's knees gave out. Not because she chose to submit, but because her physical body naturally succumbed to a power greater than hers.
The weight lifted as cleanly and abruptly as it had arrived, leaving the room completely empty of air.
I moved on pure reflex, my telekinesis catching Kris before her face hit the cracked marble, steadying her as she stumbled forward. Her trembling fingers instantly closed desperately around my hand, her nails digging into my skin.
"Come with me," she whispered, her voice ragged, her eyes red as she pulled weakly at my arm toward the private back corridor. "Please, Kiono. We need to talk. Just one minute."
I looked back through the dim light. Astelion hadn't moved an inch. She had felt it the vast, terrifying difference between our magic and his. Her power burned like a bright, volatile torch, Castel's didn't burn at all. It governed.
She watched us through the shadows. She didn't follow.
We stopped in a narrow, quiet passage far from the shattered glass and the murmurs of the onlookers. The air here was stale, heavy with the scent of old wood.
Kris turned to face me, her breathing completely unsteady, her eyes rimmed with red. I looked down at her small, pale hand still gripping my fingers, and with a slow, deliberate movement, I pulled my hand completely out of her grasp.
Lifting my arm, I calmly wiped my palm against the crisp fabric of my uniform sleeve.
The motion was small. Intentional. Brutal.
Kris's face completely crumpled at the gesture. "Why did you bring another woman here?" she cried, her voice cracking against the stone walls. "Why would you do that to me when we're supposed to be married?"
I took a step back, putting a solid three feet of cold distance between us. "We're not."
She reached out for my chest again, her fingers trembling. I adjusted my weight, avoiding her touch without a single second of hesitation.
"You don't understand," she sobbed, the tears finally spilling over her lashes. "I was scared. You were getting so distant after the announcement. And then she appeared out of nowhere, and I—"
"We have been done for months, Kris," I said, my voice dropping into a flat, quiet finality that made her stagger back as if I'd hit her. "You can't keep doing this."
"After what you did," I continued, each word feeling like lead in my throat, "I cannot be near you."
Her breath hitched violently, her hands flying to her mouth. "I told you it was a mistake. A horrible mistake."
I looked down at her then. I wasn't angry anymore. The rage had burned out months ago, leaving only a hollow, cold disgust that made my stomach turn.
"Which part?" I asked quietly. "You cheating on me? Or the fact that I walked on you with your face buried in my twin sister's pussy, of all people, Kris?"
The words hit her like a physical blow, shattering whatever little control she had left. She leaned heavily against the wall, her shoulders shaking. "I didn't mean for it to happen," she cried, her head shaking back and forth. "I swear. I wasn't thinking straight. I love you, Kiono. I love you. Please I just want to go back to how we were."
She tried to step into my space again, desperation making her reckless. I stepped back instantly, my face turning to ice.
"You don't get to say you love me after that," I said, the words cutting cleanly through her sobs. "You don't get to touch me. You don't get to ask for my forgiveness."
"It was a mistake," she wept, her fingers clutching at her own gown. "One mistake."
"No," I said, turning my face away from her. "It was a choice."
The silence stretched between us in the narrow hall, heavy, loaded, and entirely unforgiving.
"I can't look at you or her without seeing it," I went on, the raw truth of it bitter on my tongue. "And I won't live my life like that. Stay away from me, Kris. And stay away from Astelion. Just remember you don't own this Inn the man that help create me does."
I turned on my heel and walked away, leaving her collapsed against the stone wall, her heavy sobbing echoing faintly behind me.
When I returned to the main lobby, Astelion was standing by the entrance, watching the corridor. I didn't offer an explanation, and to her credit, she didn't ask for one. She just scanned the hard set of my shoulders, the way my hands were curled tightly into fists at my sides holding myself together by sheer military force alone.
Behind us, the faint sound of Kris's crying drifted through the ruined hall. Astelion said nothing. She simply turned and walked out into the sunlight with me. Some endings didn't need witnesses.
Kris POV
Kiono had always been mine.
We had grown up side by side in the shadow of the peaks, learning the same cold corridors, the same strict rules, the same unspoken dangers of being too visible in a family like ours. Where other children in the city learned to fear, I had simply learned him.
I knew his silences. I knew his patience.
I had loved him long before I even understood what the word meant. I loved him when it was easy, during the summers by the river. I loved him when it began to hurt under the weight of his training.
So when my cousin Castel finally announced it standing tall in the grand hall, his voice cool, detached, and entirely unquestionable, declaring that our union would be good for the province, good for the balance of the court, good for power, I felt like the world had finally aligned.
I remembered smiling so hard my face actually ached.
I remembered Kiono looking completely stunned, then carefully composed, his blue eyes shifting to dark green before dropping as if he were bracing his shoulders for something heavy but entirely inevitable. People congratulated me. They called me lucky. They told me I was the only match perfect enough to stand in his shadow.
And at first, I truly believed it would be exactly as it should be.
But after the King's announcement, things changed. Slowly. Quietly. Kiono began to pull away not with a dramatic fight, and never cruelly. It was just... subtle. Less time spent alone in the evenings. Conversations that ended five minutes sooner. Touches that didn't linger against my skin the way they once had.
He became careful around me. Distant.
I told myself it was just the pressure of his new rank. The expectations of the court. Castel's massive shadow looming over his head. I told myself that once the ceremony drew closer, once the palace administrative work settled, he would come back to me fully.
He didn't.
Instead, caught in the lonely vacuum of his absence, I found myself spending more time with his twin Eina.
It hadn't started as something dangerous. It had started as mere comfort. We shared our mutual frustrations with Kiono's silence. We shared easy laughter in the gardens. We shared that strange, specific loneliness that came with trying to love a man who always felt just three inches out of your reach. Eina understood his mind in ways no one else in the kingdom could and slowly, she began to understand my grief in ways that felt almost... intimate.
Too intimate.
I noticed the boundary line long before we ever crossed it. I saw the danger clear as day.
I just... didn't step away.
That night replayed in my mind endlessly, a loop of pure horror that burned my throat every time I closed my eyes. The dark quiet of the quarters. The suffocating closeness. The way months of accumulated grief and bitter longing blurred into something reckless, fluid, and warm. I told myself it wasn't a real betrayal while it was happening. I told myself it was just confusion. I told myself it didn't mean anything to my soul.
Until the heavy wooden door clicked open.
Kiono stood there. Completely still. Entirely silent.
The look on his face wasn't rage. He didn't call upon his telekinesis to tear the room apart. It was pure, devastation. His eyes just went entirely hollow, looking at me, then looking at his sister.
That silence was so much worse than a scream.
He didn't shout an accusation. He didn't ask me why. He just turned and walked out into the dark corridor. And in that exact fraction of a second, I knew there was no version of this world where I hadn't destroyed every single thing I loved.
Castel never asked what had happened to break the engagement. They only knew the clean, generic lie Kiono had fed them that the marriage wouldn't happen, that I wasn't the right match for him, that we simply weren't a good fit under the stars.
A mercy. A protection for his sister and me. And I had to carry the rotting truth of that mercy entirely alone.
I walked the stone halls of the lodge every single day with that guilt lodged deep in my chest, sharp and unyielding. I watched Kiono from a distance, tracking the way his jaw hardened over the months, the way he closed himself off from the world, the way he looked straight through my body whenever we crossed paths as if I were already a ghost.
The guilt followed me into every room. It whispered to me when I tried to sleep. It screamed in my ears the moment I saw his uniform in the gallery. I told myself I deserved his cold distance. I told myself I deserved this suffocating silence.
But my love for him had never stopped. Even now. Even after the ruin I'd made.
And then today, I saw him return. I saw another woman standing beside him girl in torn silk, her posture defiant, her presence taking up his space. I saw the way he looked at her. The old guilt instantly twisted into a wild, cornered fear.
Fear of being entirely erased from his life. Fear of being replaced by a stranger. Fear that the absolute worst thing I had ever done would also be the very last thing that ever mattered between us.
The frost storm hadn't been born out of anger. It had been months of grief with nowhere left to go.
And now, standing entirely alone in the quiet corridor with the echo of his final rejection ringing in my ears, I finally understood the truth I had been avoiding for far too long:
My love didn't absolve me. And wanting him didn't mean I ever deserved to hold his hand again.