CHAPTER 64: NO REGRETS

SOREN

I watched her walk away.

Not just from me... but from everything. The crown, the chaos, the fire. The weight of it all trailing behind her like the train of that infernal gown, gold catching on obsidian floors as if even light itself didn’t want to let her go.

And that look she gave me before turning...

Maker above.

It wasn’t anger. Not entirely. It was something sharper. Something alive. A challenge, maybe. Or the faintest recognition of what I already knew: that she and I were not done, not even close.

I felt it in my chest... the rush, the pulse that didn’t belong to a man who’d just caused diplomatic catastrophe. No fear. Just exhilaration.

Because when Eris Igniva looked at me with that fire behind her eyes, I didn’t feel threatened. I felt seen.

Of course, somewhere beneath that thrill, the ghost of guilt stirred.

Caelen.

I didn’t have to look to know what I’d done to him. I could feel it, like a shift in the air, a fracture between us splitting wide open. I’d wounded him. Badly. The friend who’d once pulled me out of losing my humanity to a battlefield now looked at me as if I’d driven a blade through his chest instead.

And maybe I had.

But what choice did I have?

What choice does a drowning man have when he finally sees the surface?

If I lose her now, if I let her vanish into the night the way she intends to,

I’ll never feel that warmth again. That wild, infuriating, human warmth that burns through every wall I’ve built.

Even Caelen’s friendship... no, especially Caelen’s friendship, couldn’t compete with that.

Not anymore.

When awareness finally slunk back into my mind, I realized the ballroom had gone silent.

Dozens of eyes still pinned to me.

Every whisper, every breath, every stifled gasp revolving around me.

My diplomats stared at me like I’d gone mad.

Lord Venrick looked one insult away from collapsing.

The priests were muttering half-panicked prayers, as if divine intervention might still salvage the night.

Nobles clutched their wine and their pearls, their minds already feeding on the gossip I’d handed them like blood in the water.

I straightened my coat. Adjusted the collar. Smoothed the front of my sleeve.

And smiled.

Let them talk. Let them tremble. Let them call me insane.

Because for once, I didn’t care.

For once, I had done something for myself.

Caelen brushed past me then.

Not a word.

Not even a glance. Just a storm in human form, fury held together by the thinnest thread of control. His shoulder clipped mine hard enough to sting.

And then he was gone.

No thunder. No declaration. Just silence... louder than any curse.

Our friendship, our shared history, left hanging in the air like smoke after a fire.

The music had stopped long ago, but no one dared move until he did.

Slowly, uncertainly, nobles began to drift away, women whispering behind jeweled fans, men pretending to busy themselves with nothing.

What had begun as a night of triumph had ended in scandal.

The peace treaty still stood.

But everything else had cracked.

And as the ballroom emptied, I found myself smiling again, quietly, to no one.

Because somewhere in those halls, Eris Igniva was still burning.

And I had no intention of letting her go out..

The moment I stepped beyond the ballroom’s fractured quiet, they descended upon me.

My diplomats, Nevarian silk and steel, every one of them, swarming like hawks around a wounded stag, though in this case the stag was neither wounded nor particularly remorseful. Their words came in a torrent, sharp, terrified, and utterly predictable.

"Your Majesty, what were you thinking?"

"Do you understand what you’ve done?"

"The treaty, the alliance, this could ruin everything!"

"Caelen is your friend!"

And on, and on, until their voices blurred into one anxious hum.

Ah, politics, the art of panic disguised as prudence.

I let them speak, let their fear fill the corridor, and then lifted a single hand.

That was all it took.

Silence dropped like a sheet of frost over the marble.

"Gentlemen," I said lightly, "you worry too much. Everything is precisely as it should be."

The look they exchanged could have frozen the Eternal Pyre itself. But I had no patience left for diplomacy tonight.

"Prepare a dispatch," I continued. "We’ll send word to Nevareth before dawn. You’ll all return ahead of me."

"Return—?" Venrick choked on the word. "Your Majesty, surely you mean we—"

"I mean what I said," I interrupted, already turning away. "Get the carriages ready. I’ll handle the rest."

And that was the end of it.

The corridors stretched before me, quiet, dim, the air still humming with the echo of Eris’s fire. I could still feel it, even after she’d gone. The heat of her defiance. The way she’d glared, like a goddess daring the world to question her freedom.

I tried to feel it. Regret.

For Caelen. For the spectacle. For the fragile peace we’d both worked years to build.

But I didn’t.

Not even a flicker.

All I felt was that same impossible pulse, the one she left behind in my chest every time she looked at me.

Caelen.

The thought of him tried to sting, but it was dulled by confusion.

He’d always said he hated her.

Spat the word like it burned his tongue.

The great hero of Solmire, eternally tormented by the queen who chained him.

He made sure the whole world knew it.

That Eris was a curse.

That she’d ruined him.

That he wanted nothing more than to be free of her.

And yet, when freedom finally came, he’d looked at her as though she’d taken the sun with her.

I couldn’t make sense of it.

Because for all her cruelty, and she had plenty of it, Eris had given him everything.

She plucked him from the gutter, made him a king, gave him a legacy. Even gave him a son.

And when she took his lover, she gave her back too.

And he still looked at her as though she’d carved the air from his lungs.

If that wasn’t love, then it was something worse, something deeper, more corrosive.

I sighed, dragging a hand through my hair as I walked. The marble glowed faintly under the torches, firelight, red and gold. Solmire’s colors. Her colors.

Caelen had always hated those hues.

I, however, was beginning to find them rather... beautiful.

He should have been rejoicing right now.

He had everything, his freedom, his lover, his throne.

But no. He’d looked like a man being buried alive.

And for some reason, that infuriated me.

Because I cared for him, gods, I did.

He was my brother in all but blood.

But even brothers must be fools sometimes.

And tonight, his foolishness had given me something precious.

Perhaps I should thank him.

For his distance. For his disdain. For every wall he built between himself and the woman he could never love properly.

Because those walls made space for me.

For us.

If Caelen had not spent years rejecting her, Eris might never have looked at me the way she did tonight or before.

She might never have let me that close.

I smiled faintly, tracing the cool stone wall with my fingers as I passed.

All that fire, and yet she’d never truly been touched by warmth.

All that power, and yet no one had ever reached her.

Until now.

I would change that.

Whether it damned me or saved me, I hadn’t yet decided.

But one thing was certain:

Eris Igniva would not disappear into the night.

Not while I still breathed.