Page 113 of Taken By Shadows

“Don’t be foolish, Kaedian,” Eryk began, “This is your only option. I’m your only option.”

Morgana’s voice floated down from the upper level. “If this room cannot contain its impulses and act with civility, we will end this session. Being called at this hour is already outrageous. However, given the person we hold in custody, we have made an exception. So we will proceed. With decorum.” Her eyes fell on each one of us.

The entire council seemed to hold its breath, even Varris.

It was nothing to them if Kaed was put back in the Cage. It was nothing to Eryk.

Without speaking a word, I looked at Kaed. It felt as though we had an entire conversation without saying a word.

But the only word that mattered, I mouthed to him. Please.

I waited with bated breath as he watched me.

The scar across his face looked like a fissure above a magma chamber with the fury he was barely containing. But he breathed in once and filled his chest.

My heart thrummed for a beat. Two. Three.

When he breathed out, finally, he took his place back on the dais.

Gavrin let out a small breath of his own, and his shoulders fell back down. Denora didn’t move an inch, her hand still on her sword.

There was a shuffle in the room as people released the tension they had been carrying. The fear in their eyes was plain as day and dark as night as they looked at Kaed.

Even bound, they feared him.

“Eryk Selldayne.” Morgana’s cool voice filled the rotunda “You have come here, freely, not bound by Prince Kaedian Viorelmar or the Crown. He has broken the sanctions levied upon him. Do you speak for this male who has broken our decrees? Your voice and his actions will become one if you speak for him. Should his actions break our decrees again, you will be punished for his insurrections. And the prisoner will be remanded here indefinitely.”

I sucked in a breath.

But Eryk didn’t flinch. In fact, he seemed languid, like he’d just stretched and was basking in the release.

How could he be so calm? They were essentially caging him too. The gauntlet of Kaed’s infractions would fall to Eryk.

“Speak now,” Councillor Rionna Darrion said. Her shoulders were broad and her voice even.

Eryk paused, and for a moment, I thought he might renege on his bargain with me.

But then the entire council seemed to calm even before he spoke. There had been a brook of tension flowing in the room that now seemed to ebb away.

“I do. I speak for this male.” Eryk locked eyes with Kaed. The sneer in his voice was not missed by anyone in the room. And then his eyes roved over me. “I take on all of his burdens.” His lashes dipped as he popped the last word off his tongue.

My eyes fluttered, and I tried to refocus them elsewhere. But when they landed on Kaed, I thought the fury beneath the surface might finally erupt.

But no one commented, and I couldn’t have cared less about it because the next words were like a clear water bell ringing.

“Very well. All may go. Prince Kaedian may leave these chambers, but not this city. Talks will resume when daylight, not starlight, graces the skies.” Morgana stood to leave.

“Be warned, Prince,” Varris spat just as the manacles were released. “Break our laws again. Any we set forth, and you will wish your brother would come here and put you out of your misery.”

Councillor Merdia grunted in his support of Councillor Varris.

The room went cold, and a crackle of darkness encroached on the white walls until it felt like the night had broken through the glass dome above.

Kaed’s eyes glowed like blue wyvern fire when he looked up at Varris, and the man stumbled backwards under the intensity of the stare.

I looked up to Eryk, who seemed a little too smug for someone who had just bound his fate to a male he hated.

But I quickly forgot about that when Kaed walked freely from the dais, shoulders straight and shadows retreating to his fingertips.