Page 179 of Season Warriors & Wolves

“It was a little,” he murmured, tucking his head between my hair like a cat. “Love me now.”

“Or what? Magnus will steal your heart?”

His whole body shook now from chuckling. “I love it when you’re jealous.”

I did not.

Chapter thirty-five

White Pawn to A4

Kilian

Magnus looked tired amongst the many shades of emotion that crossed his surroundings when I made my way across his large throne room. Cora was nowhere to be seen, but Caspian had joined him today. His heir spent most of his life at sea, if he had returned to land, they all knew what awaited ahead.

Magnus cocked his head back, studying me and the two guards behind me. “Might I suggest that if you’ve come bearing bad news to at least wear a smile. You’ve withered our sun, Night King.”

“I believe that is because of your humour, Magnus.”

The man threw his head back and laughed, hard. “You come alone. I would have not harmed your wife.”

You would have not been able to. “I could not guarantee she would have not wanted to harm you.” And she probably thinks you have plenty of sons to spare.

“Yet you asked to see me.”

“There are more important matters at hand than my own grudges.”

“Your wife does not think so.”

“My wife was hurt. My wife had no grudges. She came for what she was owed.”

“She killed my son. My. Son,” the king repeated, and old bitter pain seeped from his chest.

The pain of losing a child was one I often wished to never see, but as a king, he would have lost much more from the carelessness of his son. “It was unfortunate that what she was owed was a life. Whether it was yours, your son's or her own, she would have taken it nonetheless and without doubt.”

He sighed and glanced over at Caspian who stood tall and proud despite the disdain colouring his air—disdain for his brother. The heir was talked about all over the three seas. Bone and flesh of a soldier. Blood and magic of a healer. Given the way his emotions were so cleanly separated from one another, almost as if cut by a knife, he felt a different pain from his father. Betrayal. “You asked me to let him in my palace,” Magnus said to his son. “You tell me if it is worth my grief to listen to what he has to say.”

“Speak, Kilian,” Caspian said. “There will be time for us to mourn our loss after we can no longer fear Silas Krigborn.”

I nodded and reached onto my baldric, wrapping the white cloth bearing the Olympian crest over the whitestone blade attached to a silver hilt carved by the finest artisan in Taren, and extending it forward to them.

“You need not concern yourself with gifts,” Magnus grunted, raising a brow at my offering.

“A truth. Call it a gift or a curse after you see and hear it.”

Caspian slipped down the dais steps and took the dagger from my hands before returning by his father’s side.

Magnus’s eyes went from narrowed in curiosity to wide with almost…horror when he touched the transparent blade and then the vines around the hilt that twirled over an eagle’s head. His hand stilled over the letters engraved around the hilt. The letters forming his name. “What is the meaning of this?”

“That blade you hold was forged not long ago.”

His brows pulled together. “Impossible. Whitestone was only mined in Olympia. Whatever had been left in Myrdur has already been unearthed by many, and that is without saying that any old smith who had the knowledge to forge one would have survived the Night of the Draugr.”

“Not in Myrdur. Beyond.”

“No one can move past the mist, no one can get to the mountains. Even if there were Olympians roaming beyond, I doubt…I doubt—”

“Millions. Tens of cities. A court. A queen. An entire kingdom concealed behind the mist my wife’s ancestors drew to protect their lands along with many truths. Olympia never fell. There is no old or new Olympia. Myrdur fell.”