CHAPTER 75: DENIAL

The words former Queen cracked through the chamber like distant thunder.

Caelen’s head snapped toward him at once.

Every trace of softness vanished. His body went taut, a bowstring drawn too far.

Soren, by contrast, did not move. Not even a blink. He merely inclined his head, the faintest gesture of permission.

The guard swallowed, the sound loud in the silence. His eyes flicked nervously between the two men, clearly aware he was standing at the center of a tempest neither crown could contain.

"Speak," Soren commanded softly.

The guard’s voice wavered. "Her Majesty says: If you plan to take her to Nevareth, you must leave tonight. She will be ready."

A simple message. Bare. Precise. But oh, how it detonated.

It landed in the room like a match dropped in oil.

Caelen went still, frighteningly still, as though time itself had paused to watch him come undone. Then it began, the slow spiral, wave after wave.

First came panic.

She was leaving tonight? Not in days. Not after the coronation. Tonight.

Then came guilt, heavy and immediate.

Because he’d just left her, again.

Left her standing alone in that hallway, after kissing her like a drowning man clinging to the last gasp of air, after looking at her and seeing everything he shouldn’t still want.

And when she’d asked, Have you lost your mind?

He had.

And he’d run.

Straight into another woman’s room.

Straight into the illusion of safety.

But now...

Now came jealousy mixed with fear, thick and choking.

She was leaving with him?

With Soren, the same man who’d dared to kneel before her in front of the court, who’d spoken of admiration and cruelty as though they were virtues meant for worship?

Caelen’s stomach turned. His chest ached with something too ugly to name.

He tried for denial, clinging to it like a drowning man to driftwood.

She wouldn’t go. She wouldn’t leave Rael. Not like this. Not without him.

But then, realization.

Of course she would.

Because she already had.

The nanny had said she visited Rael earlier. Spoke softly to him. Left a small woven bracelet at his bedside.

That was her goodbye.

The thought landed like a blow, and fury, raw, reckless, feral, followed close behind.

Fury at Soren, for daring to steal her.

Fury at Eris, for running.

And fury at himself, most of all, for caring.

Why did he care?

He had Ophelia.

Ophelia, whose hand he still held in trembling fingers.

Ophelia, whose breath had hitched moments ago when she’d whispered his name.

Ophelia, who carried his child.

So why... why... did the thought of Eris leaving feel like losing a limb he never realized he needed to survive?

Why did it hurt so much?

The silence thickened, pulsing with unspoken things.

Soren was the first to break it. His tone was calm, almost languid, but his eyes, oh, they gleamed sharp as tempered glass.

"Where is she?"

The guard bowed again, visibly shaking. "Her chambers, Your Majesty."

A quiet sound, more exhale than word, escaped Soren.

Of course.

And judging by the flicker of guilt twisting through Caelen’s features, the blistered palm, the scent of smoke and jasmine still clinging to him like confession, Soren knew something had happened between them.

Something he was now far too late to prevent.

He didn’t ask questions. Didn’t wait for permission.

He simply turned, his boots tapping against the floor as he moved past the stunned court physician and the trembling guard, past Caelen’s silence and Ophelia’s fragile joy.

And as he stepped into the queen’s wing, the faintest tremor rippled through the palace, the sound of glass breaking somewhere distant, followed by the unmistakable scent of smoke.

The Ice Emperor moved through the halls of the palace like a storm contained within a cloak.

Every step echoed with purpose, his pace deliberate, unhurried, but the air around him shifted, chilled, alive.

The guards stationed along the way parted instinctively, some bowing, others simply pressing themselves to the walls, as though proximity alone might draw frost upon their lungs.

And then he felt it.

Now six feet from her door, the temperature changed.

Heat, suffocating, violent, unnatural.

It rolled in waves, thick enough to taste, like standing too close to a forge at full roar. The air rippled before him, distorted with shimmering mirage, and even the torches lining the hallway had melted into rivulets of gold dripping down their sconces.

Soren exhaled once, a slow, measured breath that sent a ghost of frost curling into the inferno ahead.

It didn’t touch him.

Couldn’t.

He was born of winter. The cold recognized him as its own.

Still, he felt the warning in the air, the pulse of something wrong, unbalanced, breaking.

He reached for the handle.

Hot. Nearly molten.

The metal should have seared through flesh, but his fingers left a frostbite kiss instead, steam curling where the two forces met.

And then he pushed.

The door gave way with a deep, aching groan.

The moment it cracked open, the room exhaled.

A violent, sucking rush of air.

The inferno gasped back to life.

The world ignited.

Flame roared upward from every surface, as though rejoicing in the new breath. The heat struck him full force, a living thing that clawed for his throat, but Soren walked forward, unflinching. Frost bloomed where his boots met the stone, spreading outward in slow, intricate veins of silver-blue, taming the fire just enough for him to see.

And what he saw...

The walls wept fire.

Cracks spiderwebbed across the stone, deep and glowing red at their edges like veins of molten glass. Furniture had been reduced to blackened bones. The silken drapes were gone entirely, nothing left but drifting flakes of ash that hung suspended in the heat, like snow that had forgotten how to fall.

The scent of smoke and jasmine clung to everything.

He extended his hand slightly, and the air cooled at his gesture. Thin, shimmering layers of ice began to form, delicate, deliberate, holding the walls in place so they didn’t collapse around him.

"Eris."

His voice was low, controlled, the sound of steady water against fire.

"Eris, where are you?"

The flames answered first. They hissed, spat, resisted. His name fell flat against the roar.

So he listened instead, to the pulse beneath it all.

There.

A corner, near what used to be her vanity. The air there burned brightest, a furious concentration of heat.

He stepped closer, the fire parting reluctantly as if torn between recognition and defiance.

And then he saw her.