Chapter 3 King Caelan
Caelan’s POV
Eldon had been sitting across from me for the better part of two hours and he was running out of subtle ways to ask the same question. I let him circle it for a while because it was almost entertaining.
The study was one of the few rooms in the castle I actually liked. With its dark wood and high shelves and a fireplace large enough to stand in. There is no throne or court formality.
Just two chairs and a table and the kind of atmosphere that only exists when the person you are sitting with has known you long enough to be comfortable in your silence. I only brought people I consider friends here.
Eldon, King of Demonarchy had known me for three centuries. Long enough that I had watched him bury parents and rebuild his kingdom from near ruin twice. He called me by my name instead of my title when no one was listening, which was the closest thing to friendship that men like us could afford.
He refilled his glass and finally stopped circling.
“You could ease up, you know.” He set the decanter down with the particular carefulness of someone who had been drinking for a while. “The grip you keep on everything. Your people are not going anywhere, Caelan. You have been ruling this kingdom for three centuries. At some point you are allowed to breathe.”
“I breathe.”
“You know what I mean.”
I did. I looked at the fire and said nothing.
“The court talks and they say you have not taken a consort in over a hundred years. You run everything personally, down to details that should be three layers below your attention.” He tilted his head. “It looks like a man waiting for something.”
The fire cracked and shifted like it knew. Everything in this castle is susceptible to my mood and he knows that.
“It is.” I said.
Eldon was quiet for a moment. Then carefully he murmure. “Her.”
It was not a question since he knew. Everyone who had known me long enough knew even if they were wise enough not to say it to my face.
The story of Prince Caelan Nightborne and Princess Nymeria of the Fae Kingdom was not a private story.
It was written in the history of the Vampire Kingdom. It was the reason two kingdoms had bled for a generation and the reason the borders were drawn where they were.
“She will be reincarnated,” I said.
Eldon set his glass down slowly. “Caelan.”
“She will.”
“On what basis?” His voice was genuinely careful not dismissive. He was trying to understand. “I know what she was to you. I know what she did. But reincarnation at this scale for a specific soul returning to a specific form? That is not something anyone can know for certain since it happens once in millennia. Even the oldest among us --”
“The Oracle told me.”
Eldon picked his glass back up then put it down again without drinking. This is the most powerful demon to ever exist but he was done puttin up with me.
“The Oracle.”
“Yes.”
“The Soothsayer who predicted the collapse of the Tethian empire down to the season. Who told the demon lords about the plague three years before the first case. Who has never in recorded history made a prediction that did not come to pass.”
“That Soothsayer.”
Everybody knows the soothsayer/oracle Kamari, the most knowing. She is not my ally but she dropped the fact that my mate would be reincarnated. I’m sure it serves her purpose cause she never does stuff on a whim. She is a witch after all.
Eldon leaned back in his chair and looked at me with the expression he reserved for situations he found genuinely troubling.
“And she told you Nymeria’s soul would return.”
“She told me to wait. That the soul bound to mine would not stay gone. That I would know her when she arrived because the dragon would know her first.” I looked at my own hands resting on the arms of the chair.
“That was three hundred and twelve years ago.”
“Three hundred and–” Eldon stopped then look at me differently. “You know the exact number.”
“Three hundred and twelve years.” I held his gaze. “Eight months and sixteen days.”
The fire was the only sound in the room for a long moment.
He had the decency not to say what was written clearly across his face. That it was an obsession that no sane creature counted days across centuries and called it patience.
The line between waiting for justice and being consumed by something far less rational had blurred past recognition somewhere around year fifty and I had crossed it long ago without looking back. He knew better than to say any of it.
“What will you do?” He asked instead. “If she does come back. What exactly are you planning?”
I smiled. I felt it move across my face and I knew what it looked like because I had seen Eldon’s expression shift in response to it before. The smile of something that had been waiting in the dark for a very long time.
“I don’t know yet. And that is the most interesting part.” I said honestly.
“Caelan–”
“She took everything from me, Eldon.” The smile stayed but the thing underneath it did not match it at all.
“Not just the war or the political betrayal. Everything! And she died before I could make her understand what that cost. Before she could look me in the eyes and know what she had done.” I turned back to the fire. “Three hundred and twelve years is a long time to think about what I want from that conversation.”
“And if she truly does not remember? If the soul returns but the memories do not?”
“Then I will remind her.”
He opened his mouth but then I went still.
It was not a conscious decision. My body did it before my mind caught up. It’s the way it does when something triggers the part of me that existed long before I learned to be civilized.
Every muscle locking into position and my head lifting. My eyes went to the window as I scented the air inside my kingdom. I ALWAYS feel when someone that isn’t a vampire enters the kingdom. It is heavily protected.
There was a young fae female inside my kingdom!
The particular wild brightness of fae magic that was nothing like vampire and nothing like demon and completely unmistakable, laced through with something else underneath that hit me like a blade between the ribs.
The dragon has been touched and it has chosen a ve. My hands closed over the arms of the chair hard enough that the wood cracked.
“Caelan.” Eldon was on his feet. “What is it? What’s happening?”
“She is here.” I growled.
Eldon stared at me. “Who? Now? She’s here now –how?”
“I sent my men.” I was already at the door. “Months ago to every corner of the Lore. The moment the Oracle’s window opened I sent men to watch for her.”
“And you didn’t think to mention—”
“The bitch is here, Eldon.” I said it quietly which was somehow worse than if I had shouted it.
Three hundred and twelve years, eight months and sixteen days and she had just walked into my territory like the universe was finally, finally paying a debt.
“She is in my territory right now and she has touched Drakthar.”
The castle corridor blurred around me as I moved and the thing I had kept buried and controlled and perfectly managed for three unbroken centuries cracked open and what came out of it was not patience anymore.
I could teleport to where she is but I want her brought to me!
She was here and now she would pay.
