The King Trials 2: Beyond.

After reciting what had Vince told me, Kelan’s response is resigned to a bestial grunt.

“A breaking point,” he quotes acidly. “Those attacks were not just about upsetting the balance in Urium, but it degraded the credibility of the Crown to rule its own realm. Chaos spreading into other dominions, not enough to provoke a military confrontation because of hostile rebels but enough to leave none wanting to broker an alliance with a volatile realm.”

“They were planning to isolate Urium,” I say over his shoulder. Sighing, I rest my forehead against his back. “They wanted to make sure that no foreign power would intervene in our affairs in fear of inheriting our strife.”

“Not only that.” He offers a quick glance behind him. “It was not about weakening Urium in foreign eyes, but weakening the Crown. They did not want a complete severance but the ability to blame the current reign for being the source of Urium’s stability. Urium is a stronghold, the epicentre of life, all know of its importance, but its unrest has warded off many.”

I lift my head. “That is why when the Ethane rise to take power, the tides of turmoil will still. Foreign powers will find fault with Urus’s rule and seek to support the takeover to put someone more fit to rule in his place.”

Zooming amidst the streets of the Tent-city, a sign I have even seen in Armathis protrudes from one of the stores that are tightly packed together, a sign of a hand holding a lotus flower. Typically owned by sages or medeises who occupy a store filled with herbs, elixirs, and concoctions, varying in purpose, all with magical properties.

“I know that your… squadron has been… tainted. But surely you can call on the First Legion when we arrive at the Pantheon. I doubt their treachery has spread to an army of thousands upon thousands.”

“Yes,” he says thoughtfully.

He steadies the horse to a halt before we dismount, and he ties the reins to a lamppost.

He pauses, faltering before he flaps open one of the saddlebags and takes out a jingling, leather pouch.

“Due to the havoc spurred by the terror factions and uprisings that has flared all across Urium, it has forced both the Vanguard and Avangard to relocate sporadically throughout the realm to respond to the surge promptly. I know of only the Fourth Legion that occupies the border of Urium. A lot of terror activity has drawn forces to kingdoms on the fringes….”

“Reinsbure—” Kelan’s face fouls into a grimace, “—mentioned that the King Trials was a distraction to amass troops and position them. And that would require a significant amount of time to trickle in forces without rousing alarm. What if all the terror activity was meant to also draw them away so that if the Pantheon was ever invaded...” I trail off to allow him to fill in the blanks.

“The High King would be left vulnerable. The City of Old is well-defended and the castle heavily fortified, but in the event of an invasion….one coming from all sides would demand immediate reinforcements that they would now lack with our forces scattered both within and without the realm.”

He curses before he storms in the store’s direction, bursting through with me in tow. Kelan marches down, the wooden floorboards creak and groan with pain. The store is dimly-lit; the flanks are lined with cases teeming with glowing objects, shelves brimming with irregular shaped bottles filled with glittering contents.

A medeis behind the counter erects at our brusque advent.

Her dark amber skin patterned with tactile markings, her bright orange eyes stark with panic. Two bronzed horns lengthen from the tip of her forehead in a spiral shape.

“We need to send a portal message.”

She gawks at Kelan with poorly hidden fright. I glance at him and see the dotted, dried blood freckled on his face, appearing as if he just stepped out of war zone.

Her gaze still stuck on him; she clears her throat. “To whom and where?”

Kelan steps aside and I advance.

“To a Captain Devwar, on an airborne ship called the Storm Voyager.”

Her wickedly sharp nail points to the writing station adjacent to her in the corner, ready with a bare parchment and a feathered quill planted in an ink well. I hurry to it, scribbling a hastily written note that is adequately legible, heeding to Kelan’s impatient pacing behind me.

I pivot my shoulders. “Where are the Yellowcliff?”

He walks briskly to me and I hand him the quill before he bends and writes the co-ordinates with surprisingly admirable penmanship. Concluded, he slots the quill back inside and returns to the counter to give it to her. With a quick flourish, she folds the parchment until it’s nothing but a small, square shape.

She stares in front of her, bringing her hand to her mouth, muttering an incantation before she whips out her arm like a crackling whip and a fissure, lashing out a fluorescent mark with the same semblance of a lightning bolt that splits the air. She widens her fingers, and the rift expands, an onrush of wind blows an ethereal breath. She hurls the folded parchment and the portal seals close.

Kelan fishes out a few cordenias to pay her. He slaps the coins on the counter before he revolves and we both exit. He tosses the pouch at me; I catch it and tighten the cords before I return it to the saddlebag whilst he unties the reins of the horse before he raises me up to settle, then mounting up behind and his arms surround me in a protective circle.

We ride through the city and make it out on the other side, on route to the RedGlade. The forests of Sula are deep and wide-ranging, a sprawling extension, and the RedGlade has a ruby tinge. The soils a reddish tint with blood-dipped leaves, the sunlight that filters through the treetops, the red bleeds into the light so that it becomes scarlet radiation.

“Though you fought well,” Kelan begins suddenly. His breaths send a shudder down the back of my neck. “I fear the malignancy will weaken you when you need your strength the most. Which is why—”

“If you are going to suggest I leave you and flee.” Resolve hardens my voice. “Do not. Our only concern is reaching the Pantheon before the invasion commences. Emikrol is likely bolstering troops near the triple frontier as we speak.”

“I do not even know why I bothered,” he mumbles.

I crack into a small smile.

We journey through the RedGlade as the sun arcs over the sky from east to west, the light of day yielding to the summons of night, the diffusion of sunlight borne twilight, warning that there are only a few swallows left in the sky before darkness devours it all.

Fatigue snuck on me. I felt it scratching at the surface, but the urgency after urgency muted my own discomfort. We have to make it to Yellowcliff by noontide tomorrow. But I need to replenish my strength, at least what remains of it.

“I know we are pressed for time, but we also need rest.”

“No,” he says harshly, with a distinct note of point in his tenor. “We need to reach the Pantheon without further delay. For all we know, the invasion could have begun already.”

“Yes, and it will not aid us to arrive with only half our vigour, the rest robbed by sleep-deprivation. A few hours of rest will do no harm. We can continue before dawn breaks.”

He says nothing.

He exhales heavily, his breaths kick the strands of my hair.

“Very well,” he concedes. “There is an Inn not far from here.”

Along the breadth of the scarlet forest, there is a multistorey lodging house with a stable and a cluster of outdoor cabins close by. We dismount and Kelan leads the horse to the stable, returning with all of our belongings as I share the load with him. After we enter the establishment, beckoning the innkeeper who informs us that no rooms upstairs are available, only the outdoor accommodation.

Kelan does the brief exchange of key and payment.

The innkeeper sends a servant ahead of to prepare a room and when she returned; we are ushered out and shown to one of the identical cabins that are fairly spaced out from each other.

The servant waits for a dismissal before she absconds us at the entrance. I saunter inside first, examining the wooden interior of the functional bedchamber with one unadorned but large bed with a budding blaze in the hearth and a long couch settled before it. There are lit candles arrayed on the head of the heart as well as a short collection of them on the bedside table, cultivating an amorous ambience.

Kelan enters behind me.

I turn around and watch him close the door slowly, hands pinned, leaning against it for a moment with his head hung. The full reckoning of today’s revelations, betrayals and loss have laden him with an unbearable weight.

I want to say something. To comfort him in some way, but what words can bring solace to such a wound. An earth-shattering betrayal, a world-altering revelation that our entire reality is moments from changing. Whether we warn the Crown in time or not, the outcome is the same.

War is inevitable.

“Did Reinsbure have family?”

“He did,” Kelan answers bitterly. “Me.”

Setting my things down with excessive gentleness, I say, “I know Reinsbure hurt you, betrayed you. But he still honoured you. In his mind he was only doing what he thought he needed to, however perverse or wicked.”

Kelan finally straightens, turning around with daunting gradualness.

“You are defending his treasonous acts—”

“No, I—”

“There is nothing that can be said to absolve his guilt. He committed atrocities knowingly, allying with Emikrol with the knowledge that they had sold their souls to evil by serving the Ulris. How foolish can they be to think that they can bargain with Vilnus?”

Kelan marches forward, round the couch to stand in front of it before he drops the bags. He turns to walk beside the hearth to the table with a bucket of hot water, still steaming with a towel on its ledge. He takes it, plunges it in the water before wringing it dry and wiping his face clean with it.

“A compromise,” I say.

Kelan throws it aside and swivels. Rage roars in his eyes, one side of him awash with firelight, the other consumed by darkness.

“I do not think anyone is that foolish to repeat a mistake willingly.” I pace a few steps and stop. “No. Cornelius Qhar used the Ulris for its power and he got it, rewarding him with an entire realm and the title of the first High King. Emikrol knows that the Ulris will seek to betray them, use them as doormat.”

My gaze falls to the floor, to the random mouldy stains.

“Vilnus may be powerful enough at the Eternal Eclipse to open a breach into our world. But what if they have found a way to close it, another way. I recall Vince telling the Nivalis’s military tribunal that there must be another alternative apart from the sun crystal? What if they had found it?”

Something flashes in Kelan’s eyes, a secreted truth.

He steers clear of my gaze. “Though I abhor them with every fibre of my being. I cannot label them as imprudent. It sickens me to admit that they are smarter than to deal with the Ulris without an insurance of some sort.”

He shakes his head and unstraps his holster, grabbing the sheathed sword inside and placing it against the couch as he begins to strip off his armour. I dally around awkwardly, unsure of what to do with myself.

It’s all too much.

The emotional trauma of today’s undoing, a war on the rise. Not to mention the Sagetai’s ordained role in this foreseen cataclysm, but never would I have thought that it would have been caused by….

I never cared for Vince in that way, but it does not mean that I am not stung by his betrayal. Because he did not only betray me. I do not care what perspective he holds; he betrayed Urium.

If Solaris were here, he would state that he will not say a word but would have still given me a ‘I told you so’ look, and he did. Repeatedly, he illustrated on every angle how he is dangerous and duplicitous.

I glance at Kelan, his armour removed.

Though more important qualms should occupy my mind. I hope he knows.

The air between us fraught with the tension of unsaid words.

I hope he knows that what I feel for him is unmatched. One cannot compare a drop of water to an entire ocean.

He looks back at me as if he hears my thoughts. His expression tightens. “Well?” He gives me a long, once over that lingers. “You wanted to rest.” His eyes dart to the bed. “Rest.”

I snort dryly. “Well, when we were fleeing from the encampment, taking a night garb was not really on my list of priorities.”

“Here.” Kelan undoes his top garment, unlacing it from the diagonal neckline before he tears it off his body, a shapeless blouse underneath, loose, but it fits his torso. He chucks the garment on the couch before he slips out the blouse, handing it to me. “Sleep in this.”

My gaze roams every chiselled feature of his muscled chest from his collarbone down, every ironbound muscle wrought from sheer metal. I wrangle with the throbs of pure, primal longing as I carefully walk over to him.

His mouth curves into the barest of smiles. It is small, but it completely changes his face for an eyeblink, somehow it lightens the burden in my chest.

I take the blouse from him. Not trusting my voice, I nod gratefully.

Hesitantly, I hold it to my chest.

“What?”

I shake my head too fast, spinning around to stumble over to the bed, placing the blouse on it for now. I plop down, taking off my boots, Then I start the tedious procedure of undressing with back towards him, setting aside my scabbards. I feel the puncture of dual drills in my bare back before I quickly put on his blouse, intoxicating me with the aroma of his smell, like the waterfall of the Shire in a crisp morning, the musky and rugged, earthy scent of a mountain.

The billowy blouse unfurls to end above my knees, long-sleeved and ridiculously comfortable.

I steal a mere look over my shoulder and it causes me to whirl around. I creep closer to him, he’s seated on the couch, facing the fire as he undoes his boots. You would think that the flesh of a soldier would be marred by the horrors of war and combat. But he is without a single scar, the only jarring thing is the assortment of markings on his back inked in black, but there are no mere markings.

It’s a tally.

Kelan must feel me staring because he tosses me a quick glance over his shoulder.

“I nearly forgot about those,” he mutters scathingly.

I round the couch to stand beside him. “May I… see them?”

He stands, looming over me. He observes me for a long interval of silent intensity, his eyes feasting on every inch of me. Eventually he turns around. I study the symmetrical groups of assembled blades; every single blade represents a life, and there are dozens and dozens of groups, representing hundreds of lives.

“So, it is true.” The words tumble out.

His head rotates just enough to stare down at his shoulder.

I raise my hand and place it on him, his muscles tauten into a clench. “My master who trained me in archery, he told me that the military had this sordid tradition of making sport of taking lives, a game of death by keeping a body count of their kills to flaunt their combative prowess.”

My fingers trace the perfect outline of an Avangardian blade, scouring, feeling every protrude of cast iron muscle, relishing in the tingling sensation of his skin beneath mine.

“I received those long before I was a Primus,” he says regretfully. “In my younger, more foolish days. I was not…. I am not that being anymore. When I came to my senses, I stopped keeping count, If I did not, no morsel of my skin would be spared.”

He swivels around and I cling to his gaze, not daring to look anywhere else.

“I am sure with such an occupation, you had to take many lives. Orders are orders.”

He shakes his head slightly, compressing his lips together as if to keep anything from spilling out. He decides on his words. “It goes beyond that. What I have done…so many irremediable things… there was… there was.”

The words trapped in his throat.

I sigh serenely; I lift my hand to place it on his neck, my thumb caressing his skin.

“You can tell me,” I softly. “Nothing you say can spoil my image of you. Besides, I would never judge your blunders, as you have never judged mine, none of us are defined by our mistakes.”

“There was a time,” he says more steadily. “Where I enjoyed what I did… the killing… it seemed to distract from an undiscovered depth I felt so ceaselessly…it made me question the real reason why I excelled at being a soldier… why I am good at what I do.”

“Kelan,” I murmur with a tinge of reproach. “You are good at protecting. I may not know your origins, but I know your character, your instinct to do what it is right, putting the duty of other’s welfare above your own. Never lose sight of that. It is not about how you begun, but it is about how you choose to end.”

His eyes move all over my face. “Yes, and it seems I’m on the right path.” He places his hands on my hips and reels me closer to him, drawing out a gasp from me. “You said that our fates were intertwined but severed by our choices. But that is impossible, for I know, as certain as my next breath that our fate is a knot that can never be undone.”

Euphoria streaks through me like a comet.

“An orbit that neither of us can escape, like gravity we will forever be pulled to one another.” Awe transforms him as a rare soul-quenching smile splits his face, exposing his line dimple. “You and I are tethered. Destined.”

Inestimable joy strums a melody within me that dances with my thoughts, welling up in my chest with something unrequited. Arousing my heart in a way never before felt.

“You have awoken something in me that I thought I had lost, something dead now alive.” He takes my hand from his neck, lacing our fingers to places it on his heart. My eyes close. I feel the cadence of his heartbeat calling out to my own.

I open my eyes, giving him a cheeky smile. “Is this your way of saying you were wrong?”

He frees a short laugh; a wonder-inspiring sound. “A soldier never surrenders, but to you I surrender all I am with the selfish hope that you will accept all parts of me.”

I raise my hand to cup his jaw, my thumb slowly grazing his full lips.

“Tell me,” I say seriously. “Do you believe in a Higher Power?”

“In the gods?”

“God.” A patent distinction.

His lips thin into a line. “Just like builders erect an edifice, I believe that creation was created by a Creator.” An acrimonious look flies across his face. “But I do not put my faith in any of them, not even a God one that wanes on disbelief, abandoning us to the disorder of this world.”

I gaze into his eyes; star-dappled, adrift in the black cosmos.

“But when I met you.” My attention attuning to every sense of him. “And I saw the goodness of your heart, such a beauty makes God’s existence undeniable.”

Our gaze lock, magnetised.

He leans forward until our lips touch—his lips are plump, warm and soft, his kiss tender and tentative at first. Then he kisses me deeper, losing himself as I lose himself in him. He feels all-encompassing, like I do not know where he begins or where he ends.

But I am eager to find out.

Sweltering desire like a furnace of fire, flooding me with heat, curling within.

His hand slips in beneath blouse to run his hand up my spine, coaxing shivers from me. A reverberating growl rumbles from his chest, my fingers thread through his hair, satiny like spun silk, I bite down on his lip and another rumbling growl escapes him, wholly lost in the throes of passion.

He drives me back and my rear slams against the nearby wall, his hands grip me, the pressure of him stoking a ravenous flame in my chest. I arch against him and his kisses trail down, his breath hot as he sucks at the juncture of my neck and shoulder, luring out a series of breathless moans from me, nipping at the skin.

He pulls back abruptly, as if yanked back by a chain.

Overawed, aching with burning want.

“No,” he says, chest heaving, shoving his hair back, ebony waves rippling. “If this is to be done, it will be done the right way. The honourable way.”

He moves fast, pressing me against the wall, his hands pasted on either side of my head, his eyes gleaming with boundless hunger. His gaze travels downwards.

“Though you kindle a thousand fires within me,” he utters painfully. “You are invaluable to me, which is why when this is all over. I will make you mine in every way imaginable, bringing life to every desire, giving flesh to every thought of you.”

Before I can respond, he captures my lips, both hands holding my face, his thumbs stroking my jaw, sending sparks skittering across my skin. Then he tips my head down to give me one last featherlight kiss on the crown of my head.

I look up at him and hold on to his wrists, a grin so wide, I fear it may break my face.

“Do you know why I call you, my queen?” He inhales deeply. “Because I do not see you as you are, but I see what you will become. The moment I beheld you, a simple glance echoed a thousand lives together and I yearn for nothing more than to live each one of them at your side.”

I turn my head to plant a quick kiss on the inside of his fingers. “The future is uncertain to all, the only that is a certainty is what I feel for you.”

His smile like the splendour of first light fleshed across a morning sky.

It is strange. It’s like time fell in a chasm, and the entire world has gone still, nothing else matters, not even the inbound dangers that come from all directions, nothing else matters other than him and I.

“I wish you could see what I see.”

I shake my head blissfully. “I am more than happy with my view.”

I slip from him, practically prancing victoriously to the bed. I fling the covers open to crawl inside. He observes me intently and I smile back at him goofily.

“Are you waiting for an invitation?”

I flop over on my side, inherently nestling myself on the edge. I listen to Kelan walk to the other side of the bed. After a moment, he slips inside, the mattress dips, whining a complaint about the heft. I soon feel his brawny arm snake around me, encroaching on me as his warmth embraces me in full.

For the first time in a long time. I find peace in my rest.