The words hung in the opulent, silent air between us, so audacious and so utterly insane that for a moment, I couldn't process them. A prophecy. A curse. He sent me away to save my life. It was a story spun from the pages of a dark fairytale, a convenient, romantic lie designed to absolve him of his monstrous cruelty.
I laughed. It wasn't a sound of humor; it was a harsh, broken thing, torn from the depths of my disbelief.
"A prophecy?" I echoed, shaking my head. "That's your excuse? After seven years of silence, you expect me to believe you broke my heart and tried to erase our child because of some cryptic warning from a mystic?"
"It was not an excuse," Rhyian said, his voice deadly serious. His hand, which had been hovering near my face, dropped to his side. "It was a fact. A fate I have lived with for centuries."
"How convenient," I spat, circling him like a caged animal. "A fate that only seems to matter when it suits you. You stood in your office, in this very tower, and told me our child was a 'complication' you couldn't 'afford.' You spoke about it like a bad business deal. There was no grief in your voice, Rhyian. There was no pain. There was only ice."
"It was a mask!" he roared, the sudden explosion of his voice making me flinch. The air crackled with that familiar, potent static of his power. "It was a lie forged from desperation! I chose the cruelest words I could conjure because I needed you to hate me. I needed you to run so far that you would never look back. I needed you to end the pregnancy, because I believed it was the only way you would live!"
His chest was heaving, the icy composure of the Sovereign completely gone. In his place was a man—a creature—haunted by a choice he thought was noble.
"The Seer of the Shrouded Court gave the prophecy to my father a thousand years ago," he continued, his voice dropping to a ragged, urgent whisper. "And it has proven true for every Dravos heir since. My own mother, a powerful vampire in her own right, was nearly destroyed giving birth to me. For a mortal..." He closed his eyes, a look of profound pain crossing his features. "The prophecy was absolute. 'The mortal vessel shall be shattered.' I was given a choice: you, or the child. And I chose you, Carys. In the only way I knew how, I chose to save your life, even if it meant losing you."
I stared at him, my mind a whirlwind of confusion and fury. It was a perfect, elegant explanation. A story so tragic and selfless it could almost make me forget the cold, hard reality of his rejection. But I wasn't that naive girl anymore. I had spent seven years learning that the world, especially his world, was built on lies and manipulation.
"And I'm supposed to believe this?" I asked, my voice dangerously quiet. "You, the master of a city, the king of a court of ancient, scheming creatures, want me to believe you are a slave to fate? That you didn't have another option?"
"What other option was there?" he demanded, stepping toward me again, his hands clenched into tight fists at his sides. "Chain you to a bed? Force you to endure a pregnancy that I was told would kill you? I did what I did because I loved you too much to watch you die for me."
"Love?" The word was a poison on my tongue. "You don't know the first thing about love. Love doesn't offer money for an abortion, Rhyian. Love doesn't abandon someone to face the world alone, pregnant and terrified. Even if this ridiculous prophecy were true, a man who loved me would have told me the truth! He would have faced it with me!"
My words hit him harder than any physical blow. He staggered back a step, the anger draining from his face, leaving behind a stark, hollow look of utter devastation. He finally saw it. The fatal flaw in his tragic, noble plan.
"I... I was arrogant," he admitted, the words sounding like they were being ripped from his soul. "I thought I knew best. I thought my way was the only way. To protect you from the truth, to protect you from the pain... I see now. All I did was choose a different kind of poison for you."
He looked at me, his silver eyes swimming with a millennium of regret.
"You survived," he whispered, a note of pure wonder in his voice. "The prophecy was wrong. You gave birth to him, and you survived. How?"
This was it. The precipice. The moment where I could tell him everything. I could tell him about the Aethel. About the fire in my blood that had awakened to protect me and our son. I could tell him that I wasn't the fragile "mortal vessel" he thought I was. I could lay my cards on the table and show him that I was his equal.
But the hunter in me, the survivor that had kept me alive for seven years, screamed in protest. Knowledge was power, and my secret was the only true power I held over him. Giving it to him now, when I was a prisoner in his tower, would be giving him the last key to my cage. He would see me not as a woman, but as a supernatural anomaly to be studied, controlled, and possessed in a whole new way.
So I lied.
"I got lucky," I said, my voice cold and flat. "Or maybe your all-powerful Seer was a fraud. It doesn't matter. The point is you were wrong. You made a catastrophic, unforgivable mistake based on a ghost story, and you expect me to just forget it because you've decided to feel guilty now?"
I walked over to the immense window, turning my back on him to look down at the city. My city. The one that was now impossibly out of reach.
"Your story changes nothing, Rhyian," I said, my reflection a pale, defiant ghost in the glass. "It doesn't erase the last seven years. It doesn't erase the fear, the loneliness, or the fact that I raised our son by myself while you sat up here in your kingdom of glass and steel. You don't get absolution that easily."
I felt him approach, his presence a heavy weight behind me. I braced myself for another argument, another command.
Instead, he spoke, his voice quiet and heavy with resolve.
"You are right. I am not asking for absolution. I am not asking for forgiveness. Not yet."
I turned to face him, surprised by his tone.
"I am asking for a truce," he said, his silver eyes searching mine. "Let me do what I should have done seven years ago. Let me protect you. Let me protect him. Let me earn back a fraction of the trust I shattered. Whatever you think of me, we have a common enemy that wants our son dead. We must face them together."
He held out his hand. Not to touch me, but as a gesture. A plea.
"A truce, Carys. For Rowan."
My mind was screaming. It's a trick. A manipulation. Another gilded cage.
But my heart, the foolish, traitorous organ that still remembered the man he once was, saw the desperation in his eyes. And more importantly, I thought of Rowan, sleeping peacefully in the next room, unaware that his life depended on the two broken people standing here.
For Rowan, I could do anything. Even trust the monster who had destroyed me.
Slowly, deliberately, I looked at his outstretched hand, and then back to his face. And I gave a single, sharp nod.