The throne room of Valerion had been built for sunlight.
Kaelen remembered it from his youth—the way the great windows had poured gold across the marble floors, the way the chandeliers had caught the light and scattered it into rainbows, the way the thrones themselves had seemed to glow with warmth. Now the windows showed only twilight, the chandeliers were dark, and the thrones sat in shadow like sleeping giants.
Prince Alaric stood before them, not sitting, because he had never been crowned. There would be no coronation until the sun returned. That was the law, the old law, the one that everyone pretended still mattered.
"You're hurt," Alaric said as Kaelen approached.
Kaelen looked down at his arm. The Crawler's fingers had left deep gouges, the skin around them already darkening with the beginnings of infection. He had not noticed.
"It's nothing."
Alaric's eyes narrowed, but he did not press. He was a perceptive man, which was both his greatest strength and his greatest burden. He saw things that others missed—the tremors in a soldier's hands, the way a counselor's voice tightened when speaking of the Church, the shadows that gathered behind Kaelen's eyes when he thought no one was looking.
"The messenger said the Unmade retreated," Alaric said. "Said a Tall One appeared and then left. That it was looking at you."
Kaelen said nothing.
"Is it true?"
"Yes."
Alaric moved closer. In the dim light, his face was all sharp angles and deep shadows, a mask of a man who carried more weight than any one person should.
"I need to know what happened out there," he said quietly. "Not the official report. Not what you'll tell the commanders. I need to know what that thing wanted. Why it stopped. Why it looked at you like it knew you."
Kaelen met his eyes.
It would be so easy to lie. He had lied before, to commanders and counselors and the men who followed him into battle. He had told them that the North was a mystery, that the expedition had been wiped out by an ambush, that he had survived by luck and nothing more.
But Alaric was different. Alaric had been there, in the early days, when the Rot was still something that happened to other kingdoms, when the walls were still being built and hope was still something people could afford.
"What do you know about the Binding?" Kaelen asked.
Alaric's expression did not change, but something in his posture shifted. Wariness. Recognition.
"I know that men who use it don't last. I know the Church considers it heresy. I know you use it." He paused. "And I know you're still here, four years after everyone expected you to be gone."
Kaelen looked down at his hands. They were steady, but beneath the skin, he could feel it—the cold pressure of the Binding, always waiting, always hungry.
"When I went north," he said slowly, "I wasn't alone. There were thirty of us. The best of the Vanguard. We were sent to find the source of the Rot. To see if it could be stopped."
He closed his eyes.