A King's Caution (The Eternal War Book 2)

by Brennan C. Adams

  Once Kylorian’s ankles were secured, Raimie lowered the pistol although he held it loosely pointed at his prisoner.

  “Let’s talk.”

  “You hold me at gunpoint, restrain me, and want to talk?” Kylorian spat.

  “I did what I must to keep you from drawing your sword,” Raimie replied. “I’ve no doubt you meant to run me through once it was free of its sheath.”

  “You surprised me is all! I wouldn’t have attacked you.”

  Perched on Eledis’ desk, Raimie crossed his arms. “And I’m a norm, devoid of magic,” he scoffed. “Cut the bullshit, and let’s talk!”

  Eledis could hear Kylorian’s teeth grinding together, feel the tension crackling between the two, but the prisoner must have realized he was stuck until the conversation’s completion because he slumped.

  “What’s there to say?” he asked. “I hate you. By now, you must equally despise me. We’re rivals for the throne. Not much to talk about.”

  Raimie sadly shook his head. “What happened to you, Ky?” he asked. “You used to be passionate but reasonable. You cared about Auden. Now, what I see in you is uncontrolled rage. All you care about is seeing me destroyed. Why?”

  “You killed my little brother!” Kylorian yelled.

  “No, Hadrion’s death isn’t the seed of your hate,” Raimie asserted. “I never hurt your brother, much like I didn’t kill your parents or Harvest your home. The responsibility for those tragedies lies squarely at Doldimar’s feet. You realized this a while ago, probably around the same time I stopped encountering ambushes while traveling, and before you say anything, yes, I know you sent those gifts my way. You don’t blame me for Hadrion’s death. It isn’t the cause of your loathing, so you can’t blame the mess you’ve become on your brother. What else?”

  “I care more for Auden than you do! How can you love a country you’ve walked for only a few years?” Kylorian retorted, but Eledis could see doubt wavering in his eyes.

  “I’d say our actions have shown which of us cares for this kingdom,” Raimie argued. “Do you know what I’ve done in the two years since Doldimar disappeared? I’m sure you must. I’ve felt your spy’s eyes on me. While you’ve paraded across the country, garnering support for your claim to the throne, I’ve feverishly labored to fix this broken kingdom. Now, my successes might explain the hate, but they don’t explain your drive for revenge. You do want what’s best for Auden. I know it, and you know what I’ve done is good for the kingdom. What else could make you want revenge?”

  Kylorian’s jaw stiffened, and he defiantly raised it. “Ren,” was all he said.

  “Ah…” both Eledis and Raimie sighed.

  “You love her,” Eledis murmured.

  “And he broke her heart,” Kylorian bit off, jerking his head at the kid. “You didn’t have to clean up the mess you left behind, Raimie. I was willing to step aside when you two began courting because she was happy. Happiness was all I wanted for her. We lived such short lives under Doldimar’s reign. I didn’t want to cause her strife by fighting for her affection. When you left for Uduli, she wasn’t the same. I’d never seen her cry before you abandoned her! So, when I saw the two of you together today, I assumed she’d refused you, that you-”

  “She left me,” Raimie interrupted, his arms tightening around his chest.

  Oh, Alouin. Keep a straight face. Don’t allow laughter to escape.

  “What?” Kylorian asked.

  “You heard me,” Raimie muttered. “Ren said our relationship’s end would be for the good of Auden. She freed me to marry Kaedesa which I didn’t, and still don’t, want to do.”

  Eledis couldn’t contain it anymore. He dissolved into laughter. The younger men glared at him, but honestly, what had they expected? They told one of the oldest stories ever written: a misunderstanding between two boys because of a girl. Really. It was pathetic.

  “Forgive me,” Eledis giggled, waving a hand at them. “I find it amusing you two argue over Ren when you should be concerned with who will stand before me at the investiture in a month’s time.”

  Their blank stares were delightful.

  “Investiture?” Kylorian asked.

  “Yes, the one I’ve planned for months,” Eledis answered with glee.

  A corner of Raimie’s mouth curled up ever so slightly, and Eledis’ bright mood dimmed.

  “Perhaps we should discuss who will lead Auden for the next several years,” Raimie suggested.

  Had the kid outmaneuvered him? Had Raimie known about his plan?

  “What do you think, Kylorian?” Raimie continued.

  “I think the subject should be discussed at some point, yes, preferably not when I’m in chains.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Raimie sighed, hiding his face in one hand. “Look, we made an agreement in a tavern long ago, right?”

  “The Audish populace would choose their king,” Kylorian agreed.

  “Their choice is pretty clear, much to my chagrin. So, unless you disagree or intend to renege on our agreement, I believe the discussion is already over,” Raimie pronounced almost as sourly as his rival.

  He didn’t give Kylorian a chance to respond, simply hopped from the desk and strode away.

  “I will see you in one month’s time,” he informed Eledis as he passed, tossing him a pair of keys.

  Wait, what had just happened? Did they already come to a decision, and-

  “Where are you going?” Eledis asked.

  Raimie paused at the door. “Qena, the eccentric town near the Wastelands?” he replied. “We received a request for aid in the midst of the Matvai negotiations. Apparently, a nearby tear is acting strangely, and they asked for me to fix it. Someone must have spread rumors concerning Allanovian and Da’kul.”

  “Raimie, you’ve matters of state to attend to in Uduli!” Eledis exclaimed.

  “But you’re so good at dealing with those, Eledis!” Raimie replied with a twinkle in his eyes. “I’d assumed managing Auden was what you wanted. Where would the kingdom be without the guiding hand of its Chief Minister?”

  Pulling the door open, Raimie disappeared. Eledis and Kylorian glared, in concert, at its closed wooden surface until his whistling faded.

  “Will you leave me like this much longer?” Kylorian growled.

  Eledis started. He’d almost forgotten the other man, too engrossed with the idea Raimie had planted in his head. He’d never actually considered it, but perhaps the kid was right. Maybe he didn’t need to be king to hold the power he required.

  He unlocked Kylorian’s chains, but before the other man could depart, Eledis stopped him with a question.

  “Do you intend to renounce your claim to the throne?”

  “The people have spoken,” Kylorian answered with a shrug.

  “In my experience, people are simpletons who don’t know what they want,” Eledis said, a challenge carried in his words.

  “Raimie can have the throne,” Kylorian answered the protest. “I’ve had my fill of carrying a nation’s expectations over the last couple years, and I know the burden will be hell on him. Consider it my little revenge.”

  “So, Ren wasn’t the only reason you’re so intent on obliterating my grandson?” Eledis asked.

  “No. No, it wasn’t.” Sadly smiling, Kylorian bowed. “If you’ll excuse me.”

  He barreled through Kaedesa in his haste to escape. The Queen of Ada’ir stopped her tumble with a hand on the door frame.

  “Goodness!” she exclaimed. “What was that about?”

  Raising his hands, Eledis shrugged. “The urgency of youth?”

  “The young are always in a hurry, aren’t they?” she asked with a laugh. “While those nearing the end have mellowed. You’d think it would be the opposite.”

  Chuckling, Eledis waved her inside. “What can I do for you, Your Majesty?”

  “Is it true the investiture has a date?” she asked as she strolled inside and curiously examined his sparse office.

  “
Indeed, it is!” Eledis answered, hoping to disguise the flush she never failed to induce as enthusiasm. “One month’s time on the 10th of Fifth. Why do you ask?”

  “Simply verifying Raimie spoke the truth,” Kaedesa murmured, trailing her hand over his desk’s surface.

  “Raimie is many things, but a liar he is not.” Eledis nervously laughed.

  His heart pounded in his ears. Eledis had become accustomed to her presence during the months immediately following Doldimar’s disappearance. She’d been enormously helpful with reestablishing order, her years of experience with statecraft convincing more than one town’s mayor to step aside and allow Eledis and Raimie to begin governing them.

  After such an extended length of time away from her kingdom, however, she’d needed to return to Ada’ir to ensure her power-hungry nobles hadn’t dared to take advantage of her absence. Eledis had missed her more fiercely than he cared to admit, and now, she was back, a few short feet from him. His heart fluttered like a hummingbird.

  “You know, Eledis, you’re not quite as disquieting as I remember you,” Kaedesa commented, snatching a paper from the desk and leaning over in the process.

  Her hair tumbled over her shoulders.

  “Thank you, I think,” he replied with a dry mouth.

  “Perhaps working with you won’t be as difficult as I’d imagined it,” she murmured as she scanned the document she’d confiscated.

  “Working with me?” Eledis parroted.

  “Indeed,” she said, replacing the paper. “I’ll be Queen of Auden soon enough. I’d imagine that, as Chief Minister, you and I will have many interactions.”

  His betrayer of a heart froze in his chest, and ice washed his spine.

  “Of course, Your Majesty,” he agreed.

  Her eyes flicked up to his, and the contact was enough to jolt his heart into beating once more, if not quite as rapidly as before.

  “I don’t know,” she whispered, her face scrunching, “Something about you… It’s like I’ve known you my entire life.”

  Violently shaking her head, Kaedesa cleared her throat. “Thank you for confirming Raimie’s assertion,” she said with a sweet smile.

  She also left, abandoning Eledis to his study sans windows, deep within the black palace’s confines. His only companion was his battered and befuddled heart.

  Chapter Twenty

  Wife,

  It is done. Our spy, our Emri, is in position, and I am become nothing more than an escort. First, beloved Illasaya, perhaps the only woman to hold the power and sympathy required to free the Esela from human domination, and now, our son delivered into the hands of a brat.

  That’s what he is, wife, despite your visions otherwise. After this last visit, I’m done giving him the benefit of the doubt.

  A powerful gust knocked Kheled sideways, and his feet lifted from the earth. Before the storm could send him tumbling, he called to the Ele beneath him, attracting it to that within his feet. Landing with a thud, he blasted a spray of pure light to correct his fall. It blinded him after so many hours hidden beneath thick cloud cover. Blinking stars away, he released the Ele binding him to the earth, prepared for another short burst of flight.

  “Duck!” Creation yelled, clearly audible over the storm’s howls.

  Kheled dove forward as something-A boulder? A wood beam?-whistled overhead before rolling to his feet. He desperately sprinted forward, surprised when he stumbled upon the dark splotch he’d spotted before the storm wall hit.

  How the ruined walls had survived within the Wastelands as long as they had, and with a roof no less, Kheled could only guess. He was grateful for the shelter, however it had managed to stay upright. Slumping in the corner furthest from the wind and rain, he shivered, longing for a fire or, even better, a bed piled with blankets.

  “Remind me why we’re out here?” Creation asked.

  Kheled attempted to respond, but even at his loudest volume, he couldn’t compete with the screaming winds. Instead, he met Creation’s gaze and shrugged expansively. Hugging arms around his bent knees, he hunkered down to outwait the hurricane, silently praying to gods in whom he didn’t believe.

  * * *

  When calm descended once more, it almost took Kheled by surprise. For hours, the winds had weakened. What once might have tossed him like a rag doll had died to, if not a gentle breeze, at least something incapable of causing him harm. The sheets of rain which shot from the sky like a curtain of icy needles had slowed to a lazy drizzle.

  Kheled stretched. His legs had cramped while waiting.

  “I thought I’d find Doldimar here,” he said, answering Creation’s question from hours before. “The Wastelands seemed a paradise for him. Since it’s constantly barraged by monsoons from the Accession Tear, I thought the maelstrom would attract him like a magnet.”

  “If he’d taken refuge here, where would he hoard his Kiraak army?” Creation asked. “He may not care if they live or die as a general rule, but without a constant stream of humans to transform, he’s forced to conserve those he controls.”

  “See? This is why, every once in a while, we should work together,” Kheled murmured, peeking around his shelter to nervously scan the sky. “If you’d made that point before we left Qena, we might have avoided the troublesome days spent searching this desolate land.”

  “You know I can be useful to you. Why do you refuse my help?” Creation asked.

  “Because, in general, you’re an ass,” Kheled answered. “Which way is the tear?”

  The splinter grimaced but he made his answer, moving in the direction opposite the one Kheled had planned to head.

  “You know, for a very long time, I found you intolerable as well,” Creation informed him. “You had this insufferable air of righteousness about you, and when it came time to kill Arivor, you’d refuse your destiny, every single time. It frustrated me to no end, and… I didn’t understand. So, I forced you to kill Arivor because I thought I knew best, what with you being a limited, physical being. I resigned myself to an eternity of abuse from you, but after two or three hundred cycles, you gave up. Something broke in you, and I couldn’t determine the cause for your despair. I found I missed the defiant spark which had been so incredibly frustrating at the beginning. I’m glad it has returned.”

  Kheled trailed the splinter, lips pursed. “Now I feel like an ass,” he eventually muttered.

  “Why?” Creation chuckled. “Your assertion was entirely correct. In most instances, I do act in an ass-like manner, but Erianger, you’ve kept me from the whole more than usual this cycle. Some of your traits have rubbed off on me, and I haven’t had the time or inclination to wash them in the whole as of yet.”

  “Huh,” Kheled murmured, “I’d always wondered why you splinters become more bearable the longer you spend with your primeancer.”

  “Why didn’t you ask?”

  “I don’t know,” Kheled said, lifting his face to the first faint caresses of sunlight through the dissolving clouds. “Maybe my responsibility for Arivor stole my focus. Maybe my guilt over the experiment which began this cascading disaster wouldn’t allow me to indulge the scientist within. I know at one point, I didn’t care, eliminating everything save what was necessary to kill Doldimar.”

  Creation had no reply for him which was a perfect happenstance because Kheled was finished sharing. This camaraderie with his ‘babysitter’ was new, and while intriguing and worth pursuing, he didn’t fully trust it.

  He turned his attention to his surroundings, curious to observe the gale’s aftermath. He’d not much to see. Without the mountains to break the hurricanes' fury, this narrow strip of land on Auden’s southwestern border endured wave after wave of stormy destruction. The Wastelands were completely devoid of life besides grass and tough, low to the ground plants. Wood beams and ship masts littered the earth, an oddity considering Kheled’s distance from the coast. Here and there, boulders of sizes from tiny to huge haphazardly sat on the green carpet. Occasionally, miraculous rui
ns rose from the earth to stand tall and proud against the fury of wind and rain, but these lone warriors were the last of their kind. In general, the Wastelands were exactly that: a verdant, green land of rubbish.

  The last few days traversing this windswept landscape had been incredibly lonely and taxing, but at least, the sun had shown its face once more.

  “I’m sorry,” Creation said from up ahead, and Kheled stumbled to a stop.

  “You’re sorry?” he repeated, unsure he’d heard correctly. “For what?”

  “For what we did. We should never have claimed you. After your first round of death, you should have stayed dead,” Creation said. “I hope you can understand. What we did was entirely instinctual. The whole doesn’t have logic behind it. It does as its nature prescribes. We splinters which are active in the physical plane try to influence it, but our efforts don’t count for much when dealing with something equivalent to gravity or Newton’s second law. The whole is a force. So, when the enemy whole claimed Arivor and obtained a gate to the physical, we reacted and latched onto you.

  “That doesn’t mean we didn’t make your life hell. I’m sorry. I wish it had been different.”

  Kheled’s mouth gaped. What was wrong with this cycle? First, a dual primeancer. Then, Ele’s retreat, and now, this? How the hell was he supposed to respond?

  “All right.”

  He initiated their trek once more.

  “All right? That’s it?” Creation asked. “The force which composes all things positive apologizes to you, and you say, 'All right.'”

  “Sorry I made you real, if only for a moment?”

  Growling, Creation quickly marched until he was out of conversation range. Kheled smirked. The splinter had begun to act like a normal, living, breathing human. He wondered what other emotional reactions he could induce in Creation. Suddenly, Kheled’s life had become much more interesting.

  * * *