The Broken Kingdoms of Osvolta (Kingdoms of Osvolta #1)

83. A Fair Fight

Chapter eighty-three

A Fair Fight

S olveig made the long descent from her tower. Down into the depths of the castle.

Every step she took on the slippery, moss ridden steps reverberated through the endless caverns below. The air grew close from the damp seeping through the walls. Water echoed as it dripped down through cracks in the floors above.

She gripped the dagger at her hip instinctively with every blind turn she made. Even the eternal blue flame she held could not eliminate the cold dark of the dungeons. It felt as though an age had passed before she finally reached the bottom. A central, circular chamber with a series of tunnels spanning every direction. She didn’t know where most of them led, and she had no care to explore now. Instead, taking the first tunnel to her right, one she knew well. Walking past rows of empty cells to the end where she halted before the only cell with a locked door. The prince slumped against the far wall, barely visible in the darkness.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” he spat, his usually warm whiskey voice bitter as it echoed around them. When she did not respond, Emmerich lifted his head, staring her dead in the eyes. His handsome face smeared with dirt was void of emotion. All his strength and warmth leeched by the damp confines.

“You came all the way down here and you aren’t even going to speak? Is it finally my turn to endure the horror of your twisted power?”

“I was waylaid,” was her only response.

“I never should have come after you.”

“No, you should have fled when you had the chance, taken the duke with you.”

He ignored her. “Are they bored with waiting? Sent you to torture the secrets out of me instead?”

Solveig took a step closer. The prince jumped to his feet, mirroring her.

“That’s dramatic, even for you.” She simpered, “You said it yourself Emmerich, I’m nothing more than an amateur Hydromancer and you? You’re the formidable Prince of Elithiend. What could I do against you?”

Emmerich’s gaze left hers, falling to the exposed cuffs at her wrists. “I’ve been wondering about that since the moment I watched you unleash that darkness for the first time.” His eyes rose again, “such a curious use of power, a significant drain on you no doubt.” He pursed his lips, angling his head to the side slightly. “Yet to use your magic in its natural form? You can barely hold back a wave for more than a second without me having to step in to save you from imploding.”

They stared in silence; him waiting for a response, she, waiting for him to continue as she knew he longed to.

Emmerich shook his head, lips lifting on one side in a smug smirk, “You want something to blame for your lack of power? For all those elemental deaths?”

“I didn’t come here to listen to you drone on,” she snapped, not liking the direction his thoughts were heading. “Tell me how you came here as a child. How did you hide? How did no one know?”

“I gave you enough already, and you wasted no time feeding that to your king. I’d rather die than lay the secrets protecting my people at your feet.”

“You’re insane.”

“No Solveig. Insanity is you making the same mistakes over and over and expecting a different outcome.”

“Stop talking in bloody riddles. I’m trying to save your damn life!”

“My life is nothing if it comes at the cost of my people. Surely you realised that by now.”

“No one loves a martyr.”

“And yet I will make myself one if I must.”

Solveig shook her head in defeat.

“Humour me, Princess. Have any of you fully removed those cuffs since the day they were welded to your wrists?”

“These cuffs give us balance, they allow us to honour The Oracle, to channel our magic to its highest potential.”

“You’re being na?ve,” he pressed, “even now, after all you’ve learned, after everything you’ve seen. You’ll still stand there and spout their pious doctrine.”

Emmerich moved forward, so slow his steps were near silent, until he stood before the bars of his cell, the hard lines of his face still neutral. His eyes bore into hers, pain meeting pain.

“Take them off Solveig. I dare you.”

“You know I can’t do that. And even if I could, what makes you think I want to?”

“You could be more than this, more than your brother’s pet.” He looked her up and down. “More than some pretty chattel ripe for sale to the highest bidder. You could burn it all down and start over if you were so inclined.”

“What makes you think I have any interest in that?”

“Because if you don’t.” He stepped even closer, hands encircling the bars between them. “It won’t be long until they’re adding your name to the list of the dead.”

White-hot rage tore through her, sick and tired of having her life threatened. She launched for him, her own hands colliding with the bars as she snarled in his handsome face.

“Bold of you to threaten me now, prince.”

He moved so fast she almost missed it.

Within a blink, his hands had moved from the bars to wrap around her wrists. He yanked her closer until their breaths mingled. So close that had the bars not separated them, every inch of their bodies would have touched in all the ways they longed for but could not surrender to.

He’d played her again. Known exactly which weakness to push, which insecurities to inflict further wounds upon, as she stared down in shock at his unbound wrists.

It wasn’t possible.

They cuffed prisoners with Elemental powers on arrest, using ones that were opposite to their known ability to stifle them. There was no way Killian would be so foolish as to let him wield magic freely down here.

“Oh, Solveig,” Emmerich whispered in her ear, in that silken voice. The voice that had once driven her to insanity. Made her crave his mouth on hers, to taste him despite the mistrust and anger that raged between them now. “That wasn’t a threat.”

“Let go,” she seethed, trying to pull free of his grip.

“Burn them down, Solveig. Because the next time we see each other,” a strange warmth tingled where his hands held her, slowly growing hotter and hotter, yet somehow not burning. “I want a fair fight.”

“I…” she was silenced, brows knitting together. The heat grew fierce. She looked down again and watched helplessly as the intricate copper of her cuffs slowly melted around her skin. Dripping to the ground between their feet, blue gems clattering against the metal bars as they fell to the dirt.

“What have you done?”

“I saved your life, and it’s far more than you deserve.”

Wind blasted from somewhere unseen. The air was warm, salt kissed and tropical. Solveig blinked as her vision shook and blurred. Through the haze, she could see sandstone and terracotta buildings beneath a glittering starry sky and then it all vanished, taking the prince with it. Leaving Solveig alone in the dark caverns of High Tower Castle.

With Emmerich no longer holding her in place, she fell backward to the floor, trying to scrape a coherent thought together. She stared at the space the prince had just occupied, then at the floor where molten copper solidified as it cooled.

They had let the wolf into their den without knowing the full extent of his might. Emmerich Ryker of House Anders, Prince of Elithiend, was no mere Aire Wender as they had thought. Nor was he duel powered with pyromancy, as she had suspected with the melting of her cuffs; that should’ve destroyed the skin and muscle of her arms beyond saving.

No, he was the one thing they feared the most, his kind supposedly extinct, defeated by the balance The Oracle had brought. As dead as the Seers were frauds. And yet there he had stood and vanished. Proof that wasn’t true. They’d welcomed a living Aether into their midst. An Elemental with the power to walk between spaces, unseen and untracked, a master of all elements, uniquely capable of destroying everything.