Page 2 of Severed Heir

“Severyn Blanche.”

I turned to face the king. His steel-colored cloak swept to his ankles, sharp and regal. A few purple seaglass beads were woveninto the silver braids of his beard. I wasn’t fashionable by any means, but the king’s taste in beard décor had always struck me as questionable at best.

The king’s cane stabbed into the frost. “Well?” he asked. “Are you going to make an old man walk the whole damn way?”

I rose, brushing ice from my shins. The Serpent mark on my back flared with pain, sharp and sudden. The nurses had whispered about cursed flesh when they saw it.

Still, I bowed low. “Sir,” I said, my voice rough from too much silence. “If this is about the Port…” I paused, the words catching. “I swear I didn’t know what my mother had done.”

My mother had killed his one true love. Veravine. My grandmother. What he didn’t know was that she’d carried his child, my mother, causing the greatest secret in royal history. We hadn’t spoken of it. But I’d been waiting. Waiting for him to say something. Waiting for the truth to crawl out of his mouth like it burned.

“The Port has nothing to do with this,” he said. “We are family, Severyn.”

Well, there was my truth.

“Then to what do I owe the honor?” I asked, steadier now. “Because I’ve been kept here for three days like a prisoner.”

He’d sent Archer away the night Charles tried to strip me of my forbidden power. Threatened war if he refused. It took six guards and a light-stealer to drag him from here. I hadn’t dared open our bond since. Not with the risk that a more skilled mind-reader might be working for the king.

The king turned toward the swirling snow beyond the archway, where a bed of yellow pansies had begun to sprout through the frost. I’d never seen a yellow flower bloom in the snow before.

“I’ve always loved Winter,” he said. “The quiet. The way it falls like the world’s holding its breath.”

I was tired of playing cold and composed. So I gave him something real. “It reminds me of home,” I said.

He laughed. “Someone like you will never have a home.”

My chest tightened. “What does that mean?”

“To have a home is to love,” he said. “And you don’t love Winter. Or Night’s shadows. What do you love, Severyn?”

He didn’t say Ravensla. And somehow, that stung more than it should have.

“I belong to my chosen realm,” I said softly. “Night.”

He stepped closer, his cane biting into the stone with each step. “I still need an heir. You could be queen.”

“I don’t want to be queen,” I said, the words dry and bitter. Not over a Continent that killed my brother.

“In due time,” he muttered.

I lifted my chin with an exasperated breath. “I’m done with cryptic threats and fluttering, all-knowing parchments. What does that even mean, in due time?”

His finger toyed with a bead threaded through his beard. “A proposition.”

Unease curled in my chest. “What kind?”

“My title is unclaimed. The chosen Serpents of each realm will compete for it. Something is coming… something we can’t control. I want our bloodline to survive.”

“And Monty Garcia?” I asked, my voice sharper now. “Doesn’t every Serpent step down if I claim heirship from his Bid?”

“Monty never completed his barter. The people mustn’t know you’re mine, Severyn. But if you win fairly, the throne stays in Herring hands. You have a pure heart. I can sense it.”

The thought turned my stomach inside out. “So you’re pitting Serpents against each other.”

“When I choose,” he replied simply.

My mind spun fast, already slipping into uncertainty. “What about Malachi?”

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