Page 31 of Taken
Alaric’s gaze slides to me, and for a moment the room narrows to the space between us.
I feel exposed—not to ridicule but to expectation.
He reaches for something like counsel and perhaps something like comfort.
I see it in the slight set of his shoulders.
“Your viyella,” Dagan says, guessing rightly. “If the Fates' answer is her, then let them answer, brother. But know this, it is a double-edged thing. Claiming your magic by using her istakinga boon that binds.”
“You speak like a man who prefers stone and dirt to flesh and blood,” Thorne quips.
He isn’t entirely unkind.
It irritates him that the Fates demand tenderness of those who would otherwise do only ruin.
I watch their faces. Brothers in different shapes of rule, each with their prejudices, their leanings toward the element that makes them.
Alaric’s calm. Dagan’s stubbornness. Thorne’s fire-forged impatience.
All of them are unavoidable weather.
I am not naive about the bargain I make in taking her.
A zareth isn’t a simple contract.
It is a threading of souls. To claim it cleanly, I must win her trust, not merely her consent on paper.
I will avoid lies and crooked clauses. I will not let any carve my oath to her into empty promises.
That is the vow I give myself in the circle of this ancient room, with my father’s helm looking down like a judge.
“Do what you must, brother. We are with you,” Alaric says.
I nod.
“Prepare the keep for a wedding,” I tell Aloysious.
“My Lord?”
“I am taking a wife. Call my subjects. Bring in the high and low born all. I want everyone. And have magicians, and any who know the old protections on hand. We do this properly or not at all.”
Aloysious bows, skin creasing at the eyes.
“At once, Your Highness.”
Thorne snorts softly from his bench, but even he looks less certain now. Alaric’s hand finds my shoulder briefly in a gesture that is both admonition and solidarity.
“Be careful, brother,” he says, the wind in his voice softening.
I feel the weight of that small touch like a tide underfoot.
My hands are not steady with certainty—no man’s are in a chamber that remembers war and calls it counsel.
But my future wife waits, and the tide answers when she breathes.
I have a chance to bend that answer to salvage a kingdom.
If I fail, the Tidal Lands will drown.
