Page 56 of The Sun King's Noon

Richard’s legs threatened to buckle beneath him. He gazed at his feet, too afraid to lift his eyes.

“It was bitterness, perhaps,” Galdran continued, “that led you to commit such an act. Grief for your departed eldest son, and resentment that the King and Queen of Ardenia still held theirs. I shall keep this matter to myself, for I will not compound one grief with another. I do not want war, Marius. But know this. Harm one of mine again, and I shall let the same flames that wreathed my parents’ pyres feast upon your skin.”

The hall spun. Not only his siblings. All had heard it now.

Richard forced himself to look up and found Dain by the rear window. The man’s eyes bulged, red-rimmed and furious.

“Truly, beloved.” Galdran tucked the letter into Corwin’s corset. “You carry too much alone.”

“Are you quite finished?” Richard said quietly. “Or would you prefer my journal entries next?”

In a blink, Galdran stood before Richard, his hand seizing Richard’s jaw hard, thumb pressing into one cheek and fingers digging into the other. The playful mask was gone, and something ancient and wrathful stared back.

“You should have care with how you address your Lumethaid,” Galdran murmured. “Or perhaps you do not see how merciful I have been. How merciful Iambeing.” His lips grazed Richard’s ear. “Shall I demonstrate? On your knight, perhaps.”

With glowing eyes, he stepped back.

Glass shattered inward from the window behind Kaelen. Gnarled vines, bristling with large thorns, whipped towards Kaelen. One coiled around Kaelen’s right leg from ankle to thigh. Thorns bit deep, and blood bloomed in dark flowers across the trousers’ cloth. A second vine lashed around Kaelen’s torso, pinning his arms to his chest. The third curled around his neck.

The Bind on Kaelen broke. He sagged onto his knees with a choked cry. Blood streamed from dozens of punctures, staining the blue tunic to black. The vine at his neck constricted, and he wheezed, veins standing livid at his temples.

Richard couldn’t breathe. Kaelen.Kaelen?—

The knight snarled and planted a boot on the marble. Then the other. Body quivering and dripping blood, he forced himself upright. The vine around his chest squeezed, and the crack of a broken rib echoed, accompanied by Kaelen’s strangled shout. But even so, Kaelen stood, chin lifting, eyes finding Galdran through a haze of pain and locking on with an incandescent hatred.

“Keep your filth—” he rasped, blood trickling from where the thorns dug into his throat, “from my king.”

You fool.Richard’s heart wrenched.Will you never learn?

“Enough.” Richard kept his tone nonchalant as he addressed Galdran. “Leave him be and cease your tantrums. I know you are upset you were not invited to the ball.” He extended his right hand, palm up. “If you wanted to dance, you need only have asked.”

Galdran’s eyes widened with clear delight.

“Oh,” he breathed. “My beloved.”

He clicked his fingers, and the vines around Kaelen crumbled to dust. Kaelen dropped to a knee, gasping, in a growing pool of his blood. The Bind snapped into place, and his shudders ceased.

Galdran crossed to Richard and took his hand in a cool grip. The elf’s other hand settled on Richard’s waist, and the touch sent a ripple of revulsion through Richard that he stifled.

“Let me teach you, Lumethain, the dance of my people,” Galdran murmured, guiding Richard’s other hand to his own waist.

Music emanated from the air itself. Strings, at first. High and keening. Then, the gentle chords of the harp followed a choral hum.

Another gift, Richard supposed. Music? A strange magic for a tyrant.

Galdran stepped forward. Two steps back. A quarter-turn. Galdran guided him through a spiral, their joined hands rising, then folding inward.

There were no lifts or pivots. Instead, the dance flowed like water, circling, pooling, ebbing and surging. When the strings swelled, Galdran pulled Richard close, and when the harps heightened, they drifted apart, hands still knitted.

Richard memorised the pattern within the first two rotations. Step, step, spiral. Draw close. Retreat. Step, step, spiral.

“You learn quickly,” Galdran said. “Most stumble for an age.”

“I have had dance tutors since I could walk,” Richard said.

They danced through the small clearing. Galdran’s thumb traced a circle beneath the corset’s hem, and nausea welled in Richard. The last time Galdran had held him, his hand had not remained at the waist.

“I have missed you.” Galdran beamed. “The months without your company stretch too long.”