Page 35 of Enchanted Shadows (The Enchanted Kingdom #6)

I put the container of fresh cookies on the table, deciding water, not whiskey, was needed for the evening. If I was going to learn more about an enemy of mine, I would rather be fully sober, not wanting my favored whiskey to dull a thing.

I had spoken telepathically to Jorah to ask for some fresh cookies earlier today, telling her that I was trying to get Kessara to open up about Calix.

Jorah had agreed and apparently stormed out of a parliament session to do so. I was a little stunned by the action, but I wasn’t sure why I was so surprised. Jorah was the queen now. I would always have her back and she would always have mine. Titles be damned.

We’d been through too much together to have it any other way.

I needed help, wanted something to set Kessara at ease, and Jorah easily delivered it.

Could she have made the castle staff make them for her?

Yes. But she didn’t. Part of how Jorah loved people was through the things she baked them.

She’d been a baker first and foremost, long before she ever wore a crown.

I opened the door to find Kessara there, right on time .

She looked at the table. Our dinner from the kitchen at the barracks was there, the cookies waiting for when we were done.

Two bites later, Kessara let out a sigh. “I’ll talk, you eat.”

“Is that what you want?” I stabbed a green bean with my fork.

“What I want is to not have to talk about this ever again. So, I will talk. I will be thorough. If you have questions, please ask them tonight. I don’t want to relive this multiple times.”

“Okay,” I nodded. “I can do that.”

“So, four years ago, I was one of the first people healed in Agria. By Prince Keiran.”

“You can call him your brother,” I offered.

“Not sure they’re ready for that,” she said through a deep inhale. I was beginning to see it was what she did through her nerves. A deep inhale. To make it appear she was calm. Even when she was not.

“They’ll get used to it,” I argued.

She pinned me with a glare.

“Sorry. Right. I’m eating. You’re speaking.”

She nodded and looked out the one window in my cabin as if it would help her. “I was one of the few healed. Reyes was healed with me. We were it, other than a spy who had been on the way home from Corsha and one more person in Wylan, when we were poisoned. By my real father.”

She paused and pushed around her potatoes with her fork.

“I should say that most people in Agria know or suspect who my real father is, though none of them have the guts to say so around me. The palm magic is a rather dead giveaway, but my family never confirmed or denied a thing, opting for an air of mystery. Which only made the stories about who and what I was more wild. I was always the mysterious princess with dual Enchantments. A little of Wylan power hidden away in Agria.”

I took a bite of my steak, glad that if I was going to have to sit through a story which was clearly bothering Kessara, there was something good to do in the wait.

“So that was when my brother Damek recruited me to the team of advisors he was building in preparation to be named the heir apparent. Artem was too young, I was not a pureblooded Agrian, so all of us had known for a while that Damek would rule. At that time, being one of the only ones with my powers back, I didn’t really have the option of saying no.

He needed me. Agria needed me to train. And I had no reason to tell him no without causing a rift within our family. ”

She shrugged as her eyes darted to mine.

“My family is not confrontational. I have no idea how Theon and my mother even had this huge fight that supposedly happened, because in Agria’s royal family, we do not argue, we do not bicker.

We very simply brush everything under the rug.

So to keep my brother content, knowing I would never rule and simply had my power back before he did, I began training, Amos as well, while working for Damek.

I figured it would be easiest to figure out what Damek was up to from inside his inner circle rather than out of it. ”

I shot her a grin. “ You were spying.”

“I was,” she agreed. “He thought I was spying for him, but truly I was spying on him. Though I knew Calix in passing, I got to know him my first few months into that. He had been through our military training with Damek and was one of the few people who I thought would stand up to him. I found that as attractive as his actual looks. Which honestly are not bad. Calix is...” she crunched up her nose, “pretty. In a clean sort of way. He is polished. Or portrays being far more polished than he truly is.”

I wasn’t a man to compare myself with others, but no part of me was polished. This man could not be more different from me.

“I am sorry to report that all it took for me to fall under his charm was for him to begin checking in on me randomly. In the beginning, Damek would send me out to hide in the shadows and gather information. But a lot of that was done late at night. Calix began checking in to make sure I got back to the castle. Began waiting up for me.” She pursed her lips like she was running her tongue over her teeth.

“Now that I know everything, I wonder if he was just trying to get the information out of me before I could give it to Damek. But I was so smitten with him, with someone who would care to check in with me, that I fell for it.”

Another deep inhale. “One night I had to spy on someone for my brother who ended up getting handsy with his wife.

I intervened, only to get reprimanded by my brother for it.

His spy had outted herself and he was not happy about it.

That night Calix came to my rooms and held me as I wept. Wept for my life which was unravelling.

“Eventually Damek saw the way Calix was looking at me, the way I searched for him first in every room I walked into. He began using us against one another, telling Calix that if he did certain favors, he would promise me to be married to him. Both of us blindly went along with this, trying to appease my brother and believing if we were together, life would be better.” She let out a derisive snort.

“Calix was a beacon of hope in a dark time of my life. The missions for Damek became darker and darker, but Calix was there when I got home.”

I stabbed another green bean, this time a little harder than necessary. Was the pit growing in my stomach disgust or jealousy? I had to look to the oval ring on Kessara’s finger to calm myself. She was married to me , not that prick. Real or otherwise.

“I was trying to spy for Damek and stay in his good graces, eventually helping him kill three people, whom he deemed threats to the throne of Agria. I was doing my best to stay steps ahead of my brother, to protect Artem, all while training early in the mornings and spying late into the nights, so busy with it all that what I didn’t see was the plotting Calix was doing. ”

She looked back to that window that held all the answers.

“I don’t think he was stupid enough to believe he could become king.

He knew I wouldn’t ever be named the heir apparent because of my true lineage, which Damek told him about.

But Calix did want to be the mouthpiece of the king.

The first time he encouraged Damek to remove someone, knowing I would have to be the one to use my palm magic to hold the person down, I should have seen it then.

But I didn’t. Not until later. Calix is nothing, if not smooth.

He smoothed his way into my bed, into my brother’s good graces, into everything . ”

I stabbed another green bean. Hard. I wasn’t as convinced that Calix didn’t want to rule.

Seemed to me that he was cozying up to an heir, while also encouraging her brother to make decisions which could label him as cruel and maybe even mad.

Lose him the heir apparent status. This was worse than I had initially thought.

Calix wasn’t just a scorned lover, he hadn’t just lost his plaything in Kessara, he’d lost his path to the crown in Agria.

That would make him even more desperate.

You okay? Jorah sent me. I can feel your rage from here.

Kessara is telling me everything, and it’s not great. I’ll fill you guys in later.

Say the word and the teams are yours to command.

As she shut off our connection, I realized she’d been wanting to remind me that I wasn’t alone in this. That Wylan would help. That Krew didn’t want to see his half-sister treated this way, no matter how well he knew her.

Kessara continued, “One day I hid among the shadows and overheard a conversation between Calix and Damek. Calix, though he also knew Artem, was feeding doubt and suspicions to Damek about Artem. It was as if my rose-colored glasses shattered immediately. That night I broke things off with Calix.”

She shrugged as her eyes met mine. “He was surprised. And tried for months after to get back into my good graces. I thank God I was where I was that one night to overhear everything. I wasn’t supposed to be but had decided to grab a hot tea before bed as I wasn’t feeling well.

Because of that one tea, I could finally see Calix for who he was.

A snake. Slithering here and slithering there.

Whispering compliments and ambitions into us until no one knew what to do without him.

The dead king may have poisoned Agria, but Calix is just as much a poison. A well-dressed, well-spoken poison.

“Time passed. It had to be close to a year. Calix, however, would not move on. He believed we were supposed to be together. That I would eventually need him. I believe he encouraged Damek to send me on some rough missions. To take part in holding down another person for Damek to kill. The second person I helped him kill. Calix wanted to be the one to swoop in and help me. To save me. Even though he played a part in the pain I was experiencing. And yes, it was always Damek’s dagger that delivered the killing blow, but it was my gold power holding them down every time. ”

“Kessara,” I warned.

She waved me off. “Don’t. Just let me tell my truth. Please.”

The please got me. I chewed a bite of my steak rather aggressively. It no longer tasted as great.

“So, then the third person I had to kill happened. I felt as if my soul was tearing in two. I knew there would only be more people. In an effort to help save and protect my brother Artem, I wasn’t sure there would be a part of me left.

I didn’t like who I’d had to become. I went to my parents with my concerns.

They encouraged me to take a break from Damek and also spoke to him about his actions.

Rather than remove him as heir apparent, they just delayed the timeframe for his becoming king.

A slap on the wrist considering what was going on behind the scenes.

“I took a few months and then ended up back with Damek, fearing for Artem again with some whispers I heard. I had Reyes working beside me by then, helping. Only a month later, Damek, knowing that Artem and I were close, asked me to keep close to him and find out what his ambitions were. One day I found out from Reyes that Calix and Damek were talking about a betrothal for me and Calix. I got in Damek’s face and refused.

“But he told me it was my duty as an heir of Agria to solidify the power lines in Agria. That the Cyncrest family, Calix’s family, and the Zavatari family needed to be united.

He said my unique skillset was to be strategically and carefully placed within the Agrian bloodlines.

So he basically told me to get over it, that it was happening, and threw me out of his room.

That was when I knew. I knew Damek would kill Artem.

Damek is only a few years younger than I am, and wasn’t always that extreme, but by this point, he was so blinded by all the royal politics, the paranoia, that he forgot to see the people attached to actions. ”

She stopped to swallow down her anger. “The rest you already know. I was fuming and pacing along the docks one day when the package from Corsha came. Within a month, we were heading for Brakken. And now I’m here. Married to you.”

“Stuck with me,” I told her. “I’m sorry you haven’t had the opportunity to make more choices of your own in this.”

Her voice went quieter. “I chose you at least.”

“Only because I was the better of the two. The lesser of two evils.”

She shook her head. “No. Because in you, I feel safe. And together with the team, I feel as if I could take on the entire realm. Before them, I don’t think I had ever experienced real teamwork, other than with Reyes.

” Her voice cracked as she again looked to the window.

“I cannot be with Calix. I cannot be with someone who played a part in making me live through taking a life. And numerous other dark things that ate at me, threatened to pull me under so far that not even the shadows could save me. Someone who wants me as a mere trophy for my dual powers. I can’t. I can’t go back, Owen.”

“You don’t have to,” I promised .

Her eyes hit mine and stayed there. What she was hoping to find, I had no idea, but I hoped she found it.

My next words came out sounding close to a growl, “Like hell will I let him have you.”

A knock sounded on my cabin door in that moment. I wanted to tell whoever it was to buzz off, this conversation far more important, but I stood, going to the door.

To my surprise it was Amos Reyes himself. “Yeah?”

His eyes went to Kessara and even in just that look, my hands itched for a sword. But then his eyes were back on mine as he uttered the words, “He’s here.”