Page 14

The Great Fall

Sinrik wasn’t sure what woke him first—the distant echoes of movement through the mountain, or the fact that Beth was in his arms.

His body was still heavy with sleep, but his mind surfaced fast, instinct dragging him to awareness. The warmth curled against him didn’t belong there, but somehow it had become familiar. A habit formed too quickly. A necessity he hadn’t been able to resist.

She’d had nightmares again. He knew that because he had held her through them.

Now, her breathing was steady, her body slack in deep sleep, and despite everything he told himself, his arm stayed where it was, draped possessively over her waist.

He carefully splayed his hand against her womb, his fingers pressing just enough to feel the rise and fall of each breath. He needed to move before she woke up and saw this. Before she tensed and ruined whatever temporary peace he’d found in comforting her. Protecting her. Feeling her.

But he didn’t move. Instead, he let his fingers brush against her shirt, a slow drag of skin against fabric, tracing the subtle warmth beneath. A hunger stirred—not the kind that had plagued him his entire life, not the relentless need to consume, conquer, or claim. This was different. It was slower, heavier.

It felt like something dangerous.

And it pissed him off.

His jaw clenched. He should move. Now.

Beth inhaled sharply, and then—too fast—she was pulling away.

The sudden loss sent something sharp through him. An irritation. A gnawing frustration he had no right to feel.

She scrambled upright, her breath uneven as she pushed her hair back, avoiding his gaze.

He forced himself to stay where he was, watching as she straightened her shirt, pulled her legs up beneath her, and reestablished the boundaries she had never set but always maintained.

Sinrik flexed his fingers against the sheets, forcing himself to exhale slowly.

“You had nightmares,” he said, voice rough from sleep still.

Beth swallowed but nodded. “I don’t remember them.”

He doubted that, but let it slide.

His eyes lingered on her face, taking in the exhaustion smudged beneath her eyes, the tension in her shoulders, the way she refused to look at him for too long.

He wasn’t sure when this had happened—when he started looking at her for too long.

Or when she became the thing he was constantly trying to figure out.

The connection between them wasn’t something he could explain. It wasn’t attraction. It wasn’t simple obsession. It wasn’t anything he had words for, and that alone was enough to make his blood run hot with vexation.

He had always understood his wants, his needs. He had never questioned why he reached for something—he just did. He took what he wanted. That was his nature.

But this?

He hadn’t chosen it. It chose him. Whatever it was.

Sinrik’s hands curled into fists against the sheets. Maybe her husband was dead. Maybe…

He just needed to confirm his death.

It wasn’t just curiosity anymore. He needed to know.

Because it wasn’t just her he had the need to protect. It was the baby too. No reasoning, no foundation in logic. Just a raw, instinctive truth crawling beneath his skin, sinking deeper every day.

He didn’t know what to do with it.

Or even what it would make him do.

****

Beth kept her focus on the plate in front of her, stomach a twisted knot of guilt and confusion. The food was untouched, though she moved a few pieces around to make it seem like she was trying. The longer she sat next to Sinrik, the harder it was to ignore the weight pressing in on her from all sides.

She told herself it was just the room—the shadows creeping along the edges, the unsettling quiet of the Pillars’ domain. But she knew better. It was him.

She’d woken up in his arms. A pull, low in her stomach, in her blood, twisted through her ribs like a phantom limb she wasn’t supposed to have. She kept telling herself taking his blood had been necessary—he’d said it was for the baby, and she could justify anything if it meant protecting him. Just like when she’d forced them to stop for the women and children. Necessary.

But guilt still crept through cracks, whispering accusations. He’d held her through the night. The baby hadn’t needed that. She had.

“You want to tell me about the nightmares?” he asked quietly.

Beth tried to meet his gaze, making it as far as his stern mouth. “Maybe later.”

Like five years later. She remembered fragments of something dark moving beneath her feet. That terrifying abyss. Stretching wide, waiting. But worse than that had been the feeling of hands pulling her down, whispers pressing against her ears, familiar yet distorted.

Silence stretched, thick and charged. She wanted to break it, to turn the conversation somewhere else, anywhere else. “Did you ever get in touch with my husband?”

She looked enough his way to see his expression didn’t change, but something in the air did.

Her heart slowed. “Sinrik?”

“Not yet.”

She opened her mouth as the heavy doors at the far end of the room creaked open. The Kings had arrived.

Beth barely had time to collect herself before the four figures strode in, their presence shifting the atmosphere like a storm rolling in. She sat with her hands wrapped around a warm cup, staring at the untouched food in front of her. Any other circumstance, the smells of spice and fresh bread that filled the room would’ve made her happy.

After cordial greetings with nods and smiles, they all sat, the Kings across from their apprentices while Sinrik and Beth sat five seats away at the opposite end. Within a minute, the apprentices engaged in deep discussions, the kind of intellectual combat that came from years of debating in circles.

Beth peeked at them, watching one lean forward, his sharp golden-brown eyes locked on the one she remembered to be Elias, who seemed entirely unimpressed with whatever point had just been made.

“I’m just saying,” the first one continued, voice smooth but edged with challenge, “if emotional chaos is truly the most volatile form, then the logical conclusion is that we don’t need to study the structure of chaos itself—just the instability of the people at the center of it.”

Elias scoffed as he filled his mouth with scrambled eggs before aiming his fork at him. “And that’s where you always get it wrong,” he mumbled. “Power doesn’t originate in emotions. It manipulates them. A system of control doesn’t break because of unstable individuals—it breaks because someone stronger learns how to use that instability.”

“Then why do we call it chaos?” Zahir countered smoothly. “If it were just power shifting hands, it would be politics.”

The one called Graves exhaled sharply through his nose, dragging his hand down his face. “This again?” he muttered, exchanging a glance with the last one, who had been quietly drinking his tea as if the entire debate was a headache he wasn’t willing to suffer through.

“The problem,” Graves finally interjected, setting his cup down, “is that you’re both under the illusion that chaos can be understood in such a linear way. Elias wants to believe it’s just power, Zahir wants to believe it’s just people. But what if it’s neither? What if the thing you keep arguing about isn’t something that can be explained within the limits of human comprehension?”

A silence settled for half a second before Zahir’s lips twisted. “Now he’s quoting Nexus.”

“And you sound like Noctis,” Elias shot back.

“I will take that as a compliment.”

Across from them, Noctis chuckled as he cut into his food. “You should.”

Volkan, who had been silent up until now, finally leaned forward, his deep-set eyes landing on Zahir. “And what exactly do you think emotions are?” he asked, his voice slow, measured, carrying the weight of someone who rarely wasted words.

Zahir arched a brow. “Complex biochemical reactions influenced by memory, environment, and perception.”

Volkan took a bite of his food and chewed like he had all the time in the world. “Then you just argued against yourself.”

Zahir frowned. “How do you figure?”

Volkan gestured vaguely with his fork. “If emotions are biochemical reactions—things triggered by external and internal forces—then you’re not studying the root of chaos. You’re studying one of its symptoms. Which means you’re wrong.” He shifted his gaze to Elias. “And so are you.”

Elias narrowed his eyes slightly. “I never said I wasn’t.”

Volkan grunted, unimpressed, and returned to his meal.

Beth welcomed the distraction, liking that the apprentices seemed to have no hesitation arguing in front of their masters. As if this kind of debate was encouraged, even expected. With the Kings interjecting when they found something amusing.

Beth stole a glance at Sinrik beside her. He was watching the exchange but his attention had been absent for the last several minutes. Every now and then, she felt his gaze flick to her. Not in a scrutinizing way. Not in a way that demanded anything. Just… checking. Measuring.

“You’re not eating,” he murmured, his voice low enough that only she could hear.

She swallowed, shifting slightly. “I’m not really hungry.”

He picked up his muffin and placed it on her plate. “Eat a little,” he said, softer now. “For the baby.”

Her throat tightened with how he said it. Was he still feeling connections to him?

She picked up the muffin and took a small bite, mostly to appease his worry.

He leaned back in his seat, his hand resting along the table’s edge, close enough to her plate that if she reached for anything, she’d likely brush it.

“Told you she had a soft influence,” Oblivion said, his voice carrying just enough to catch Beth’s attention. She looked up to find him watching her, his wrinkled face alight with quiet amusement. “Sinrik doesn’t have the patience to coax anyone into anything, and yet there you go.”

She felt her face heat slightly, but before she could think of a response, Sinrik beat her to it.

“She’s stubborn,” he said dryly, sipping his drink. “Doesn’t take orders well.”

Oblivion gave a thoughtful nod. “Even so, she listens to you. After breakfast, I hope we can pick up where we left off.”

Beth was still on his previous words, wondering what they even meant or what that proved. “Of course,” she said, glancing at Sinrik as she took another nibble of muffin.

“Tell me, Miss Sweetling,” Nexus said, his voice smooth as silk. “What do you think of all this?”

All eyes turned to her and she regarded her plate, catching the slight twitch in Sinrik’s hand. She forced herself to lift a pleasant smile. “Of what?”

“Chaos,” Nexus said, tilting his head. “As you have experienced it.”

Chaos. The air seemed to still as she considered it. Considered why he asked. What was he wanting to know from her. Why it mattered what she thought? She took a slow breath, her mind racing with too many thoughts for such a complex topic. A topic she felt was useless to obsess over the way they did. “I honestly don’t know a thing about it,” she decided to say.

One of the Kings chuckled. “Of course you do,” he said. “Not knowing chaos is like not knowing… air .”

The answer and arrogance that carried it, forced her to bite her tongue before responding. She took a careful breath and said, “More like me not knowing your mother the way you know her.”

“So you have no firsthand experience with chaos?” Colton challenged lightly.

She regarded him. “I have more experience with what prevents chaos.”

“Ah, but chaos is not something to be prevented,” Oblivion murmured. “It is inevitable. Like the tide, like the turning of the stars.”

Volkan added his grumbled, “You don’t stop chaos any more than you stop time. You endure it. Adapt to it. Perhaps even become it.”

Beth exhaled carefully, twisting the napkin in her lap. “You talk like it’s an omnipresent, all-consuming force, not just the consequences of human choices.”

“It is a law,” Nexus said, sipping his drink. “Just as gravity pulls, just as entropy increases, chaos moves forward.”

Her hope of not offending these men was dwindling. “I really mean no disrespect to any of you. But… I think all of you have spent so much time in your theories and studies that you’ve forgotten the rules of real life.” Her voice remained steady but charged. “There are people who cause chaos and there are those that don’t. There is one common factor between both. And it’s love. The one who doesn’t love causes chaos and the one who does love, does not. To me, it’s just that simple.”

The Kings were silent. Some watching her with amusement, others with the calculated patience of men who had already made up their minds about all things.

“Romantic,” Oblivion finally stated.

Beth looked at him, his arrogance taunting the wrong hormonal nerves. “You say that as if romance is some kind of irrelevant fantasy. You, who are isolated in this mountain, convinced that you’re the ones who understand the world, that you have some greater grasp of truth because you’ve studied chaos and broken it into theories and equations. When’s the last time any of you held a crying child? Or sat beside someone who was dying? Or gave up something you wanted just to make someone else’s life a little easier?”

“So you believe… love prevents chaos?” Noctis asked, carefully.

“Yes,” she said without hesitation. “And at the very least, it’s the only thing that makes chaos bearable.” She inhaled, trying to steady the fire burning in her chest. “Chaos isn’t some unstoppable force. It’s what happens when people stop loving each other. When they become selfish, when they turn inward, when they stop choosing to care. I don’t need to understand chaos to love. I need to understand people so that I can love them so that no power, not even chaos, can touch them.”

Silence followed. Heavy. Thick.

“Tell us, Miss Sweetling,” Colton practically drawled. “What about your little… gift of persuasion. You can make people do whatever you want. Assuming you believe in free will. How does this fit in with your love theory?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Graves,” she returned, matching his tone. “I didn’t give myself this ability.”

“Maybe chaos gave it to you,” he suggested with a grin.

“Maybe God did,” she returned, flatly.

“Ohhhhh,” one of the apprentices murmured, implying a weakness.

“Are you telling me you all are godless and faithless here, too?”

“Not I,” Zahir said with a raised hand.

“Nor I,” another said.

“Well, I am,” Colton said with a smug grin. “Does that mean I’m an agent of chaos?”

“Not necessarily,” Beth said, holding tight to her temper. “It could just mean you’re ignorant or stupid.”

The eruption of snickers, including Sinrik’s brought a stinging guilt to her neck as she held the arrogant gaze across the table.

He sat forward, grin as stoic as ever. “Well, then why don’t you put your money where your mouth is little lady, and show me what you got.”

Her head barely shook in disbelief. “I will surely not.”

“Aww, come on,” he beckoned with open mock. “Tell me to do something. Command me like you commanded Mr. Mayhem’s soldiers.”

“That’s enough,” Sinrik said, his words hard.

“Ahhh,” Colton said, gesturing to Sinrik with a proving hand. “The Master has spoken. In defense of the little lady.” He gave her a single nod with raised brows and shit eating grin. “How quaint. ”

Beth turned to Sinrik, her anger officially overflowing. “What are we doing here? Are we done? I’m done.”

“Let cool minds prevail,” Nexus pled.

For some reason, his eternal patience snapped what little she had left. “Yes, let the cool minds prevail,” Beth said, standing, her napkin falling to the table like a severed tie. “And when they do, maybe you’ll see what’s been in front of you all along—that the only chaos worth studying is the one you’ve created for yourselves. You sit here, dissecting destruction like scholars at a feast, writing theories while real people bleed, while real lives crumble under the weight of problems that your equations will never solve. You have locked yourselves away in this tomb, you have buried your humanity beneath endless, useless philosophies. And despite all your brilliance, all your knowledge, you will never see the simple truth—that love —not your precious chaos—is what moves this world. Your chaos theories are as hollow as this mountain. And mark my words, Kings,” she said to the four that should have known better than all of them. “ Both will crumble beneath your foolish, arrogant feet one day.”