Page 30 of Warlord’s Plaything

30

XYRON

T he summons had come in the dead of night—urgent, clipped, laced with something unspoken.

Something wrong.

I should have gone sooner.

I should have felt it—the shift in the air, the tightening noose.

But I had been elsewhere.

I had been with her.

The door looms ahead, tall and carved from onyx.

The guards outside step aside too easily.

Too quickly.

A warning flashes in my mind, sharp and cold.

I push open the doors.

And then—the world tilts in its axis.

Xiva is collapsed in his chair, body slack, skin paler than I have ever seen it.

His eyes, once so sharp, so unwavering, are dulling.

Fading.

A slow, quiet death.

One that has been happening for days.

For weeks.

And I never fucking saw it.

"No."

The word rips from my throat.

I am at his side in seconds, dropping to a knee, hands reaching—for what?

To shake him awake? To pull him back from the abyss?

To reverse what has already been set in motion?

He coughs, blood staining his lips.

His fingers curl weakly around mine.

"Too slow, boy." His voice is ragged, but there’s a smirk in it. A whisper of the man he was.

My chest tightens, seizing with something I can’t fucking name.

"What happened?" I grit out, my hands tightening around his arm, trying to will strength back into him. "Who did this?"

His lips part, a breath of sound?—

Then, the doors slam open behind me.

Footsteps. Voices. A fucking army of them.

I don’t have to turn to know.

I already know.

The Council.

The vultures, the snakes, the fucking traitors.

They planned this.

They waited until the perfect fucking moment.

And I had walked straight into it.

"What is the meaning of this?" Kaelith’s voice is mocking concern, false fucking grief.

"My Lord!" Valis follows, stepping closer, eyes flashing with something triumphant.

"Guards! Seize him!"

Cold steel clamps around my wrists before I can even think.

Too many hands, too much force—but it doesn’t matter.

My father is dying in my fucking arms.

And they are already writing my death.

"He’s been poisoned!" One of the advisors exclaims, voice so perfectly timed, so carefully practiced.

Kaelith tilts his chin, watching me.

"How unfortunate."

Bastard.

Lying, traitorous bastard.

I snarl, trying to surge up, but hands clamp down on my shoulders, forcing me to kneel.

"Release me!" I bellow, my voice a promise of blood.

But they don’t.

They don’t have to.

They have already won.

"You… knew."

The words come soft, barely above a whisper.

I freeze.

My gaze snaps down.

Xiva’s eyes are on me.

Half-lidded. Fading.

And fucking knowing.

"You knew," I repeat, my voice breaking. "Didn’t you?"

His fingers twitch, the faintest trace of a smirk on his bloodied lips.

"I suspected."

A cough. A breath.

"But you needed to see it for yourself."

The words hit like a blade through the ribs.

He knew.

He fucking knew.

And he let it happen.

He let himself be the bait.

He let himself fucking die.

For me.

For my lesson.

For my fucking throne.

"Do not kneel, boy," he rasps, voice weaker now. "You are my son. You will rise. Remember our duty, boy. Remember what we live to protect and destroy. Don’t forget."

"You will take back what is yours. It has been too long, and I’m going to see her now."

His grip tightens—one last burst of strength.

And then?—

It’s gone.

He is gone.

I stop breathing.

The world stops moving.

A king dies in my hands.

And a warlord is born in chains.

"Xyron, Lord of House Herox," Kaelith announces, stepping forward with the air of a fucking executioner. "For the crime of regicide, for the murder of your own father ? — "

I lift my head, slow and lethal. "Say it."

Kaelith smiles. "You are stripped of your title, and sentenced to death."