Broken Faith

Broken Faith


Chapter 21

Broken Faith

The air still clung heavy with the aftermath of betrayal. Mira's heart thumped in her breast, her lips dry, her body shaking with rage that would not be quelled. She could not bear to look away—see it—the image of Kael embracing this slave, his lips on her skin, his hands around her as if Mira herself was of no consequence.

She had tried to entomb it in silence, to hide her cries within the pillows. But with dawn, the weight of her wrath broke out.

The servant entered Mira's room with the water basin and rolled cloth, eyes cast downward, steps slow. She placed the basin on the stand, as if nothing whatsoever had happened, as if she were not the dagger Mira had witnessed inserted into her chest last night.

Mira's fingers clenched. Her voice cracked like a lash.

"You!"

The servant halted in her steps, trembling in her hands against the fabric. She slowly lifted her head, and Mira saw it—the tender spark of shame in her eyes. It was all it took to reignite Mira's anger.

"Why?" Mira's voice shattered, the question spilling out of her lips like shattered glass. "Why would you do such a thing? Do you have no shame? No respect?

The servant's mouth opened, her eyes darting to the ground as if for courage. For one moment there was a silence between them, and Mira thought she would lie, deny, make it nothing. But then the girl's voice burst out, low and trembling—but edged with something sharp.

"Because he was never yours."

Mira stiffened, her breath caught. "What did you just say?"

Her chin came up now, braved by the seriousness of what she was saying. Her words were stronger, her eyes ablaze with a bitter, wild conviction.

"Kael never belonged to you to take. He was hers before you ever touched him. You feel as though you've been betrayed? You feel as though you've been cheated? You were never first. She was."

The words stung Mira like a rib to the breast. She recoiled, wrenching her head in a frenzied denial as if that would reverse what she'd heard.

"Lies," she spat. "You're lying to save your own skin. You want to see me crushed.".

But the servant did not falter. "I speak the truth. Selene had his heart before you. And now you have his son? Do you think that makes you anything more than a shadow? A stand-in?

Mira's stomach twisted, bile rising up the back of her throat. The fury burned fiercer now, not only for the defiance of the servant but for the cold possibility that some part of what she had said was true. She thought of Selene, her sister, the one who'd vanished into war and suffering. Had Kael's power stretched so far?

Her words shook with anger and loneliness. "How can you utter her name! You know nothing about Selene. Nothing!"

The servant smirked, a cold, taunting twist of her lips. "I know enough. Enough to know that he loved her once. Enough to know she was the woman he wanted before you had ever appeared on the scene. You are nothing but a convenience."

The words shattered Mira's fragile self-mastery. Her hands trembled, her eyes welled up and lost focus, her chest tightened so severely she could barely breathe. It was betrayal heaped upon betrayal.

At that moment, the door to the chamber burst open.

Kael entered, his footsteps heavy, his presence filling the room with the power that had long distorted others to his will. His eyes swept from Mira's trembling form to the servant's rebellious stance. His jaw tightened, and even the air was charged with menace.

"What is this?" He was cold steel.

Mira stood before him, her face as pale as alabaster, her voice trembling. "Tell her. Tell her what she had the temerity to say to me."

The servant, provoked by whatever inner resentment lurked in her, did not budge. She spoke to Kael, her words slicing the silence with the precision of a blade.

"I only said what was true. I only told her that Selene was yours before she was ever mine. That she is nothing but a—"

"Enough!" bellowed Kael, causing the walls to tremble. In two strides he was standing over the servant, his hand snapping the air inches from her nose so that she stumbled back, her eyes rolling with fear. His voice thundered in the room. "You will never utter her name in this hall again. You will never betray Mira in front of me, or behind my eyes. Do you understand?"

The rebellion of the servant crumbled, her eyes cast down, her lips shaking. She nodded hastily, the flame in her being extinguished under Kael's anger.

But Mira stayed frozen in position, her arms and legs numb. His words ought to have comforted her, his defense of her honor should have soothed her hurt. All she could listen to instead was the truth that the servant had flung into her heart like a blade. Selene. Selene and Kael. A history she had never known, one Kael had never shared.

Her voice broke, raw and shattered. "Tell me it's not true, Kael. Tell me she lied to me."

Kael retreated to stand in front of her, his face softening in a manner that was uncharacteristic, almost otherworldly. He went to reach for her, one step forward, but Mira backed up, shaking her head.

"Don't touch me," she whispered. "Not until you tell me the truth."

Kael's eyes dimmed with something more than anger—guilt, regret, something Mira hadn't thought she'd ever see in him. He dropped his hand, his shoulders clenched, his breathing rough.

"Yes," he said at last, the word falling like a rock into a still lake. "Selene was mine once. Before fate gave me you.".

The world tilted beneath Mira's feet. Ground dropped away, and she doubled over, hands clapped to her stomach reflexively, her knees folding.

Her words were a strangled whisper. "So I'm a shadow to her? You'd have me, have this child, while she—"

No. Kael's voice sliced through her spinning despair, pleading now, on the edge. He crossed the room towards her, down onto his knees, hands out but not touching, hovering in mid-air as if he was afraid that she would shatter into fragments beneath him. "Mira, you are not an shadow. You are the future. You are the one who holds the heir who will reshape all of it. Selene… Selene was the past. I want you. Don't doubt that. Don't doubt me.".

His words cut two ways. The cry was sincere, but the venom of betrayal clung to them like a shadow. Mira's eyes raked his face, her chest thudding, her soul wailing for something—truth, love, promise—that she could not find in his eyes.

Tears ran down her face as she gasped, "You betrayed me. You betrayed everything I trusted. How can I ever believe you again?

Kael lowered his head, his voice low, his words fractured the way she had never heard him speak before. "Because I will spend every day showing you. Because losing you would kill me more than any war, more than any throne. Mira, please… forgive me."

The quiet was strangling in the room after he spoke, broken only by the harsh rasp of Mira's breathing. She wanted to scream and to strike him and to sink into his arms all at once. Her heart wrestled with her rage, her love locked with her pain.

And then—

A heavy banging shook the chamber door. A guard yelled through, disturbed, frantic.

"My lord! Riders from the east! 'Tis Ronan's banner!"

Mira's head whirled toward the door, her heart freezing in her chest. Ronan. Her ex-guardian. Her hope. Selene's friend. He had arrived.

Kael's eyes blazed dark, fire igniting anew within them as he stood on the balls of his feet, his begging replaced by fury in a second.

The fragile moment between them disintegrated.

The storm had broken.