Chapter 496 To Belong To The Throne

Chapter 496 To Belong To The Throne
(Caelum Ashborne) 

"No body was recovered," Arkael answered dismissively with a wave of his hand. "The battlefield buried him beneath half the Spire." 
"Perhaps." 
"It makes little difference." 
Cael said nothing. The silence stretched comfortably between them. 
Or at least... It did for Arkael. 
His father smiled faintly to himself, as though recalling something amusing. 
"She seems rather comfortable with you. Perhaps even smitten." 
The words caught Cael so completely off guard he almost laughed. Almost. Instead, he found himself smiling. 
"She was terrified of me when we first met." 
Arkael's eyebrow lifted. "I imagine she was." 
"Apollo had spent weeks convincing her Hell was filled with nothing but monsters." Cael shook his head faintly. "Every time she looked at me, she expected cruelty." 
"Yet somehow, before she makes any move, her eyes find you first. Is that not affection?" 
His father's voice held no accusation, only curiosity. 
Cael exhaled quietly. "Trust was... slow." 
His mind drifted briefly back across the journey. Adelaide shivering beneath the Devil's punishment, her wrists bleeding against the cross while Apollo had demanded she remain exposed and isolated inside his chamber. 
"When Apollo ordered her left naked..." he said quietly, "I found clothes for her." 
Another memory surfaced. An unconscious face and a bloodied body. A cup of water held out in secret after Apollo had insisted exhaustion would make her more compliant. 
"When he denied her water, I brought it to her when no one was looking." 
Arkael remained silent. Watching. Listening. 
Cael scarcely noticed. His thoughts had already carried him elsewhere. To Adelaide staring in wonder as a ribbon of gold fire danced across his palm within the fighting pits. To her laughter when her own flame had finally answered. 
"I showed her my Emberflame," he admitted. "Taught her how to call her own." 
The corner of his mouth lifted almost unconsciously. "She trusted me enough to try." 
He realised a little too late that he was smiling. He forced it to disappear. 
"After that..." He hesitated. "Progress became easier." 
Arkael's eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. 
"Easier?" 
Cael nodded once. 
"As much as circumstances allowed..." He lowered his eyes. "...I took certain liberties." 
His father's expression didn't change. "What liberties?" 
Cael hesitated only briefly. "I needed her to trust me." 
The words felt ugly now. Transactional. As though every moment between them had been nothing more than another step in a mission. 
He knew it hadn't been. But he couldn't allow his father to know that. 
"I kissed her." Silence settled over the library. "She allowed it." 
Arkael's face remained unreadable. 
"Nothing beyond that," Cael continued quietly. "I told her I wasn't worthy of her." 
The words tasted bitter now. Not because they had been a lie. Because they had been the truest thing he'd ever spoken. 
For several heartbeats, Arkael just stared at him. Then something ancient and terrible settled over the room. The warmth vanished. The air itself seemed to tighten. 
"When I sent you to retrieve our Queen..." His father's voice had become unnervingly quiet. "...did I ask you to court her?" 
Cael felt the first thread of gold fire wrap itself around his wrist before he even saw it. It burned. Not across his skin. Inside it. 
His own Emberborn blood answered instinctively, betraying him as the flame raced through his veins. A second later, black Netherfire coiled around it. Gold. Black. The two ancient powers twisted together like chains forged from living flame. 
Pain exploded through every muscle in his body. 
Cael dropped instantly to one knee, a strangled groan escaping before he could stop it as the fires constricted harder, every attempt to move answered by another surge of blinding agony. 
His father watched him without the slightest trace of satisfaction, only deep disappointment. 
"My son." 
The words should have sounded gentle. Instead they landed with crushing finality. 
"I sent you to deliver her." 
Another coil tightened. Nothing in those nine hundred years beneath Apollo had ever hurt like this. 
"Nothing more." 
"I know..." Cael's teeth clenched so hard he thought they might crack. 
"No." Arkael stepped closer. "You do not." 
The fire tightened again until Cael's vision blurred. 
"If you love her..." Arkael let the words hang between them, his voice remaining unnervingly calm. "...then I will remove you from the equation." 
Another surge of agony ripped through Cael's body. Gold Emberflame and black Netherfire tightened together inside his veins until every muscle seized, his shoulders trembling beneath the invisible restraint while his own blood betrayed him from within. 
He tried to rise. Nothing answered him. Even drawing breath had become a labour. 
Arkael stood over him, his expression almost sorrowful. 
"I did not spend one thousand years rebuilding what was stolen from us only to have my own son jeopardise it over something as fleeting as affection." 
Cael forced himself to meet his father's eyes through the haze of pain. 
"It isn't..." 
"No." Arkael silenced him with a single word. 
"I have seen kingdoms fall because kings believed love mattered more than duty. I have watched bloodlines vanish because men confused desire with destiny." 
His gaze hardened. 
"I will not watch it happen again." 
The flames constricted once more. Cael's head dropped as another involuntary groan tore free. Sweat dripped from his brow onto the polished stone beneath him, every instinct screaming to fight against the restraint while knowing it was utterly futile. Arkael's command reached into the Emberborn blood that flowed through his body itself. There was no resisting it. 
"The Queen was never meant to belong to one man." 
Arkael's voice echoed quietly through the library. 
"She belongs to our people." 
Another pulse of pain. 
"To our future." 
Another. 
"To the throne." 
Once more. 
“To me.” 
His eyes settled upon Cael with devastating certainty. 
"If I must choose between your happiness... and the future of our people..." His voice became almost impossibly gentle. "...I will bury your ashes myself." 
Cael felt something inside him fracture. Not bone. Faith. The unwavering certainty that his father had always been the man he remembered. Cael's chest tightened far more painfully than the fire. He recognised the expression on Arkael's face. Absolute conviction. The same expression he had worn when teaching a young Cael that duty outweighed comfort. That sacrifice outweighed happiness. That an Emberborn gave everything for his people. 
Only now... Cael realised his father had never believed there should be a limit.
Still trembling against the floor, he forced the words through gritted teeth. 
"I don't love her." The lie tasted like ash on his tongue. "I brought her here, didn't I?" 
For a long moment Arkael watched him. 
"You brought her home." 
"Yes." 
"You delivered her to me." 
"Yes." 
"You walked away from the Devil knowing she was never meant to choose him." 
"Yes." 
Another long silence. 
Then, at last... The pressure vanished.