Chapter 7: Fevered Confessions

The scent of blood and herbs clung to the air like a shroud. I had dismissed the royal physicians with a cold, unwavering stare, claiming the king’s care was a matter for the old gods and a healer’s steady hand—not their leeches and rattling instruments. It was a lie, of course. I needed him alone. Unconscious. Vulnerable. I needed to hear the truth spill from his lips, even if it came out in a fevered slur.

Kael lay on a bed of silk and shadow, his broad chest wrapped in pristine linen already stained with a fresh bloom of crimson. The gash in his side was deep, meant to kill, but his heart was stubborn. It beat with a frantic rhythm against his ribs, a drum of survival I both admired and despised.

I dipped a cloth in cool water and pressed it to his brow. His skin was scorching, a furnace of infection and delirium. A muscle in his jaw twitched. He was dreaming, lost in some dark chasm of memory.

"Lyra," he rasped, the name a broken prayer.

I froze. My hand hovered over his face. My real name. Not the servant’s alias I’d used for months. Not the bitter title of “princess” I now wore. Just Lyra. The girl he’d known before the coup. Before the betrayal.

"I'm sorry," he choked, his head thrashing against the pillow. "I didn't know. I swear to the old gods, I didn't know it was you."

A cold fury coiled in my chest. I wanted to press my hand over his mouth, to silence his apologies. His pleas for forgiveness were a betrayal in themselves. They meant he remembered. They meant he knew what his family had done to mine, and still, he had stood idly by.

"You let them take my father," I whispered, the words tasting like ash. "You watched them drag him from the throne while you played prince."

His eyes flew open, glassy and unfocused, but they found mine. A flash of desperate clarity cut through the fever. "I was a boy," he begged. "I was weak. Merrick promised he would spare your family if I stayed silent. He said you would be safe. That you would be sent away to live in peace."

Merrick. The King’s advisor. The spider who spun webs of gold and poison from the shadows. A new, chilling understanding washed over me.

"He lied," I said, my voice flat.

"He lied," Kael echoed, his hand shooting out to grip my wrist with surprising strength. "But I've paid for it every day. I searched for you. I sent riders to every corner of the realm. When I heard the rumors of a girl with your eyes claiming the throne, I knew. I knew it was you. I came to the tournament not to win, but to find you."

His thumb stroked the inside of my wrist, a touch both intimate and infuriating. "To ask for your forgiveness," he breathed. "And to warn you."

My heart, the traitorous organ, stuttered. "Warn me of what?"

"He knows," Kael coughed, a wracking sound that shook his entire frame. "Merrick knows you are the true heir. He knows the bloodline holds. He arranged the assassin in the crowd during the joust. He wanted you dead before you could speak with the nobles. When I saw the blade, I couldn't... I couldn't watch you die again."

His confession hung in the air, heavy and thick with the scent of iron and my own rising dread. But his feverish ramblings weren't finished.

"Merrick wants the throne for himself," he continued, his words a frantic whisper. "He has a puppet waiting. A distant cousin of my father's. But he can't rule while any of the true bloodline draws breath. He wants both heirs dead. Me... and you. He has golems of the northern mountains. Stone men who feel no pain. They are moving through the city as we speak."

The king’s eyes rolled back in his head, the effort of his confession draining him. He slipped back into the churning sea of sleep, his grip on my wrist loosening.

I stood, my legs numb, the image of stone golems marching through the capital a cold horror in my mind. The King wasn't my enemy. He was another pawn, a boy who had been bought with a lie and broken by the truth. My vengeance was misplaced, a wildfire begging to be aimed at the true arsonist.

A sharp knock came from the heavy oak door, the sound like a judge’s gavel. I recognized the cadence. It was Merrick’s personal knock.

I looked from the fevered, pitiful king on the bed to the door, behind which my true enemy was surely waiting to “check on the king’s health” and ensure his plan had succeeded.

Merrick was close. He was ready to finish the job. And I was trapped in a room with a dying man and a single, unused dagger.

The lock clicked. The door began to open.

I had to decide: flee and gather my allies to fight an army of stone, or stay and face the architect of my ruin, alone.

Merrick’s shadow stretched across the floor, long and skeletal, reaching for me. I grabbed the cool hilt of my dagger, the same one I had used on the battlefield. It felt like a promise. I would not run. I would not cower.

I was the true heir. And it was time I started acting like it.