​Chapter 12_The General's Rebuke

Tarni

The Great Hall of the Northern Citadel smelled of roasted meat, spilled drinks, and the strong perfume of dozens of nobles trying to cover up the smell of the cold mountain air.

​I hated every square foot of it.

​I stood two paces behind the High Table, my hand resting stiffly on the pommel of my longsword, my shoulders locked in the broad, rigid posture I had spent months perfecting. To the lords sipping plum wine beneath the grand silk banners, I was Lord Kael Vane, a quiet, brooding young officer who knew his place at the edges of the high court. I wasn't a person to them. I was armor, velvet, and a noble surname.

​That suited me just fine. The less they looked at me, the less chance someone had of noticing that my throat lacked an Adam's apple, or that the leather doublets I wore were cut to hide the heavy cloth binding flattening my chest.

​To my left sat General Vance.

​He hadn't touched his roast, nor had he touched the heavy crystal goblet of dark mountain wine sitting beside his elbow. He sat draped over his high-backed carved chair like a sleeping panther, one long, pale finger lazily tracing the polished edge of his silver meat knife. He was silent, as he usually was during these grand banquets, but his silence had a terrible, magnetic mass to it. It dragged the light out of the room. People laughed a little softer near his table. Servants walked around his chair in wide, sweeping arcs, terrified that the mere whisper of their linen aprons against his shoulders might draw those pale, dead-gray eyes toward them.

​I kept my gaze fixed on the heavy oak doors at the end of the hall, but every nerve ending on the left side of my body was screaming.

​Vance was too close. He was always too close now. Over the last three weeks, he had quietly, methodically shifted his personal guard rotations until I was assigned to every minor walkthrough, every evening report, every public banquet at his right hand. At first, I thought it was a suspicion that the dark, unreadable General of the Northern Reaches was testing my brother's forged credentials, waiting for me to make a rookie mistake so he could send me to the gallows.

​But over the last few days, a far more horrifying thought had begun to take root in my mind.

​He wasn't watching me to catch a traitor. He was watching me the way a dragon watches a hoard of gold.

​"You're stiff tonight, Vane," Vance’s voice cut through the ambient roar of the feast. It was low, smooth, and devoid of any warmth, a voice that belonged in a frozen graveyard, not a victory hall.

​I didn't turn my head, keeping my eyes locked forward. "The air is cold tonight, my Lord General. My joints are slow."

​"A soldier's joints should never be slow," he murmured. I felt his gaze shift a heavy, physical weight dragging across the side of my face, settling on the curve of my jaw, then drifting down to my throat. "Especially not yours."

​My pulse hit my throat like a trapped bird, but I forced my jaw to remain set. Stay cold. Stay Kael.

​Before I could answer, a burst of loud, obnoxious laughter erupted from the lower tables. Lord Gerald, a minor landholder’s second son with a flush face, too much family coin, and an ego twice the size of his brain was staggering up the step toward the High Table. He was carrying a full goblet of dark, syrupy southern wine, his eyes glassy and unfocused from hours of drinking.

​"General Vance!" Gerald boomed, slurring his words as he raised his glass in a sloppy toast. "A toast to the brave vanguard! The king’s men who keep the wild mountain barbarians from our doorsteps!"

​Gerald stumbled slightly on the edge of the stone step, his boots catching on the heavy tapestries.

​He lunged forward to catch his balance, his heavy satin sleeve catching the edge of my arm.

​The goblet tilted. A dark, crimson stream of sweet southern wine splashed across the front of my light gray leather tunic, soaking through the dye instantly and dripping down to the stone floor in heavy, dark drops.

​The immediate area fell dead silent.

​My breath caught in my throat. It was just wine. An annoying, clumsy accident from a drunk minor lordling. I instinctively stepped back, wiping my gloved hand over the stain. "It's nothing, my lord. No harm done."

​Gerald chuckled nervously, swaying on his feet, his face turning pale as he realized how close he was standing to the General's seat. "Ah, apologies, young Vane! A bit clumsy on the flagstones... I'll send my valet with a fresh double

​He never finished the sentence.

​Vance didn't stand up. He didn't shout. He moved with a horrifying, liquid speed that made the air in the room feel like it had been violently sucked away.

​In a single fluid motion, Vance’s hand shot out, his long, pale fingers locking around Gerald’s throat like a vice of cold iron.

​Gerald let out a wet, strangled gasp as Vance dragged the full-grown, grown man off his feet with a single arm, slamming his back down hard onto the corner of the heavy oak table. Plates shattered. Wine goblets tipped over, dark red liquid pooling across the white linen tablecloth like fresh blood.

​The entire Great Hall froze. The music died instantly. The laughter vanished. Three hundred men and women stood utterly paralyzed, watching the terrifying scene unfold in horror.

​"G-General..." Gerald wheezed, his face instantly turning a mottled, terrifying shade of purple as his hands clawed frantically at Vance's iron grip. "It... it was... an accident..."

​Vance leaned down, bringing his face inches from the choking man. Vance's face was completely calm. No anger. No fury. Just a cold, terrifying emptiness, the expression of a man crushing a bug because he disliked the sound it made when it crawled across his floor.

​"You touched him," Vance whispered. His voice wasn't loud, but in the absolute silence of the hall, it echoed off the high rafters like a death sentence.

​"I... I spilled..." Gerald gasped, his legs kicking wildly against the side of the table, knocking over heavy silver platters.

​"You approached my space," Vance corrected, his gray eyes shining with an unholy, dark light under the chandeliers. "You stood too close to what belongs under my mantle. And you laid your filthy, drunk hands on my officer."

​"Please..." Gerald choked out, tears streaming down his swollen, dark cheeks.

​My heart was hammering against my ribs so hard I thought my chest would split open. The sheer, senseless violence of it was shocking, a brutal, psychotic display of power over a simple spilled cup of wine. But what made my blood run utterly cold wasn't the violence.

​It was the reason behind it.

​Vance wasn't angry because a lord had been disrespectful to the military. He was enraged because Gerald had dared to exist in my physical space. Vance was systematically, violently cutting away every single human being who tried to come near me. First it was the guards reassigned to distant outposts, then the servants replaced by his own silent mutes, and now this. He was clearing my orbit. He was trapping me in a cage, and the bars were made of blood and fear.

​"General, please!" I blurted out, stepping forward, forgetting my place for a split second. "He’s drunk! It was an accident, he meant no offense!"

​Vance didn't look at me, but his fingers tightened around Gerald’s neck until a sickening crack of cartilage echoed through the silence.

​Gerald's eyes rolled back. His body went limp.

​Vance released his grip. Gerald dropped onto the stained stone floor like a sack of wet laundry, gasping violently, retching and sobbing as he clutched his broken throat, coughing up spit and blood onto the flagstones.

​Vance calmly took a white silk napkin from the table and began wiping Gerald's sweat from his fingers, his movement meticulous and slow.

​"Drag him out," Vance said softly to the two silent, black-armored guards standing near the pillars. "If he or anyone from his house sets foot in this Citadel again, strip their lands and hang them from the battlements."

​The guards rushed forward, hauling the half-conscious, weeping lord away by his ankles, his fingernails scraping uselessly against the stone as he was dragged into the dark corridor.

​The hall remained dead silent. No one dared to move. No one dared to breathe.

​Vance tossed the soiled silk napkin onto the table, right into the pool of spilled red wine. Then, he turned his head slowly toward me.

​The cold emptiness in his gray eyes was gone, replaced by an intense, terrifying hunger that made my knees tremble beneath my dark trousers. He reached out, his long, cool fingers lightly brushing against the wet, stained leather right over my chest right over where my heart was beating like a trapped beast beneath the tight linen wraps.

​"Look at you," Vance whispered, his voice smooth as silk, his thumb slowly tracing the line of the wine stain upward, stopping just below my collarbone. "You're filthy now."

​I couldn't move. I was paralyzed by the dark, suffocating trap closing in around me.

​"Go to my private quarters, Kael," Vance commanded softly, his face leaning in so close I could smell the sharp, metallic tang of iron on his breath. "Strip off those wet clothes. I will be along shortly to ensure you are... properly cleaned.