Kiono's POV
The palace courtyard was older than the imperial towers themselves.
Massive stone arches curved high toward the sky like the weathered ribs of some ancient, mythical beast long turned to bone. Their cracked surfaces were deeply carved with forgotten gods, dragons, and primordial monsters that had roamed the world before kingdoms even had names. Magic lingered here like a physical weight. It hummed constantly beneath the heavy stone pavers, a low, vibrating resonance that made the hairs on my arms stand up.
The training ground sat completely empty under the open sky, the cold wind whispering across the carved floor. No guards were stationed at the perimeter. No servants dared to approach.
Only one man stood at the dead center of it all, Castel.
There was blood smeared across his face, and a swirling orbit of blood circled him like a living, breathing storm. It flowed continuously from a shallow, self-inflicted cut across his left wrist, rising into the crisp air in twisting, ribbons of dark crimson. The liquid obeyed his will completely splitting apart into dozens of thin, lethal blades before crashing back together in a roaring, heavy spining around his body.
With a sudden flick of his fingers, the blood shot outward. Spears of solid red slammed into the surrounding stone pillars with explosive, deafening force before ripping free and flying back toward his position.
The blood hardened in midair. Blades. Dozens of them hovered in the empty space, with a deadly intent.
My footsteps echoed heavily beneath the courtyard archway. Castel didn't turn around. He didn't need to, he already knew exactly who had arrived.
I stepped into the open courtyard, my boots scraping softly across the stone as I approached the center. I stopped a few feet away from the perimeter of his floating daggers. "Greetings, Your Majesty."
Castel didn't move a muscle. The floating blood continued its slow, ominous spiral around his frame.
"No need," Castel said casually, his voice echoing cleanly across the empty stone. "It's just us."
With a lazy gesture, the blades dissolved instantly back into liquid, splashing harmlessly onto the floor. "We can talk normally, brother."
I let out a low chuckle, crossing my arms over my chest. "Well then." I stepped closer, eyeing the splatters of crimson covering the floor. "Tell me what I'm walking into. What is all this? Have you finally decided to end it all?"
Castel burst into laughter. It was loud, heavy, and completely unrestrained. He bent forward slightly, clutching his stomach as the residual blood splattered across his bare arms and chest. I sighed, walking over to a nearby bench to grab a clean white towel. I tossed it straight toward his head. Castel caught it easily out of the air.
"You are an idiot," Castel said with a wide, blood-streaked grin.
But the exact moment he lifted the towel to wipe his face his eyes froze.
The fabric slipped completely from his fingers, fluttering to the bloody stone. Instead of wiping his face, his hand shot out like a striking, grabbing my left hand with an iron grip. Immediately.
I blinked, my muscles tensing. Castel didn't say a word; he just stared directly at the thick gold band of the ring on my finger.
"...Is the wedding back on?" His brow lifted slowly, his voice dropping into a dangerous, questioning tone. "I thought you didn't want to marry her."
I pulled my hand back instantly, breaking his grip with a sharp jerk. I bent down, picked up the fallen towel, and threw it straight into Castel's face with a snap of my wrist. "I am not marrying Kris."
Castel wiped the cloth across his face slowly, pulling it away to reveal a look of pure, shock. He stared at me like I had lost my mind. "There is no way. You have got to be fucking joking." He stepped forward, poking me hard in the shoulder. "You are marrying that girl you just met? The one you just brought into my kitchen?"
I didn't smile this time. My expression hardened. "I really love her, Castel."
Castel blinked once. Twice. Then he laughed all over again a sharp, mocking sound. "You cannot be serious. You barely even know her." His eyes narrowed into slits, his yellow and blue gaze burning into mine. "How can you know you love someone in such a dangerous, short amount of time?" He continued "What you have is pure lust."
Then, his eyes lit up suddenly with a wicked, mocking realization. He leaned closer, his voice dropping. "Wait. Don't tell me you already fucked her." His grin turned completely feral. "Did you give your virginity away that easily? The big, bad Commander Kiono fell just like that?"
I shoved him hard in the chest, a ripple of kinetic pressure between us. "I am serious about her," I said, every trace of humor completely gone from my voice. "I do not need months to know what I want or how I feel." I stepped directly into his space, my voice lowering to a harsh whisper. "I know what I want. And what I want... is her."
Castel studied my face carefully now, searching for any sign of hesitation.
"What I feel for her is not lust," I exhaled slowly, letting the truth hang between us. "I need her like one needs air to breathe." I shrugged, looking out over the courtyard. "It's not just sexual. It is more than that." Then, a faint smirk returned to my lips. "And besides... a gentle man never kiss and tell. You would never know whether we had sex or not."
Castel's smile widened, his shoulders relaxing slightly. "Oh, come on."
I sighed, shaking my head. "It's funny though."
"Because it only took you one day to realize you wanted—"
I stopped. Completely.
Castel's smile vanish instantly. The blood splattered on the stone around him froze midair, the droplets turning to solid, jagged ice. His eyes glowing the yellow and blue burning with a sudden, terrifying light.
"Don't."
The word came out of his throat like a rusted blade scraping across raw stone. Castel's voice dropped to a quiet whisper that made the air in the courtyard turn freezing cold. "Do not mention her name. Do not ever speak about her."
An absolute, suffocating silence swallowed the courtyard. I held his gaze for a long beat, acknowledging the boundary, before nodding once. "Understood."
I walked back toward the bench and grabbed another towel to wipe the dust from my boots. Castel exhaled slowly, tilting his head back to stare up at the sky above the towers. For a long moment, neither of us spoke. The silence was heavy with old scars.
Then, Castel broke the quiet, his voice returning to its normal, casual pitch. "You never told me why you suddenly don't want to marry Kris. I thought you two were in love."
A sharp, mocking laugh broke from my throat, echoing loudly between the stone arches. I walked back toward the center. "I never felt that way about her. Ever."
Castel frowned. "No one asked me anything," I continued, rolling my shoulders to loosen the tight fabric of my uniform. "You all just assumed."
Castel studied me for a moment, the tension completely draining from his posture. Then, a slow, dangerous grin returned to his face. "Well then..." He dropped his towel to the floor. "How about some practice, dear brother?"
My own grin returned instantly, the familiar thrill of combat sparking in my veins. "Why didn't you say that sooner?"
Both of us laughed—a grim, shared understanding between soldiers. I tossed my towel aside.
The blood surrounding Castel sharpened instantly into a hundred glittering blades. A violent wind ripped through the courtyard, howling through the stone arches. Two brothers stood facing each other. And the stone beneath our feet trembled.
The wind died completely. For a fragment of a second, the entire world held its breath.
The training ground seemed to recognize exactly what was about to happen. The carved dragons along the stone pillars watched silently, and the faint, glowing runes etched deep into the stone pavers pulsed softly, reacting to the massive psychic and elemental presence of. Castel rolled his shoulders, his blood spiraling around him like a crimson halo.
I cracked my knuckles, my boots shifting into a solid stance. "You ready?"
Castel smiled, his eyes flashing. "You're the one who asked for it."
My eyes glowed, burning with a cold, electric blue light. My telekinetic power rippled outward like waves of heat rising from desert stone. Across from me, Castel's body shifted. His left eye burned yellow, bright enough to entirely erase his pupil, while his right eye glowed a piercing blue. The ribbons of blood around him sharpened instantly. Blades. Dozens of them.
"Try not to die too quickly," Castel said calmly.
I smirked, the adrenaline hitting my system. "You wish."
The courtyard exploded.
I moved first. The solid stone beneath Castel's feet shattered into dust as a massive wave of telekinetic force slammed toward him like an invisible tidal wave. Castel didn't even flinch. His blood blades shot forward in a tight spiral, slicing clean through my kinetic force like steel knives through water. Then, he vanished from my line of sight.
I barely had time to react before
WHAM.
A brutal, heavy punch smashed directly into my ribs. The sheer force sent me skidding backward across the stone, my boots leaving dark streaks on the floor. Before I could fully recover my balance.
CRACK.
A sweeping kick slammed hard into my shin. I staggered, a sharp burst of pain radiating up my leg, but I retaliated instantly. I unleashed a burst of telekinetic power outward. The heavy courtyard stones lifted into the air, tearing free from the floor, and shot toward Castel like a volley of high-speed missiles.
Castel simply flicked his wrist. The flying stones froze midair, suspended by his own invisible grip, and then exploded outward into harmless powder. He lunged through the dust cloud again.
BOOM.
A heavy fist smashed straight into my jaw. My head snapped back, and I stumbled over the uneven stone but I forced my legs to hold. My blue eyes burned brighter, the metallic taste of blood filling my mouth.
"Not bad," I muttered, spitting blood onto the floor.
Then, I vanished.
Castel tilted his head, his reflexes instantaneous, but I reappeared directly behind his blind spot.
BAM.
My fist slammed into the center of Castel's back. It was the first clean hit of the match. Castel slid forward half a step, his boots grinding against the stone. He stopped, a slow, amused smile spreading over his face as he glanced over his shoulder.
"Well," he murmured, his yellow eye flashing. "That's new."
I didn't give him time to recover.
THUD.
A heavy kick slammed into Castel's side, rattling his frame.
WHAM.
Another strike struck his left shoulder. Castel slid back across the cracked stone, his movements fluid despite the impact. A heavy silence fell over the area. Then, Castel let out a low, dangerous laugh that sent a chill down my spine.
"You actually landing hits on me," he said, straightening his posture slowly. The blood around his wrist thickened, expanding into a dark, heavy mass. The very air in the courtyard turned suffocatingly heavy, pressing down on my lungs. "Twice."
He moved. He was too fast an absolute blur of movement that bypassed my psychic senses entirely.
CRACK.
A brutal punch slammed directly into my stomach. The breath exploded from my lungs in a ragged gasp, my vision blurring.
THUD.
A heavy knee drove straight into my fractured ribs.
BAM.
A backhand caught my cheek, sending me spinning through the air. I hit the stone floor hard, sliding through the puddles of blood, but my stubbornness forced me back up onto one knee. Castel was already standing over me, his expression completely unbothered.
CRASH.
Another punch. Another shattering kick. I tried to counter, throwing up a defensive wall of telekinesis, but Castel's blood magic tore through my shields like paper.
Then came the final blow a brutal, crushing kick to my chest.
I flew across the courtyard, my body skidding along the stone before I managed to catch myself on one knee, panting heavily. A thin line of blood ran from my split knuckles, dripping onto the floor. Castel stood over me, his breathing perfectly steady, his chest barely rising. The floating blood around him slowly, fluidly returned to the cut on his wrist, sealing the wound.
Silence settled over the ruined training ground.
Then, a breathless laugh broke from my throat. Castel joined in, his deep laughter echoing against the shattered stone arches. Two brothers, bleeding and bruised, laughing in the middle of a destroyed courtyard.
Castel extended his hand toward me. I grabbed it, and he pulled me up to my feet easily, his strength immense.
"You've gotten better," Castel said, inspecting his bruised shoulder.
I rolled my aching shoulder, the joints popping painfully beneath my uniform. "That was you holding back."
Castel smirked, a dark look crossing his features. "I tried as much as I could." He glanced around at the cracked floor and shattered pillars. "Even in my weakened state, you still managed to land a hit on me."
I wiped the blood from my mouth with the back of my hand. "Comforting."
Castel looked toward the high palace towers, his gaze turning distant and cold. "You forget," he said quietly, his voice dropping into that flat register that always meant danger. "My blood is in this palace."
A sudden wind stirred the dust around our boots.
"In the walls."
"In the stone."
"In the foundations."
His eyes glowed faintly again, I let out a heavy sigh, cracking my neck to relieve the tension.
"Great," I groaned. "So basically, I'm fighting you on your home turf."
Castel clapped me hard on my bruised shoulder, his grin returning with a sharp flash of teeth. "Exactly."
I groaned again, my ribs aching with every breath. "Fantastic."
Castel turned and started walking back toward the stone archway, but then he suddenly stopped. His head tilted slightly to the side, his ears twitching as if he sensed a sudden shift in the psychic currents of the lower levels. His glowing eyes narrowed, and then a slow, incredibly wicked smile spread across his face.
"Well..." he murmured, his voice dripping with amusement. "That's interesting."
I frowned, my hand instinctively dropping toward my side. "What?"
Castel's smile widened into a full, mocking grin as he looked back at me. "Your wife is coming this way."
My stomach dropped, my chest turning cold as I realized he was sensing Astelion's approach from the kitchens. I stepped forward, my voice turning sharp. "She shouldn't be coming up here at all."
But Castel was already turning away from me, his burning eyes locked firmly on the entrance of the courtyard, waiting for her to step into the light.