Chapter 14: Lycan Civil War
The kingdom cracked along lines that had been forming for decades.
She didn't see most of it. The hours after the courtyard were fragments—tending Lex's wound with shaking hands while the sounds of combat moved through the fortress like weather, the loyal beta Kael barricading the medical wing, messengers arriving with reports that grew progressively worse and then, abruptly, different.
The Lycan King had left his chambers.
She heard this through the wall—Kael's voice, disbelieving. She heard the reply: the King is on the field. He's defending the prince.
Lex's head came up from the cot where she'd ordered him to stay still.
"My father," he said, and she felt something from him she hadn't felt before—something complicated and young, the grief of a son who had accepted that his father was irretrievably a certain kind of man, meeting the unexpected evidence that it might not be entirely true.
"Rest," she said.
"Ava—"
"You have a blade wound and you're not moving." She pressed her hand against the bandage, not hard, but firmly enough to make the point. "Your father's on the field without you and somehow the world continues to turn."
He looked at her for a moment, the complicated thing still moving through his face.
"He let her go," he said quietly. "Twenty years ago. He made a choice I've been terrified of repeating my entire life." He closed his eyes briefly. "And now he's—"
"Maybe people change," she said. "Even the ones you've decided can't."
The battle lasted seven hours.
When Kael came to tell them it was over, he couldn't seem to decide whether to look relieved or stunned. "The Elder Council has surrendered," he said. "The King is—" A pause. "He's asking to see you, my lord. Both of you."
She helped Lex to his feet. He kept her hand for slightly longer than necessary.
"Ready?" she asked.
"No," he said. "But I've noticed that's rarely a prerequisite with you."
She smiled despite everything, and they walked out together.
