Rise Of The Black Sovereign

Chapter 5

The car kept moving through the rain, and outside the window, the tall iron gates of the Vale estate began to rise into view through the mist, waiting.

"You will have to stay in my place tonight because we are making the engagement announcement tomorrow." Xena said immediately the car drove into the compound.

"Agreed." Kael said almost immediately. "But I have one condition."

"Name it." Xena said.

"There are things about me you won't understand right away," he said quietly. "As long as none of it puts you or your city at risk and I guarantee that it won't, we don't go looking for answers neither of us is ready to give. Agreed?"

Seraphina held his eyes for a long moment, weighing him the way a strategist weighs unfamiliar terrain.

"Agreed," she said.

***

The Council chamber was packed tight. Three hundred of Ashfall City's wealthiest people stood shoulder to shoulder, and every single one of them seemed to already know why they were there, even though the official announcement hadn't happened yet. Rumors moved faster than paperwork in this city.

He stood beside Xena at the front of the chamber, wearing an expensive tailored coat that fitted him very well. Though he had initially wanted something simple but Xena had insisted on it, so he let her. Better to let her believe he was the pauper she knew.

"This is absurd," someone muttered from the second row in a not so quiet voice. "She's marrying a nobody just to spite her uncle. This isn't governance. It's a tantrum."

"Better a tantrum than handing the city to the Kanes," a woman beside him murmured back.

Kael felt the word hit Kael hard but he kept his face still. He was getting better at that, he realized. Or maybe he was just getting tired.

Harlan Vale rose from his seat near the dais, his face a mask of barely controlled fury. "Xena. A word. Now."

"Whatever you need to say, Uncle, you can say here." Xena's voice came out cool and easy, carrying across the whole chamber without her even raising it. "The Council requires an announcement. I've made one. Kael Draven and I are engaged. The paperwork satisfying the Stability Clause has already been filed."

"You cannot be serious." Harlan's eyes swept over Kael, head to foot, the same way Darius had looked at him the night before, like he was something left on the side of the road. "This man has no name. No fortune. No family standing behind him. As I understand it, he was humiliated at a promotion ceremony less than twelve hours ago, by his own former fiancée's family."

A ripple of laughter moved through the chamber.

Kael felt the heat of it crawl up his neck. Though he had expected it, but it still didn't stop his fist from tightening. It only Harlan knew that one word from him and he would seize to exist. Kael could only scoff in his mind.

"You're well informed, Uncle," Xena said, unbothered. "I'd be curious how quickly that story reached you."

Harlan's jaw tightened, caught slightly off balance by the redirection. "That's not the point. The point is you're handing your household's name to a man with nothing to offer this city."

"He offers exactly what the Stability Clause requires," Xena said. "A husband with no competing ambition. No family faction pulling strings behind him. No interest in controlling anything that belongs to me." Her eyes didn't leave her uncle's face. "You spent four months insisting I needed a husband who couldn't threaten my authority. Congratulations, Uncle. You got exactly what you asked for."

The chamber erupted, half laughter, half scandalized whispers. Harlan's face went a shade darker, caught between two feelings Kael could read easily on him which was anger and something close to embarrassment.

Across the room, Darius Kane sat with his arms crossed, watching the whole exchange with narrowed eyes. Beside him, Reginald Voss leaned over and murmured something close to his ear. Whatever he said, Darius's expression shifted fast, from irritation into something colder. Something calculating.

"Draven." Darius's voice cut through the noise, deliberate, carrying. "This is a surprising turn for a man I slapped in front of witnesses last night."

Kael felt his pulse pick up, but he kept his voice level. "A great deal can change in twelve hours, Lord Kane."

"Can it?" Darius stood, straightening his coat with slow, theatrical calm, enjoying the attention of the room shifting onto him. "Tell me, does the Lady Vale know about last night's little scene? The proposal? The ring? The tears?"

"There were no tears," Kael said.

"There were plenty of witnesses who'd tell a different story." Darius smiled thinly, glancing around the room like he was gathering their silent agreement. "I wonder if she'd still find you useful, knowing you spent last night begging another woman to marry you, before settling for whatever this arrangement actually is."

Something in Kael's chest tightened. Not from the insult itself, but from the anger he had been controlling since last night. To him, Darius arrogance was getting too much. After this engagement, he was going to do something about it.

He turned to look at Xena to see her reaction but Xena didn't so much as blink.

"I know exactly what happened last night, Lord Kane." Her voice stayed perfectly calm. "I watched most of it from my car." She turned her attention fully onto him now, something sharper entering her tone. "What I find interesting is that you felt the need to personally humiliate a stranger at an event that had nothing to do with you, simply because your future wife's family summoned you like a dog to handle an inconvenience. That tells me a great deal about the kind of husband you would have made."

The room went very quiet at that and Kael felt something like pride rise up in his chest. She hadn't flinched. She hadn't even looked at him twice to check if it was true. She had simply turned the whole thing back around and let it land somewhere else.

Darius's composure cracked, just slightly, color rising in his face. "Careful, Lady Vale."

"I generally am," Xena said. "Careful enough to avoid marrying a man who takes his orders from his fiancée's father."

Laughter broke out again, sharper this time, aimed squarely at Darius instead of Kael for once. Reginald Voss's face went dark with fury. Darius's cousins shifted uncomfortably behind him, suddenly very interested in the floor.

Kael said nothing. But he watched it happen, watched the whole room's mood tip sideways in the space of one sentence, and he understood something about the woman standing beside him that he hadn't fully understood an hour ago.

*She just made an enemy of the entire Kane family,* he thought, *and she doesn't look like she regrets a single word of it.*