Chapter 71

The massacre that purged Blue Shadow Palace in a single moonlit night sent shockwaves rattling through the royal court. A staggering death toll within the palace walls buried every administrative department under a mounting workload. While an irrational, gnawing fear of witches and dark magic spread like contagion, one man inspired a terror that eclipsed them all: Prince Kaiyan.

He had long been an object of both dread and awe to those who knew him, but once a catastrophe of this magnitude occurred within his reach—even though he had neither orchestrated nor desired it—the cold dread surrounding him reached a fever pitch. The newly assigned servants were terrified, of course, but even the veterans who had survived the massacre by the grace of being off duty now found themselves unable to meet his gaze without trembling. It was a fear that transcended their previous experience.

Nor was this dread confined to the servants and subordinates. Fear is a fickle, irrational beast, devoid of shape or reason, and not even the bonds of direct blood could insulate one against it.

“…”

Isaac cut his tongue-clicking short, his face twisting into a sharp grimace instead. He swallowed the involuntary groan, but Selvero, standing nearby, must have sensed the shift; he glanced over immediately.

“You all right?”

“Ngh… nod really.”

His words emerged thick, slurred, and mangled. Isaac pressed a hand to his mouth as a fresh pulse of pain radiated across his face.

“All right, I get it. Don’t talk. Just don’t talk.” Selvero gestured urgently for him to remain silent.

Isaac gave a stiff nod, rubbed at his parched lips, and let out a shuddering breath. His lips were dry, but his tongue, crushed and swollen into a pulpy mess, still throbbed with the sharp, metallic tang of blood. Because of that, the sight of the lavish banquet spread before the royal family made his stomach churn rather than his mouth water.

Inside the vast dining hall, guards stood like statues along the walls while the King and Queen dined with their children and extended kin. Royalty was no different from commoners when it came to the mundane banality of dinner conversation; they discussed relatives, unruly children, and the relative merits of holiday retreats. What differed from a few days ago, however, was the suffocating atmosphere.

Though words flowed around the table as if nothing were amiss, an undercurrent of brittle tension threaded through every voice. It coiled tightest around Prince Kaiyan, who ate in stony silence, detached from the conversation.

He looked as indifferent as ever, swallowing each mouthful with the mechanical disinterest one might afford a piece of scrap paper. His movements remained perfectly mundane, yet the people watching those gestures were wound tight as wire. It was as if something fundamentally alien had claimed a seat at their table.

Then, Kaiyan reached toward the Queen.

The moment his hand moved, the Queen started violently. Her shoulders jerked, and the spoon slipped from her trembling fingers.

Clang!

It struck the gold-rimmed tray, bounced, and clattered to the floor, the sound ringing with unnatural violence through the quiet hall. The silence that followed was even more deafening. The effortless conversation died instantly, laying bare how thoroughly performative it had been. All attention converged upon the Queen’s bloodless face and the prince who watched her without a flicker of emotion.

Open dismay flickered across her features. She understood instantly that the fear she had struggled so desperately to conceal had betrayed her. The first to catch that shift was Kaiyan’s younger brother, the Second Prince, who sat opposite him. He had spent the entire meal studying Kaiyan’s expression, struggling to force food down a constricted throat.

Isaac’s lip and tongue throbbed with renewed intensity. He frowned, swallowing a sharp, jagged breath. His lip had split and his tongue had been crushed only yesterday, shortly after the Second Prince departed from Blue Shadow Palace.

Prince Iliyan possessed a mild, gentle nature and was widely beloved. As the next in the line of succession, he occupied a position of great envy, yet he possessed no grand accomplishments and lacked personal ambition. Perhaps that expectation weighed upon him like a shackle. Whether someone had filled his head with paranoid warnings or he had simply succumbed to the terrors of his own imagination, Iliyan had arrived at Blue Shadow Palace yesterday afternoon with tension etched into every line of his face.

“Hyung, I intend to leave for my estate soon and spend the rest of my days tending to my own lands. Unless you summon me, I will not return to the capital.”

Standing behind Kaiyan, Isaac had watched the pale prince in utter confusion. Iliyan normally feared his brother so acutely that he avoided the palace altogether; Isaac could not fathom why he had come of his own volition to issue such a desperate declaration.

“I truly have no desire for a higher position, nor do I harbor any hidden intentions. So… so if you find me displeasing in any way, I beg you to put aside that displeasure…”

Iliyan bowed so deeply that he seemed on the verge of prostrating himself. Only then did the truth dawn on Isaac. Iliyan had come to beg for his life before Kaiyan ever threatened it. He lived in terror that his brother might suspect him of coveting the throne, even though Kaiyan had never once shown a shred of such suspicion.

Isaac shifted his gaze to the prince. Kaiyan watched Iliyan without expression, saying nothing as his younger brother bowed lower and lower beneath the suffocating weight of that silence.

In all the time Isaac had served him, he had never once heard Kaiyan speak of the throne or political power. The prince held no interest in such trifles. Yet, here was a man trembling before him, bowing his head in the shadow of ambitions Kaiyan did not possess.

“I have no interest.”

Kaiyan’s cold reply had been entirely sincere. Iliyan should have withdrawn the moment he heard it. Instead, he pleaded again.

“Hyung, I truly will become your most faithful subject. Please do not guard against me or look upon me with suspicion. I beg you to trust me.”

Desperation sharpened every syllable.

“Please. Please tell me that you believe me. Hyung, if you commanded it, I would accept even death without complaint.”

With lips drained of color by the intensity of his fear, Iliyan clung to his brother for a shred of reassurance. Kaiyan’s indifferent gaze settled upon him.

How tiresome.

The thought crossed his face as clearly as if he had spoken it aloud. It was a look of mild displeasure, perhaps even irritation. Then, his hand moved toward the sword resting beside him.

“Lord Kaiyan.” Isaac stepped forward, his voice a strained, ragged whisper. It happened at the exact moment Kaiyan reached for his blade, following the habitual reflex by which he removed whatever annoyed him from his sight. “Lord Kaiyan, you mustn’t.”

The moment the words escaped him, Isaac realized his fatal mistake.

Kaiyan’s eyebrow arched in a slow, sharp motion. Without averting his gaze from Isaac, he reached out and tightened his grip around the hilt of his blade.

Iliyan’s face drained of all color.

What do you think I intend to do? Kaiyan’s eyes remained locked onto Isaac.

Forgive me. Isaac bowed his head, falling silent.

Kaiyan could have easily maimed Iliyan—not because he harbored a deep-seated hatred for his brother or feared him as a rival, but simply because Iliyan had become an intolerable nuisance. The conventional, sentimental notion that one should never harm their own flesh and blood held no weight for him.

Kaiyan held his gaze on Isaac for a long, heavy moment. As his eyes traced the rigid lines of Isaac’s face, his expression hardened, his mouth settling into a grim, unyielding line.

Then, he drew the blade.

The sword descended in a swift arc, biting diagonally across Isaac’s torso from shoulder to waist. The wound was jagged and deep, though carefully calculated to stop short of a lethal strike.

The metallic scent of blood washed over the room. Isaac’s breath hitched, and his knees slammed against the floorboards. Agony flared through his nerves like a wildfire, forcing his heart into a frantic, erratic rhythm.

Blood pattered against the floor.

Kaiyan watched as Isaac knelt, struggling to control his ragged breathing, before flicking the excess blood from his steel. A few stray droplets spattered across Iliyan’s pale face, yet he remained frozen in place, paralyzed by a terror that forbade him from even reaching up to wipe them away.

Kaiyan nonchalantly cleaned his blade against a cushion and turned his attention back to his brother. Iliyan flinched so violently his entire frame shook.

“Hyung… Hyung… please… please…” He could barely form the words.

“Whether you desire something or not is of no consequence to me. If I want something, I will possess it, regardless of whom it currently belongs to. You cannot take from me what I intend to claim, and if I have no interest in an object, I do not care whether you hold it or not.”

Kaiyan’s voice remained calm, stripped of any malice or warning; he simply laid out what he viewed as an objective, undeniable truth. “Leave.”

Iliyan hesitated, but he dared not speak again. He understood all too well that Isaac had paid the blood-price in his stead, and he sensed that if he lingered a second longer, the blade would surely find him next. With the hollow, wide-eyed look of a man who had narrowly escaped the grave, Iliyan scrambled away.

Kaiyan pivoted toward Isaac. The cats, which had been lounging in the sunlight on the windowsill, had scurried over to the wounded man and were already lapping at the blood.

“Witch-child. Do not interfere in matters beyond your station.” The prince’s voice was languid, yet it carried the frigid weight of a death sentence.

“I had to interfere.” Isaac’s reply was little more than a strained whisper, though he knew Kaiyan heard every syllable. The prince stared down at him with a predatory stillness.

“You should have rebuked those who failed to step forward.”

That was what common decency dictated. If a man saw his elder brother preparing to maim their sibling, any bystander should have intervened to stop the violence. Isaac raised his head, meeting Kaiyan’s gaze directly. The prince did not blink.

Something twitched faintly at Kaiyan’s brow, a momentary flicker of recognition, as if he were thinking, Yes. This is the kind of creature you truly are.

His hand shot out, clamping around Isaac’s throat.

Crack.

Bone ground beneath the relentless pressure.

“Witch-child. A loathsome vermin who ought to have been torn apart a hundred times over for that cursed blood alone. Your tongue runs remarkably free, does it not?” Kaiyan’s eyes, a shade of blue so glacial they seemed frozen, watched him from mere inches away. “Do you honestly believe you are incapable of dying?”