Free Web NovelChapter 495: Chapter 495
The missive was the third one he had received this week, this one from lord Tomar. Ragnar sat at his desk in his study and read through it again. The words were chosen carefully the way the man always wrote when the news was bad.
A farm on the outskirts of the city had been set ablaze three nights ago. The family inside had barely managed to escape. The granary had not. Livestock lost. Fields scorched to dirt.
However, the description of how it was done perfectly matched the style of attacks that had been carried out in the eastern provinces by the rebels.
The method was not unknown to those who have studied the eastern reports. It didn’t look like this was a coincidence.
Ragnar set the letter down on the desk.
He exhaled slowly through his nose and looked at the far wall, trying to find some measure of calm in the position he found himself in. Yet it never came.
The anger was already there, steadily building by the second, and there was nothing to redirect it toward.
Seraphine had come to the estate four days ago and she had told him about what she overheard from eavesdropping on one of Nheera’s conversations with her sons.
The queen intended to push the rebel activity into the capital. Manufacture enough fear and disorder that the court would have no choice but to agree to her demands to make Hairan the kingdom’s protector and unofficial king. The kingdom’s mourning period made crowning a new king impossible by law. But a protector — that was another matter entirely. That was a door Nheera had clearly decided to walk through.
And she had already begun acting on her plans.
Ragnar picked the missive up again and stared at it. A family lost their home and means of livelihood just because of one person’s self serving schemes. And Nheera had ordered it done without second thought, without any apparent concern for what was lost, because none of it touched her. It was simply the cost of what she wanted, and what she wanted was to see her son elevated above every other name in the kingdom.
Ragnar’s fingers tightened around the edge of the letter. The parchment crinkled under the pressure. A sudden warmth bloomed at his fingertips. When he glanced down, the edges of the paper were already darkening, thin orange flames licking upward along the creases.
For a heartbeat he simply stared, stunned. Then he dropped the burning sheet onto the desk and shoved back his chair. He snatched a heavy ledger and brought it down hard, smothering the flames before they could spread to the other documents. A thin trail of smoke curled toward the ceiling.
He stood there a moment, breathing hard, then ran a tired hand over his face. The half-charred remains of the missive lay twisted on the wood.
This was not the first time. Ever since he returned from the hunt, fire had been sparking unbidden from his hands. He could be reading, writing, or simply sitting still when the heat would surge and whatever he touched would ignite.
Clothes, letters, the arm of a chair, nothing was safe. Each incident left him feeling raw and off-kilter, like he was a boy again, fumbling through his first clumsy attempts to master control over his shadows with no one to teach him.
He remembered being young, learning to manage the shadows with no one to teach him. The frustration of that. The shame of losing control in front of others, the way it made him feel weak and incompetent . He had eventually figured it out on his own, through trial and failure and more failure, until summoning his shadows became second nature. freeweɓnovēl.coɱ
He had lost the ability to call on his shadows during the fenrar attack and he still hadn’t been able to call on them again since. That ability had been with him since childhood and now it was just gone and he didn’t understand why.
Now there was only emptiness where it had been, and in its place was this wild fire that arrived without invitation and left only ruin in its wake.
He did not know how to do that again. And this was not shadows. Shadows did not burn things.
He gathered the ruined missive and disposed of it, then spent a few minutes making sure nothing else on the desk was singed. When he was satisfied, he left the study. So far, Ragnar had been able to hide his string of mishaps.
---
Circe was already in bed when he returned to their chambers, lying on her side with the covers drawn up to her shoulder.
Ragnar undressed quietly and got in beside her. When he settled and reached for her, she stirred.
He pulled her towards him, closing the space between them until he could feel the warmth of her body through the thin linen of her shift. She made a soft sound and let herself be moved until half of her body was on top of him.
He pressed his lips on hers and she kissed him back, her hand coming up to rest against his firm chest, and for a moment the memory of the queen’s machinations and the letter he burned receded from the front of his mind.
Since returning home, he found it difficult to stay away from her for long. He was always drawn to her, always wanting her close, close enough to touch. And whenever she was near, he found it impossible not to. freēwēbnovel.com
Being with her had a way of quieting everything else. The weight of his troubles would fade, and for a while, he could simply exist without the constant pressure of the burdens that haunted him each day. She became his refuge, his safe haven, and in her arms was the only place he truly felt he belonged.
His hand moved down the line of her side and came to rest at her abdomen, lingering there.
His hand moved gently over the slight swell of her stomach, tenderly tracing the small curve that held his unborn child. Each time he saw it or felt it, emotion rose within him. It was proof that something precious was growing inside Circe, the woman he loved beyond reason.
In a few months, he was going to be a father. The knowledge filled him with a fierce protectiveness and a type of joy he had never known before.
