Bound to the Hybrid King

Chapter 8: The Binding Part 1

They arrived on the sixteenth day, as planned and unsurprisingly the palace knew it before Theia did.

Theia felt the shift in the air the way one feels the quiet before the storm hits, a tightening of every servant's shoulders, a hush that fell over the corridors.

She was summoned to the throne room in the pale gold hour after midday, dressed by herself, in a gown of deep blue. Chosen, she suspected, for its resemblance to the colours of the crown she was marrying into. Her hands had not stopped trembling since she woke, and she pressed them flat against her skirts as she walked, trying to ignore her still throbbing ribs, while willing her hands to still, she willed her face into the careful neutrality, a mask she had spent years perfecting.

She strangely smelled him before she saw him, something she wasn’t sure she’d ever experienced before. Sensing someone’s innate scent. Though it took her a moment to understand what she was smelling. It was like fresh cold rain and crushed pine, faint beneath the throne room's usual incense. Wrong because she should not be able to smell such things. Then the great doors opened fully and she understood.

There were three of them, and they moved as all predators moved, but as individuals, rather they were a single creature with three separate bodies. So entirely attuned to one another's presence that the space around them seemed to bend to accommodate them. Theia had never seen anything like it, and something in her chest went very tight and very small at the sight.

The one at the centre could only be Nikolai Ashryn. The Hybrid King in the flesh. He was tall in a way that seemed almost like an act of violence against the room itself, dressed completely in black that drank in the light, dark hair falling in a careless sweep across a face built of sharp, unforgiving angles. His cheekbones were like something carved rather than naturally formed. In fact, his entire face looked like it be carved from marble.

His dark brown eyes found her the moment he crossed the threshold, and Theia felt the full weight of that attention settle over her like a hand closing around her throat, not violent, not yet, but entirely, unmistakably powerful. He did not smile. She was not surprised. She dropped her gaze and lowered her head, an act of submission, that she’d learnt long ago appeased most men in power. Though, the general who was suspiciously closer to her, rather than the opposite side of her father throne as usual, tensed as she did so.

She did not look at him. She didn’t, not want to see what was on the general’s face.

She slowly, in a casual movement, lifted her head once again. Then she took in the rest of the scene, noting everything little detail she could.

That was how she learned to survive this place, she couldn’t afford to miss anything, it may be the difference of her life, or theirs.

The man on Nikolai’s left was easier to look at, though no less overwhelming. A broad enough man to fill a doorway on his own. Built like something meant for war rather than court, with a wide, easy grin that seemed entirely out of place amid the solemnity of the room. Yet, somehow, he managed to soften it, make the air fractionally more breathable.

His green eyes, when they found hers, were warm. It startled her so much, she almost took an involuntary step back. He must has read something on her face because he inclined his head with a small, informal nod that felt almost like kindness, then winked at her. It took all her years of practice to keep her face devoid of any emotion. Especially as the general was practically vibrating with rage next to her.

She quickly looked away, then she looked to Nikolai’s right. There stood the third, slightly apart, and where the other two radiated heat, he radiated something closer to absence. A stillness so complete it made her skin prickle. He was beautiful, the way frost was beautiful, in a way that promised nothing but unforgiving cold, and when his gaze passed over her, it did not linger with curiosity or warmth but with something closer to distaste. A swift, dismissive assessment that made Theia lower her eyes to the floor once again before she had consciously decided to do so.

'Your Majesty.' Her father's voice, formal and hollow, greeted the three men with the stiffness he reserved for matters he found distasteful but necessary. 'We welcome the King of Aretrea and his commanders, to Iskeld.'

Nikolai's voice was low and even, rich and full, carrying an authority that required no volume to enforce itself. 'King Aldric. Let us not draw this out longer than is necessary for either of our houses. I have no need for formalities. We’d like to be done with this and back to Ashbane within two days.’

Theia stayed looking at the ground. Nikolai’s words were dismissive and impatient. She had expected nothing less. But now the reality of her new life started to seep into the hollow parts of her. She tried to focus on her breathing, one breath in, one breath out. Hoping the world would not fade to blackness quiet yet. Not until she could get out of this room.

She was not asked to speak and was not addressed directly at any point.

She stood where she had been positioned and watched the negotiations of her own fate pass over her head in language too formal and too swift to truly believe they were talking about her life as if she wasn’t standing right here. She watched her father and this stranger discuss terms and timelines as though she was an object, and felt, not for the first time in her life, entirely and thoroughly absent from her own existence.

Once both kings were happy enough, everyone but her father, Nikolai, his commanders and the general, were dismissed.

Then the priestess arrived. She was an old woman in grey robes who set a shallow silver bowl upon a low table before the throne and Nikolai glanced at his two commanders briefly with an unreadable look and stepped up to the table. It was comical how large he was next to the priest.

She sensed her father's gaze and found it funny how, when she was small, she used to yearn for him to just look at her, to just remember she existed. Now she’d give anything to have him stop staring at her. She hadn’t wished for his attention for many years, learning that when it did fall to her nothing good followed.

But surprisingly, it was the general’s voice that broke into her spiralling mind.

‘Theia,’ he said firmly. She looked at him then. He half-smiled at her and nodded his head toward the table, toward Nikolai. A command.

She had no choice but to move, slowly, so no one would notice her wince at the pain her rib threw at her over each stride.

She stood in front of the table, a few feet away from the hybrid king, his presence even more overwhelming up close.

Theia thought it was ironic that the priestess started without any ceremony, in a voice like dry leaves, to speak words Theia did not recognise. Old words, older than the kingdom itself. Theia's heart began to hammer.

Minutes passed but it felt like hours.

'Your hand,' the priestess suddenly said to her, and Theia extended it because there was nothing else she could do, because refusal had never once, in her whole life, been a door left open to her.

The blade was small and impossibly sharp. This was it. The blood-binding details had been vague about it from the steward, and she had realised it was because he simply didn’t know, rather than any malice towards her. So, she was still unsure what would happen next.