Chapter 52: Is He Alive
"Let me see that!" Rhea lunged forward from her seat, her chest heaving in ragged bursts. She snatched the weapon from the elder’s hand, her fingers instantly recognizing the cold weight of the hilt.
With trembling hands, she reached to her own thigh, pulled Kaleb’s blade, which he had used to stab her, from its sheath, and laid them side by side on the dark wood. The tears finally spilled over her cheeks, blurring her vision. The matching gold etchings, the precise curve of the wolf’s tooth on the pommel, it was an exact match.
"It’s the same," she choked out, her voice fracturing down the middle. "This is Kaleb’s personal blade."
Inside her skull, River unleashed a long, agonizing wail of pure, unbridled grief.
Rhea slowly lifted her head, her silver eyes blazing with a terrifying, lethal white light as she stared at her mate. "You put this very steel into my chest, and then you planned to use it to slit my baby’s throat?" she asked, her voice shaking with a dangerous, quiet malice.
"Damn his soul to the dark moon!" River barked, her phantom jaws snapping in a frenzy. "Let me tear him apart!"
"I do not know those men! They are liars!" Kaleb barked in a desperate, wild defense, his hands gripping the rail so hard the wood groaned. "They could have easily slipped into my quarters and stolen that knife! Look at them, they have the foul scent of rogues!"
"No, Kaleb. These men are not nameless rogues," Adam’s smooth baritone cut through the shouting, instantly dropping the temperature in the room. "They belong to Bloodveil."
Kaleb stiffened, his amber eyes going completely wide as he processed the words. "You— You had spies planted in my vanguard?" he snapped, his head whipping toward Rhea. "That is a direct breach of territory! That is treason against the alliance! And how could you not know that, Rhea? It was your absolute duty as Luna to smell them out!"
"I was on my sickbed, remember?" Rhea shot back, her voice dripping with cold sarcasm. "Right where you and your dear mistress put me."
Kaleb tore his panicked gaze away from her, facing the high elders with a desperate, sweating urgency. "Elders, you have heard Alpha Thorne’s own confession! These men are soldiers of Bloodveil, which means their testimonies are bought and paid for! Their words mean absolutely nothing under Council law. This entire charade should be dismissed immediately!"
The three elders shifted in their seats, exchanging low, murmured glances as they weighed the legalities of the border laws.
"The Duskbane Alpha has a point," one of the councilors muttered from the back of the tier, nodding slowly. "Bloodveil spies cannot legally testify against an Ironfang monarch."
Rhea’s eyes widened, a cold, suffocating dread dropping into her stomach like lead. No.
"We cannot dismiss the evidence simply because they were spies," she protested, her chest heaving in desperate bursts against her ribs. She slammed her hand down onto the matching blades, the steel clinking sharply. "The crest does not lie!"
Silence fell over the high chamber first, thick, heavy, and suffocating.
"There is one path to find the truth," Adam’s smooth baritone cut through the freezing air. Every head in the room snapped toward him. He lifted a single, broad finger and pointed it directly at Daniel. "He can corroborate this nightmare, I am certain."
Kaleb’s grip on the wooden armrest tightened so violently that the ancient grain groaned and splintered under his claws. Daniel looked at the fracturing wood, then slowly shifted his steady gaze to Adam.
"Did Kaleb command that the pup be left in the wilderness for the wild animals?" Elder Rowan asked, leaning forward over the stone rail.
Daniel shrugged his shoulders, his chest still tight from the crushing pressure of the elders’ earlier command. "I have no idea, Elder. And that is the absolute truth on my wolf," he said, his voice level. "But one truth I do hold is this. The Alpha has, for many winters, outsourced his darkest kills when he wanted to taint the ground and ensure the blood would never splash back onto his own name."
"Nonsense!" Kaleb spat, a thread of foam flecking his lower lip as his amber eyes turned manic. "Produce these executioners then! Show me the men!"
"Well, that brings me to the second tragedy," Daniel continued, his voice dropping into a dark, grim register. "We cannot drag those warriors into this room because none of them are alive. And the few who still walk this earth are lacking their tongues. Now, I finally understand why the Alpha ordered my unit to hunt down and execute these three vanguard males, and why they vanished before we could slit their throats."
"We have more than enough treason to summon the silver block right now. What are we still waiting for?" Elder Rowan said, his deep tone thick with unfiltered disdain as he looked down at Kaleb. "This Alpha possesses no honor. His beast is corrupted."
"You cannot execute a King on the word of a rogue Beta! It is his word against mine!" Kaleb spat, his dominant aura pushing outward in a desperate, suffocating wave.
"Then answer this Council one final time, Duskbane!" Elder Magnus barked, his ancient voice vibrating the stone. "Did you, or did you not, attempt to end the life of your own flesh and blood?"
Kaleb stared at the high elder. His chest heaved in ragged, shallow gasps, his nostrils flaring as he inhaled the scent of his own looming ruin, but his lips remained sealed into a tight line.
Rhea slowly shook her head, hot tears finally blurring her vision as a brutal realization slammed into her soul. She looked around the grim room, her gaze sweeping over every face.
From the high elders who confirmed that there was no record of Eli’s death, to Kaleb, who knew her boy had been stolen and faked a grave to hide the truth, to Adam, who sat there completely unreadable, his stoic mask holding firm, along with the ultimate fate of her son.
"I am done with this circus of arguments and defenses," Rhea blurted out, her voice cracking with quiet fury. She shook her head, stepping away from the tables. "Everyone in this sacred hall seems to know more about my son than me, his own mother," she said, her voice dropping into a dangerous whisper. "But my wolf only demands to know one thing."
All eyes settled heavily on her, the frantic whispering in the gallery dying instantly as the room held its collective breath.
Rhea shifted her silver gaze first to the stone dais, then to the sweating, desperate face of Kaleb, and finally, she locked her eyes onto Adam. "Is my boy alive?" she asked, her voice trembling slightly against the suffocating silence.
Adam swallowed hard, his throat bobbing beneath his heavy collar. He looked deep into her silver eyes, staring straight into the raw, bleeding sorrow that lived in the depths of her soul.
Then, he gave a single, firm nod. "Yes."