Kaden simply blinked at Lord Loratyk. He didn’t think the man would really try to throw his son to the wolves that easily. It cemented the rise to power he was set on. Kaden shook his head and waved his hands.

“No, no. This is not right.”

“I order you to seize him!”

Kaden scoffed. “You can’t order me to do anything! This is ridiculous! He’s your son!”

Anders pleaded to him. “Dad, we should just tell him what happened.”

“Tell him, what? That you let traitors into our home and convinced me that you were in love with one of them? I tried to be a caring father, to accept her and her so-called family.”

“That’s what you called caring?” Anders shot back.

Kaden couldn’t help but look around awkwardly as the two yelled at each other.

“You literally kicked me out of the keep because I didn’t get blessed by a matriarch. I had to live on the streets! Why do you think they found me so easily?”

“I was trying to give you tough love.”

“That’s neglect and abuse, father! They were nice to me! Of course, I was entranced by her. For the first time in my life, someone actually listened to me.”

Kaden waved his hands out, cutting them off. “Wait a second, wait a second. Let me get this right: He didn’t get blessed, so you kicked him out of his home. Then the Serpents targeted. How did we get to them having a rune book?”

“He felt bad,” Anders said as he waved toward his father. “He saw I was doing okay with Gina and so he felt like he had to show off to her.”

“So you gave her a rune book?” Kaden was floored that it came down to bad parenting. “How does impressing your son’s girlfriend result in that?”

Lord Loratyk shrugged. “They made a good case at the time about how they were going to use the runes for good. I wanted to believe them because my son believed them.”

Kaden rubbed his face. “So you did give them the book, then?”

Loratyk rolled his eyes. “Well, yes, technically I did it.”

“So if he’s a terrorist, so are you.”

Loratyk threw his hands up and turned around before pacing back and forth. “You have caused me so many problems, son.”

This wasn’t the full confession that Kaden or the others needed. This was just them admitting that Anders had a girl take advantage of him. If the lord was as harsh on him as he was in that moment, it wasn’t a surprise the boy got taken for a ride by someone so easily.

“Is this really something to tell the other lord about, then?” Kaden tried to ease Loratyk’s worry so he may confess more of his misgivings. “Why would you need to tell Lord Cronley about this?”

“Yeah,” the lord turned back to Anders. “All this will do is attach us to the serpent's attack. They just attacked the king, you dunce!”

“How did they do that, Dad?”

“They hid with the nobles, and got inside for the feast.”

He crossed his arms. “You said you killed them all, Dad. You forced me to leave when you did so. If you killed them all, then why did Kaden here get assaulted by Gina’s brother in the main hall?”

Kaden's eyes popped wider. They hadn’t discussed this. The very first attack they were aware of was against him in the hall. He hadn’t mentioned that he knew that person. Even so, it wasn’t that he just knew them; it was the brother to his lover. That was an important detail to leave out. Kaden wondered what else they had left out.

“I got rid of them.” The Lord said in a low tone.

“How? How did you get rid of them, Father? You told me they were dead!”

“I got rid of them!”

Anders threw his hand out. “You lied to me and you’re lying to everyone! You didn’t get rid of them! You moved them!”

“Everything I did, I did for our family!” He shouted through gritted teeth.

“What did you do, Father?”

With a whip of his hand, he pushed the two of them back with a gust of wind. Kaden stumbled and fell as he hadn’t expected the move. It was working.

“Why was he alive?!” Anders wasn’t letting his father get out of it. “You told me you killed her. I mourned her! I mourned them! You forced me to grin and bear it after the investigation started. You told me to lie to them!”

“We needed them.” The Lord said as spittle escaped his lips. “We were using them, you fool.”

“For what? It wasn’t for the people! They just wanted others to not suffer! You armed them! You have their magic when they had none! You taught them runes you never even taught me!”

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Another burst of wind threw both Anders and Kaden into the air, tumbling them about before hitting the ground hard. Kaden grunted as his chest hit first, forcing his breath out of his lungs.

“That fool of a king didn’t know how to run this country.” He was walking toward them, pulling in the moisture around him to his hands.

Kaden pulled himself up to his feet to look him in the eye. “And Ambassador Laramee? How did he factor into all of this?”

The lord stopped and the misting around his hands died down for just a moment. Kaden realized from the puzzled expression on his face that he hadn't yet acquired that knowledge. The white mages had done well to keep that under wraps.

“I —”

Kaden didn’t even bother to let him finish. “You see, it wasn’t a random agent that told me the water was tainted.”

Throwing his hand down as well, he let the water pull toward it. “It was a matriarch at the citadel. You see, she gave me a vision.”

Lord Loratyk was watching as Kaden casually made steps toward him.

“I’ve been shown a lot of visions lately, from a lot of matriarchs.”

The lord pulled in the water to his hands again with more ferocity, causing a frigid chill to blow into the forest. Kaden smirked at it and pulled it toward him instead. The lord’s eyes darted around in as the water was stripped from his grasp.

“I saw the end of the world. There was a water lord there with me and it wasn’t you.”

“Visions can be misunderstood.” He tried to bumble his way through an explanation. “Or be fragmented.”

“They showed me Ambassador Laramee murdering the only serpent agents we caught.” He flicked his hand so the water started to freeze around his arm. “So I went to see if that was real. Do you know what I found?”

The Lord looked down his nose at him but didn’t answer.

“He was trying to murder them in cold blood. Needless to say, we stopped him. I think when they give me these visions, I need to heed them.”

Anders had finally stood up behind them, Kaden could feel his magic wanting to pull at the water in his body. The lord pushed on Kaden, on his body to get him to stop walking toward him. He could feel the tingle spread across him. It didn’t feel as it had before when the Ambassador had done it; this was muted.

Rolling his shoulders back, Kaden laughed as he took another step forward. It was as if he was wading through mud, but he was still pushing toward the lord. His hands waved wildly in a strange formation, and Kaden felt his body begin to cool. His body temperature was dropping quickly.

“I was only trying to save this nation,” he shouted as the lord waved his hands.

Kaden could feel the chill crawling through his veins. Exhaustion and sleep were hitting him harder than he thought was possible. It was getting harder for him to think as he tried to push the magic away.

“He was going to bleed the people dry. The citadel move was… I didn’t agree with it.”

Trying to grab onto the chill that was enveloping his body, Kaden forced himself to concentrate on the blood pulsing through it. He dropped the ice surrounding his hands before falling to his knees. Clutching his heart, he tried to force the blood to pump through himself.

“It was too early. He was getting anxious about the investigations here. I had told him at our last meeting to hold off on anything.”

“Your last meeting,” Anders said behind them. “The Ambassador hasn’t been back to our realm for months before you met Gina.”

Kaden’s heart ached as the chill spread into him. A tendril of darkness spread over his vision. In that instant, he knew exactly what was causing the chill. Lord Loratyk didn’t just have the elemental magic at his beck and call. He was using the darkness as well.

“Gina’s group was foolishly naïve. They were working independently. They thought they could go after me through you, not knowing my position.”

“Your position?” Anders said as Kaden had to brace himself on all fours.

Darkness began to pool around the lord’s feet as he walked toward the two of them, misting and licking the air around them. Kaden gasped as a tendril touched him, leeching the life from him.

“Do you think we planned a coup in one day, son?”

A devastated sob erupted from Anders. That was the confession, the admittance that he was involved in what had happened outright. His father just admitted to orchestrating the attack on the king.

“I am truly sorry that you got involved. And to think, you thought it was all about giving rights to the poor, so foolish.”

The darkness swelled around him as he came closer. It was as if he was floating across the ground toward them. He very well might be from the combination of both wind and water magics. Kaden knew that by showing them this magic, and admitting what he was, he wasn’t intending to let either one of them leave.

“Anders,” he coughed out. “Run!”

His body was pushed into the ground as the powerful force of wind slammed him down. The cold darkness inside him was weakening his ability to fight back. He had tried his best to be prepared for wind and water. He didn’t think the darkness would be involved.

Nearing Kaden, Lord Loratyk bent down to look him in the eye. He pulled his face up by his chin, his fingers pressing hard into his jaw.

“You have caused me so much strife. To think, a farm boy was capable of all of that.”

He tossed Kaden’s head back down, and it bounced off the dirt.

“I had only begun my ascension. The dragons weren’t ready to be out yet. We hadn’t fed them enough to grow. What choice did I have after that blunder at the citadel?”

Kaden rolled his eyes at the monologuing.

“Then you had to come around and throw it all into disarray. First, you involved the water mages, then you stopped the attack at the citadel. Now you managed to not only summon all of the matriarchs, but they destroyed all my hard work while they were here. How am I supposed to have an army at my beck and call if the matriarchs can just devour them like that?”

Kaden couldn’t help himself. “You won’t get away with this.”

Leaning back down to look at him, he said, “Oh, but I have. The king now trusts me implicitly. I wasn’t stupid when I made this move. I made sure I was in the right place when it all went down.”

Standing up abruptly, he did a little skip as the shadowed darkness left wispy remnants from every step he took. Kaden glared at them as they faded away into the sky. He couldn’t let the darkness win. He had already fought it himself once. If he let it win now, what was all this for?

“Now I just need to bide my time, keep the other lords at a distance, and fuel the paranoia the king will have and things will change. He will become my puppet. I will be the one in control.”

Kaden could feel the darkness wrapping around his heart as he desperately tried to push and pull the blood through it. He knew if he didn’t have the powers the matriarchs had granted him, he would have been dead already.

“Did you know,” the lord had spun around to Kaden again as he said, “that dragons are entirely magical creatures?”

Kaden just gave a grunt in reply as he tried to focus on keeping his blood moving.

“When they die, they give a delicious amount of magic. It’s just there for anyone to take.”

It was strong, too strong for him. His vision was blurring, getting darker as he tried to keep himself alive.

“I need to thank your matriarch one of these days for providing us with so many young dragons.”

Push in, pull out. Push in, pull out. He had to keep the blood moving.

“You should die soon, Champion of the Night of Fallen wings. Even a white mage can’t handle that much darkness.”

Closing his eyes, Kaden couldn’t hold on any longer. They got his admission, but at what cost?

“You were a pain, young rider. I won’t be sad at your demise.”

Push in. Push out.

Push in.

Push out.

Push… in…