KORO’S POV The silence that followed the departure of the Syndicate was more violent than the heat in the room.
We stood in the center of the Council Chamber, the floor beneath us still humming with the residual energy of Rujin’s outburst.
Vane and the remaining guards stood at the periphery, their faces like stone, but their eyes were windows into a deeper, darker reality.
They didn’t look at Rujin with the reverence of subjects but looked at him with the cold, calculated loathing of prisoners watching their master.
“Back to the room,” Rujin commanded.
We left the chambers, and the walk through the corridors felt like a funeral procession.
We passed the glass-walled offices and the tiered gardens of the elite, and the inhabitants of the upper world stopped to watch.
They stood by, and they bowed as we passed, a mechanical ripple of feigned loyalty, but as soon as Rujin’s back was turned, I saw the masks slip.
I saw the way a Duchess of the North Sector tightened her grip on her wine glass until it shattered.
I saw a High Commander of the Wolf Guard spit silently into the frost at the edge of the carpet.
They fucking hated him.
Hated him for the heat he gave them, and they hated him for the power it gave him over their lives.
Then there was I, walking seven feet behind him, the cuffs glowing a dull, rhythmic orange.
When the doors to the chambers finally hissed shut, cutting off the prying eyes of the court, the atmosphere changed instantly, and Rujin didn’t stop at the bar or the desk.
He walked straight to the center of the room and collapsed into his chair, his head falling back against the leather.
“Vane,” he rasped, his eyes closed.
“Don Marks?” Vane stood by the door, his hands clasped behind his back.
“Clear the floor,” Rujin ordered.
“I want no guards in the hallway or servants in the kitchens.
I want the silence of the grave until morning.” “Rujin, the security protocols.” Vane’s voice rose.
“The security protocols are currently melting,” Rujin snapped, his eyes flying open.
“I can feel them, Vane.
I can feel every pair of eyes in this Spire boring into my skull and sense their hunger for my heart to stop.
” “As you wish,” Vane nodded.
He signalled to the two guards standing by the entrance, and they moved with a hurried, fearful efficiency, exiting the room and sealing the doors behind them.
Rujin stayed in his chair, his chest heaving, and surprisingly, he looked smaller now, stripped of the dragon-shadow he had projected in the chamber and even looking like a man who was being eaten alive by his own soul.
“Why do you do it?” I asked out of the blue and wondered why I spoke up.
Rujin didn’t move.
“Do what, little wolf?” “Rule them,” I responded.
“They hate you.
Every single person we passed in that hallway would have pushed you off the edge of the Spire if they thought they could survive the winter without you.
You’re a Don of a kingdom that’s just waiting for you to die.” Rujin let out a dry, hacking laugh.
” You think I don’t see the poison in their smiles or the pretense in their faces?
They don’t hate me, Koro,” he said, stopping five feet away.
“They hate the sun and the fact that they are shifter beasts who cannot survive the world they were born into.
They hate that their lives are measured in the power heat that I distribute.” He reached out, his hand hovering near my face.
“You and I,” he whispered, “we are the only honest things in this Spire.
You hate me because I took your freedom.
I hate myself because I cannot stop taking.
“His fingers touched my jaw.
“They see a monster,” Rujin said, his thumb tracing the line of my lower lip.
“They see a tyrant who hoards the fire, but they never ask what the fire does to the hearth.” He pulled me closer, the Thermal Lock humming with a low, vibrating frequency.
I could feel the heat radiating through his shirt, and for a moment, the defiance in my chest wavered because I recognized the look in his eyes.
It was the look of a trapped animal.
“You think you’re so different from them,” I said, my voice a whisper.
“But you’re just as afraid of the cold as they are.
“I am the wall that keeps the White Death from swallowing this city whole.
If I fail, Nara dies.
If I fail, the Iron-Paw Pack becomes a collection of ice statues.
I am the only reason you have a world to hate.
You signed the contract, Koro.
Do not mistake my exhaustion for weakness, as I still own every drop of blood in your body.” Rujin was toxic and a predator who had forgotten how to be anything else and built a world out of fear and fire, and now he was surprised that the people in it wanted to see him burn.
“I didn’t sign because I believed in you,” I said, my voice cold and steady.
“I signed because you gave me no choice, but don’t think for a second that I’ve forgotten what you are.
” Rujin set the glass down with a sharp clack and turned back to me, the toxic smirk returning to his face, though it didn’t reach his eyes.
As long as it’s snowing outside, you’re staying right where I can feel you.” He walked toward his bedroom, the Thermal Lock yanking me along with him.
We walked in the dark, and inside the bedroom, Rujin stripped off his shirt, revealing a torso that looked as if the gods had forged it, and he sat on the bed.
“Sit,” he commanded.
I moved and sat on the edge of the bed, seven feet away, and the heat was a physical weight that made my skin crawl.
“You think they hate me now?
Wait until they see what I do to keep you alive.
Wait until they see how much of their precious heat I waste on a single hybrid.” Rujin whispered.
He lay back, his eyes closing, but he didn’t go to sleep.
He stayed there, a silent, burning presence in the dark, and I stayed there beside him, the only thing in the world that could touch him without turning to ash.
I looked at the obsidian cuffs on my wrists, and, for the first time, I didn’t see a grave.
I saw a fuse, and I was just waiting for the spark.