Chapter 36: Maverick

Palace of the Equinox Throne: Kingdom of Delos

It wasn't lost on Maverick that someone was still trying to kill him.

It had taken all of his persuasive abilities to convince Aditya and Zephyr not to follow him back to Delos and even more to convince Neva to remain outside of the palace gates. Maverick had to do this alone. Quiet, remaining in the shadows, he made his way into his childhood home through a hidden door on the west side, one that members of the royal family and their guard used to escape in times of siege or distress.

He waited in his mother's room, hidden in the dark shadows of the corner beyond her curtains. Valencia retired late that evening, undoubtedly having been serving her king. Maverick padded forward silently to reveal himself but, before he could, she spoke.

"This is no way to greet your mother after so long away," she purred, her voice like smooth silk running along the edge of the night. Maverick couldn't help but smile as he stepped into the light, watching as she pulled off her jewelry and dropped them onto her vanity table.

"Mother," Maverick spoke, keeping his voice low so as not to be overheard despite the fact that they were quite alone in Valencia's room. "It's good to see you."

"And you," she said, finally turning to look at her son with a raised brow. "Though I don't expect you'll be staying for good given the way you've slithered in here this evening."

"No. Not yet."

"Why not?"

She crossed her arms the way Valencia always did when she was preparing for a fight.

"There's someone who needs me," Maverick explained, stepping forward. He reached up and gently took his mother's hands in his own, then he watched her closely as he asked his next question. "How do you know Gabriel Barlowe?"

Valencia's lips parted slightly, the only betrayal of her true surprise.

"I don't know who that is," she lied. Maverick could tell she was lying. He just couldn't tell why.

She wrenched her hands from his grip and strode past him. If Maverick didn't know any better, he could have sworn his usually calm mother was shaking ever so slightly.

"His daughter's in danger," Maverick told her. "I need to get her somewhere safe. This palace has proven to be anything but in recent weeks. I had hoped you would know of a place where—"

"The Duke," Valencia interrupted him, turning back to him and blinking rapidly while trying to hide her shaking hands in the folds of her satin gown. It was so unlike Valencia that Maverick simply froze in his observation of her. "Kael. The Viduran. He can help her. She will be safe with him."

"Mother—"

"King Jareth is dead."

Maverick froze, blinking at her, stunned by the news.

"The Idorian king?" He asked, uncertain if he had heard her correctly but she nodded vigorously in return.

"They're saying the Chaos did it. That Bijan is riding out to meet him in the field. Helios isn't listening to me and Orion is too obsessed with Seraphina to believe—"

"Where is father now?"

"Maverick, don't. He won't listen to reason. He—"

"Where is he, mother?"

"In his room."

Maverick was out of his mother's room and storming toward his father's before she could stop him. She trailed after him for a time, begging him to stop, but gave up eventually and turned back.

King Helios Aphelion had just sent the last of his servants away when Maverick stormed into his room. A couple of his guards followed, muttering apologies at having been unable to stop his son from entering without warning. Helios dismissed them with an annoyed wave of his hand before turning his unimpressed glare onto Maverick.

"I assume you've come to berate me about politics once again," the King drawled lazily, sipping the last of his wine from his goblet before sitting on the edge of his enormous bed.

"Mother just told me that the King of Idoria is dead," Maverick said.

Helios watched him for a moment and, when he did not speak again, waved his hand in the air impatiently as if to say and?

"They're saying his lap dog, the Chaos, killed him."

"People say a great deal of things whilst knowing very little."

"Father, I met him."

Helios frowned at that. The first genuine reaction that Maverick had been able to draw out of him since his entrance.

"What do you mean you met him?" The king asked, brown knitted together in concern.

"I mean, we ran into him. In the forest on our way back."

"And you're alive?"

The king's callousness where Maverick's well-being was concerned had long since stopped being an issue of discomfort for him. All Maverick felt for the raised brow and disinterested grunt was disdain as he frowned and answered his king, not his father.

"I am," he said. "Because of the girl."

"What girl?"

Helios was losing interest. He sat his goblet on his nightstand and started rifling through a few papers that were stacked there.

"Delphi had visions of her. She said she's to change the outcome of the war. We met her here, in Delos, the night of the Karilish attack. She took us back to her people. She's one of the Ysuelt. The first female warrior in their ancient lineage. And she's Andhakaar."

Helios froze, his hand hovering inches above a stray paper he had been reaching for while Maverick spoke. Slowly, he turned to face his son, eyes narrowed in suspicion.

"Where did you hear that word?" he asked, his voice gruff but firm.

"Aditya," Maverick replied. "She's well learned in the history of the enchanters. She said one hasn't been seen in hundreds of years."

"Precisely. So why do you seem to believe this stray girl you picked up on the street might be one?"

"I saw it with my own eyes. The Chaos hurled his fireball at me and she stepped in front. The flames, they just... disintegrated. As if they'd never existed in the first place. And the Chaos, he just fell to the ground, screaming in agony."

"Did you capture him?"

For the first time, Maverick looked down at his feet, mortified. He should have thought of that.

"No," he confessed, ashamed. "We ran."

His father scoffed.

"The Chaos, though you may do well to start referring to him as Kazimir, after all, he's a boy, not a plague, has managed to convince the High Priestess of the Allegiant to back his claim," the king said.

"His claim?" Maverick asked, confused.

"To the throne. She has sanctified him, made his name holy within the bounds of their so-called religion. Every loyal follower of the Allegiance has accepted him as their leader. And they are a zealous lot. This boy has gathered the might of the Makana and the church and he's making a move against the remaining Idorian loyalty which means he's making a move against us."

"Seraphina," Maverick whispered, realization dawning upon him as his father informed him of all that he had missed.

"Precisely," the king replied with a sigh. "This Kazimir is amassing quite the following, spewing rhetoric about how all of us royals and nobles have been busy playing at politics while Karil murders enchanters with impunity."

"But we've allied ourselves with Idoria. We've taken their side in this conflict. Publicly. Whether it's the right thing to do or not."

"With Idoria, yes. But as far as this Chaos is concerned, Idoria is dead. The country is his now and anyone allowing the persecution of his people is automatically his enemy. Alliances and threats be damned. How is one to reason with that?"

"I told you that you shouldn't trust Jareth, father. I told you–"

Maverick was interrupted by the sound of screaming coming from the hall. He exchanged one glance with Helios before he and his father were running from the king's chambers and down the hall of the royal residences to where a small group of guards were still outside of Orion's door.

It wasn't the way that Maverick had ever wanted to see his brother. They had spent most of their lives arguing and fighting and being jealous of one another but no one deserved this.

Helios gasped from the hall and a few of the guards pulled him away, muttering platitudes that the king wouldn't hear. No one pulled Maverick away. The remaining guards seemed too horrified to do anything at all.

He was naked. That was the first thing that Maverick noticed. In hindsight, it wasn't the most shocking part of the scene but his brain wasn't processing what he was seeing to its fullest extent yet. In the following moments after that initial observation, he saw the knife sticking out of his brother's back, the blood coating everything from the formerly white sheets on his bed to the deep green carpet below. He was laying face down but his face was twisted upwards. His eyes were open but unseeing and his mouth was poised in a perfect O, a state of pure shock.

Maverick took a step forward. Something was sitting on the nightstand. A small piece of paper with a quill leaking ink down the side of the drawers laying beside it. He reached down.

Orion was dead. Murdered in his own bed. But his killer had taken the time to scrawl this message for them to find once they had fled. And as Maverick's eyes scanned the page, he felt a chill in his very bones.

For the Allegiant. For the Chaos.