Chapter 61. The Princess's Gambit - Part II
Encounter Two: The Training Hall at Dusk
The training hall was never truly empty.
Not for Sylen Velwraithe.
Even in silence, he could hear the echoes of sparring matches long past — the crack of wooden staves, the ring of steel against steel, the barks of command from captains whose bones now lay in the catacombs beneath Ebonspire. The air was heavy with ghosts. Smoke and oil clung to the rafters, seared into the grain of wood and stone after decades of battle-drills.
Sylen moved through that silence as though he belonged to it, a shadow among shadows. He had stripped down to the waist, skin gleaming with the sheen of exertion, his broad chest heaving with steady rhythm. The scars across his torso glimmered faintly where torchlight licked them — pale ridges earned in campaigns that now felt like another lifetime.
His wings — vast, black as midnight — shifted occasionally, rustling in the still air like restless banners. His sword whistled arcs through the space, each swing clean, precise, restrained. This was no idle practice. This was penance. His discipline was the last bastion against an ache he refused to name.
Then a voice broke the hall's ancient hush.
"Your form's impeccable."
It wasn't one of his men. It wasn't memory.
It was her.
Sephora's tone slipped from the darkness like smoke from a brazier, teasing, almost intimate.
He turned sharply, every muscle tensing, blade lowered instinctively but still ready.
And there she was — leaning against the rack of polearms with all the indolence of someone who had never tasted the weight of duty. A dagger spun idly between her fingers, flashing briefly in the torchlight before disappearing again into her palm.
She wore no court gown tonight. No silken cascade of feathers and lace. Instead, her body was wrapped in close-fitting training garb, dark fabric hugging her narrow waist and lean curves, sleeveless to bare the pale, sinewy strength of her arms. Her raven-feathered wings flared slightly, half-unfurled, not quite posturing — but not at rest either. A predator stretching in the dark.
"You shouldn't be here," Sylen said, his voice rough, clipped. He forced his gaze back to his blade, to the ground, to anything but her.
"And yet…" Sephora pushed off the rack, circling him with deliberate steps, "here I am."
Her footsteps whispered across the sand-dusted floor.
He swung his sword again, sharper, faster, pretending she wasn't there. Precision — control — was the only shield left to him.
But she matched him.
Her dagger cut the air when his blade did. Her footfalls echoed his stance. Her eyes never left him, pale irises glittering in the low torchglow like ice catching fire.
Two predators. Circling. Testing.
Sylen tightened his grip until his knuckles whitened. His chest rose and fell with controlled rhythm, but inside — inside his restraint wavered like glass over flame.
At last she stepped closer, too close, and struck.
Her dagger caught his blade with a sharp clash, steel ringing into the rafters. Sparks scattered briefly like fireflies. She leaned into the bind, her smaller frame deceptively strong, her wings flaring to balance her weight.
His jaw tightened. "You mock training?"
"I mock nothing, Commander," she said softly, her smile dangerous. "I want to feel what you teach my sister."
"That is not your path." His voice was harsh, almost a growl.
Sephora tilted her head, feathers brushing his bare arm as she pressed harder against his sword. Her breath was hot against his cheek, smelling faintly of roses and iron. "Everything is my path… if I choose it."
The steel between them shivered. His muscles strained to hold against her audacity more than her strength.
He shoved back, rough, breaking the bind. The clash rang sharp as judgment.
"You test me. Again."
She laughed — low, dangerous, soft as silk but sharp as a knife under velvet. "And you pass. Barely."
With deliberate slowness, she sheathed the dagger at her thigh. Then, as she swept past him, her wing brushed across his bare chest — a feathered caress that seared worse than fire.
Sylen froze.
Her steps whispered out of the hall. The torchlight dimmed in her wake, as though the air itself exhaled relief at her absence.
As Commander Sylen stood rooted in place, heart hammering, every nerve ablaze.
He could not deny what he felt.
He could not allow himself to admit it either.
He would never.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
That night, Sylen returned to his own estate — not the grand Velwraithe manor, where his brother Lord Everan the head of his house lived, but Sylen's was a smaller townhouse keep reserved for his branch of the family... if you could say he had any.
It was not empty. The halls were full of finely carved chairs, tapestries woven in deep blacks and silvers, iron sconces burning steadily along the walls. Yet to Sylen it felt hollow.
Empty of laughter.
Empty of voices.
Empty of the family he once had.
He walked past the dining table that had not hosted more than his solitary meals in years. Past the sitting room where no children had played. Past the marital chamber that had belonged to him and his wife — long dead, taken in the last civil war.
The silence was absolute. He had learned to live with it.
Until Sephora's laughter haunted it now, lingering like smoke in every corner.
Sylen sat heavily in the great chair before the hearth, staring into the flames. His sword leaned against the wall, but he could not bring himself to lift it again.
He thought of the kiss they had nearly shared. The heat of her breath. The challenge in her eyes. The press of her wing against his chest.
His oath echoed back to him: loyalty to Queen Nox, to the Raven throne, to the dignity of his house. He had survived war, widowhood, betrayal. He had survived everything but this.
And in that lonely chamber, beneath the weight of his ghosts, Sylen broke.
For the first time, he let himself think of Sephora not as a princess, not as the queen's daughter, not as his responsibility — but as a woman. A dangerous, intoxicating, forbidden woman who had set his blood aflame.
His breath quickened. His body remembered her too vividly. Her fire had seeped beneath his armor, into his very bones.
He hated himself for it.
He hungered for it all the same.
When the fever finally left him, he leaned forward, elbows braced on his knees, face buried in his hands. His body trembled with shame, with release, with the terrible knowledge that Sephora now lived in his blood.
And that next time… if she tried again, he feared that by all his oath and all he had bee through that...next time, he might not be strong enough to stop.