Page 264 of The Crown's Awakening
The audacity. It was bad enough Colsar stood there as though the right were his by nature. Worse still that he deemed it appropriate for Arabar and Kentan to speak on his behalf.
He did not know what version of his brother stood before him now, only that it was not one he liked.
Colsar ignored the disturbance entirely. He had stepped closer to Asharin’s chair again, and while the argument continued he lifted one hand, crooked two fingers toward the child and made a ridiculous face that should have looked absurd on him and somehow did not. The child broke into a smile so quick and bright that the whole chamber felt altered by it. She cooed at him, delighted, her attention fixed on his face with unguardedadoration while he kept arguing with the same steady tone, as though this too were simply part of the conversation.
“She will not divide anything,” Colsar said. “She will command it.”
He made another face at the child, softer this time, and she responded with another delighted sound, her tiny hands moving in excitement while she remained planted on Asharin’s lap. Sevrin watched it and felt something dark and unfamiliar twist inside him. It was not only that the child adored him. It was the ease of it, the casual wholeness, the way Colsar could stand before a council and argue succession while smiling at his daughter and be answered with joy instead of strain.
The child looked at Sevrin then. Her eyes were brown, but too light, too clear, carrying some future color beneath them that had not risen yet. He knew with certainty they would turn gold. He cannot tell which of her parents she resembles more. All he could see was that she possessed something in miniature that should not have belonged to an infant at all: defiance, entitlement, the absolute refusal to question her place in the room. He recognized it with immediate, private certainty: himself.
He heard Colsar still speaking. “She is different. You see it.”
Sevrin did.
“For the sake of this realm,” Colsar continued, “name what is already obvious. Our Arakis will inherit Shalvar. Fiorakis will inherit Veynar.”
“And if Veynar rejects the idea of an heir with divided loyalties,” Sevrin said, dragging the argument back into language before it dissolved entirely into sensation, “what then?”
Asharin answered before Colsar could. “Then Veynar will be foolish enough to reject its own strongest future.”
Arabar spoke again, calm as ever. “The child’s mother is beloved in Alarna and her father has returned with power, armies, and favor. The people of Veynar have already welcomed them. A beloved family produces stability where decrees alone cannot.”
Beloved family.
“I have little respect for you,” Colsar said, his eyes fixed on Sevrin while Fiorakis continued smiling at him from her mother’s lap. “I ought to kill you for what you allowed. But for the sake of this realm and my family, I will refrain.”
Family. It was the thing Sevrin had wanted and Colsar had always rejected. And yet here they were.
A dangerous, unwelcome pull rose in him then. It came from the terrible knowledge of what he had wanted and never had, what he had once allowed himself to imagine in unguarded moments and what now sat in front of him wearing another man’s face and another man’s name.
Asharin adjusted the baby lightly on her lap as Fiorakis smiled up toward Colsar again, still pleased, still watching him as though the room existed only to frame him.
Colsar stood and stared at Sevrin. Then he speaks. “Let my mother know. In the end, it was the dog who secured the future of this kingdom.”
Sevrin lunged. The distance collapsed all at once. Colsar met him instantly, and the council did not intervene because by then they were watching something much larger than an argument between brothers. They were watching the child, the succession,the future, the structure already forming around a family Sevrin had no place inside and could not stop staring at.
And in the center of that realization, with his body already in motion and his control already gone, he understood that whatever had begun in this room would not end here.
They collide with enough force to scatter the table behind them, wood scraping hard across the floor as Sevrin drives Colsar backward. For some unspoken, prideful reason, both of them have chosen to forego power, as though this fight is the true test of their strength. Colsar does not give ground easily, his body refusing to yield the way most do, the resistance in him something beyond training or stubbornness.
Sevrin has to work for every inch, his weight pressing in, muscles straining against something that pushes back with equal force and does not tire the way it should. For a moment it is simply two men who should not be matched, matched entirely.
Then Sevrin finds the angle he needs and forces him down, following with his full weight, his fist rising with the instinct to finish what he began. But then something seizes him mid-motion and tears him away from the moment with violent precision, his body lifting and then slamming hard across the chamber as though he has been both claimed and discarded.
The impact knocks the air from him.
The room goes silent. At first there is nothing, and then a sound breaks through, small and low, not quite human. Something that can only be described as a growl.
Sevrin remains where he landed, stunned. He has faced magic before. He has fought it and endured it, but this is unmistakable. He pushes himself upright slowly, his attention no longer onColsar but drawn toward the source with something that feels dangerously close to inevitability.
Asharin sits where she had been, composed despite everything, the child held close against her.
And on her lap, the girl.
Colsar has pushed himself up as well, breathing harder now, his focus moving between Sevrin and the child with something that resembles both recognition and calculation.
Sevrin steps forward. The child watches him. Her eyes are no longer a soft, light brown. They have deepened into something richer and darker, a burgundy so vivid it seems to carry heat beneath it. Her tiny fingers have curled into small claws.
