Chapter 28: Royal Intimacy Interrupted
The fire had burned down to embers, painting the vast bedchamber in a shifting chiaroscuro of deep orange and long, velvety shadows. The palace was quiet, a rare and precious stillness that felt earned after the weeks of campaign reports and the lingering tension of the Red Harvest’s aftermath. Here, in this room, the scent was not of parchment or politics, but of sandalwood, sex, and the faint, sweet smell of Anora’s skin.
She moved above him, a slow, undulating rhythm that was less about urgency and more about profound, tactile reclamation. Her swollen belly, round and taut with their third child, pressed against his chest, a warm, living weight between them. His hands, those massive, hammer-wielding things, spanned her hips, his thumbs drawing slow circles on the soft skin of her abdomen.
“You feel…” she breathed, her head tipped back, the column of her throat working as she swallowed a moan. “…impossible. Like you’re trying to split me in two.”
A gruff, breathless laugh escaped him. He was buried deep inside her, the incredible, stretching fullness a mutual anchor. “You’re the one who insisted on top,” he murmured, his voice gravelly with want. “Said you missed the view.”
“I did.” She opened her eyes, looking down at him. The firelight caught the sheen of sweat on her collarbones, the dark focus in her gaze. “I missed this. The weight of you. The… completeness.” She rolled her hips, a deliberate, grinding motion that made him gasp and his hands tighten. “After all those letters about rivers running red, I needed to remember you were mine. Not just the kingdom’s monster.”
“Always yours,” he growled, pulling her down for a searing kiss. It was fierce, possessive, a silent conversation of its own. I am here. I came back. This is real. Her fingernanks scraped lightly over his scalp as the kiss broke.
Their pace built, the slow, deep rocking giving way to something more demanding. The world narrowed to the slick friction, the hitch of her breath, the way her inner muscles clenched around him. He could feel the coiling tension in his gut, a rising tide matching the tremors starting in her thighs. Her moans were louder now, unfiltered, words dissolving into pleasured sighs.
“Kerr… oh, Maker…”
He was right there with her, on the precipice. The heat, the pressure, the sheer love of it was a white-noise roar in his ears, drowning out everything but her.
AS THEY REACH THEIR CLIMAX IS WHEN THE DOOR BURSTS OPEN.
The world shattered.
One second was ecstasy, the next was violent dislocation. The ornate door crashed inward, splintering wood screaming against stone. Anora jolted, a sharp cry ripped from her throat that was nothing like pleasure. Kerr’s body went from pliant to rigid steel in less than a heartbeat, his arms wrapping around her and rolling, shielding her with his own body as he came up on his knees on the bed, placing himself between her and the door.
Ser Jerran stood there, framed in the torchlight of the hall, his face pale, his sword already drawn. Behind him, the frantic sounds of booted feet and shouting echoed.
“Assassins!” Jerran barked, his eyes wide. “Inside the palace! Orlesian agents, we think–they’ve breached the royal wing!”
All intimacy was gone, evaporated like mist. Anora’s face, flushed seconds before, was now a mask of icy calculation. She scrambled back, grabbing a heavy velvet robe and wrapping it around herself with swift, efficient motions. Kerr was already moving, naked and lethal.
“The children,” Anora demanded, her voice cutting through the panic.
“Anaerin is with the twins in the nursery. The door is barred, six of our best with them,” Jerran said quickly.
“Stay with her,” Kerr ordered Jerran, his tone leaving no room for argument. He didn’t look for clothes, for armor. He slid off the bed, his bare feet silent on the cold stone. He yanked a pair of long, balanced throwing knives from a display case near the fireplace—ornate things, gifts from Antiva, but with edges he kept razor-keen himself.
“Kerr!” Anora’s voice stopped him at the doorway. He glanced back. She stood tall, her hand resting on her belly, her eyes blazing. “Do not be gentle.”
A feral, mirthless smile touched his lips. It was the only answer she needed.
SHIRTLESS, UNARMED AND BAREFOOT KERR EXITS THE BEDROOM INTO THE HALLWAY.
The corridor was a tableau of chaos and failed stealth. A palace guard lay dead near a spilled brazier, his throat a dark grin. The elegant runners were scuffed and muddy. And there was the smell—not just blood, but the faint, perfumed oil Orlesian nobility used on their leathers, utterly foreign in Denerim’s stark halls.
REMEMBERING HIS TIME WITH THE CROWS HE THINKS OF ALL THE ADVANTAGEOUS SPOTS IN THE CASTLE.
His mind, still thrumming with adrenaline and unsatisfied lust, clicked into a different, colder gear. The alcove by the third tapestry. The shadowed recess beneath the grand staircase. The cross-ventilation shaft that gave a line of sight down the northern passage. Zevran’s lazy, deadly lessons in Arlathan’s Reach came back not as memories, but as instinct.
He moved not like a king, but like the shadow he’d once employed. A glide, a pause, a listening. He heard the scuff of a boot on stone, three yards ahead around the corner. Not a guard. Guards clanked. This was a whisper.
ONE BY ONE HIS REFLEXES ARE TOO SHARP FOR THE ATTEMPTED REGICIDE AS HE CRUSHES THE FIRST ASSASSIN'S SKULL WITH A STANDING-TO-GROUND PUNCH AFTER TOSSING HIM TO THE FLOOR.
The man peered around the corner, a slim, dark-garbed figure with a drawn stiletto. He never saw Kerr’s hand snake out, grabbing his face and yanking him forward with enough force to lift him off his feet. Kerr slammed the man’s back onto the stone floor, the breath exploding from him in a wet gasp. Before the assassin could cry out, Kerr drove his fist down, a brutal, hammering blow. The sound was a rotten melon dropped from a height. The body spasmed once and went still.
HE USES HIS KNIVES TO THROW ONE INTO THE SHADOWS THAT HITS WITH A WET IMPACT AND ANOTHER FALLS DEAD INTO THE LIGHT.
Movement, to his left. A shift in the darkness of an alcove. Kerr didn’t aim; he pointed and let fly. The knife vanished into the gloom. A choked gurgle, then the solid thump of a body collapsing. From a doorway ahead, a second assassin lunged, a shortsword held low. Kerr’s other knife was already spinning through the air. It took the man in the hollow of his throat. He stumbled into a pool of torchlight, clawing at the hilt, eyes wide with surprise before he fell.
THROUGH THE HALLWAYS THEY HAVE ABANDONED TRYING TO SNEAK UP ON HIM AND INSTEAD TRY TO RUSH HIM.
A whistle, sharp and commanding, echoed down the hall. The subtle approach was over. They knew he was here, a barefoot phantom in the dark. Four of them came at once from a intersecting corridor, moving with the coordinated discipline of Chevalier-trained killers. They fanned out, blades catching the low light.
HE USES TWO DAGGERS TO PARRY AND SLICE THE ARTERIES OF THE FIRST, THEN USES HIM AS A HUMAN SHIELD TO BLOCK A CROSSBOW BOLT.
Kerr bent, snatched the dead man’s shortsword and a dagger from his belt. The first assassin closed, a flurry of professional strikes. Kerr parried with the sword, let the momentum carry the man’s arm wide, and slashed the dagger across his inner thigh. A femoral artery severed. The man shrieked, a fountain of hot blood arcing across the wall. As he fell, Kerr grabbed his jerkin, hauling the convulsing body up just as a thwump sounded from the far end of the hall. The crossbow bolt meant for Kerr’s heart buried itself in the dying assassin’s chest with a meaty thud.
AFTER WHICH HE GRABS THE LONGSWORD AND TRULY BEGINS TO IMPLEMENT HIS WRATH.
He dropped the bleeding corpse and charged. The crossbowman was fumbling to reload. The other two, wary now, advanced. Kerr’s stolen shortsword was a toy in his hand. He saw a fallen palace guardsman, a proper longsword still clutched in his grip. Kerr kicked the body over, ripped the sword free. The balance was good, Ferelden steel. It felt like coming home.
He became the Ogre King of the ballads.
He did not fight with finesse. He fought with overwhelming, terrifying force. A sweeping parry smashed an assassin’s blade aside so hard it flew from numbed fingers. The return stroke took the man’s head from his shoulders in a spray of crimson. The remaining assassin tried a desperate lunge. Kerr sidestepped, grabbed the man’s wrist, and twisted. Bone snapped. Before the scream finished, Kerr drove his sword point up under the man’s ribcage, lifting him off his feet before shoving him away.
PARRIES AND DISMEMBERMENTS OF AT LEAST TWENTY OF ORLAIS'S FINEST PAINT THE FLOORS AND THE WALLS RED.
They kept coming. They had no choice now; their mission was blown, and their only hope was to overrun the demon in the hallway. Kerr met them in a whirlwind of sharpened steel. He parried a thrust and removed the offending arm at the elbow. A slash across the eyes. A decapitating blow that cleaved through a gorget. He moved constantly, a dervish of death, the longsword an extension of his wrath. The fine tapestries were spattered. The stone beneath his bare feet grew slick and warm. The air thickened with the copper stench and the voiding of bowels.
THE LAST ONE IS THROWN AGAINST THE WALL, STABBED THROUGH THE STOMACH, THE HANDLE IS BROKEN OFF THE BLADE BY KERR AFTER WHICH HE DRAGS THE IMPALED MAN THROUGH TO THE OTHER SIDE, GRABS HIM BY THE HAIR AND SLAMS HIS NECK ONTO THE BLADE, BEHEADING HIM.
The final assassin, a man with the delicate features of central Orlais, backed away, his blade shaking. He made a feeble attempt at a guard. Kerr closed the distance, knocked the sword aside with contemptuous ease, seized the man by his leather harness, and hurled him bodily into the wall. The impact cracked the plaster. Before the man could slump, Kerr reversed his grip on the longsword and drove it through the man’s gut, pinning him to the stone.
The assassin stared, disbelieving, blood bubbling on his lips. Kerr placed a foot on the wall, gripped the hilt with both hands, and wrenched it sideways. The steel, buried in stone and bone, held. The ornate pommel snapped off with a sharp crack.
Kerr left the blade embedded, its broken handle protruding from the man’s abdomen. He reached out, grabbed a fistful of the assassin’s sweat-soaked hair, and yanked him forward. The impaled man screeched as he was dragged through the embedded sword, the widening blade tearing a horrific path through his innards until he slid free of the wall.
Gasping, dying, the assassin collapsed to his knees. Kerr didn’t let go of his hair. He hauled the man’s head back, exposing the throat, and slammed it down, using all his weight, onto the razor edge of the sword still jutting from the wall.
The wet, grating chop was final. The body went limp. The head, still gripped in Kerr’s hand, dripped.
Silence.
Not true silence. There were distant shouts, the clash of steel elsewhere in the palace as the garrison cleaned up. But in this hallway, there was only the drip of blood and Kerr’s own ragged breathing.
He dropped the head. It rolled into a dark corner.
He stood amidst the carnage, chest heaving, painted red from head to toe. He looked down at his hands, slick and trembling not from exhaustion, but from the fury that still coursed through him, unmet, unspent. They had come into his home. They had threatened what was his.
He turned and walked back the way he came, his bare feet leaving sticky red prints on the stone. He passed the nursery door, heard a infant’s brief cry quickly shushed, and the low, reassuring murmur of a guard. He kept walking.
At the door to his chambers, Jerran stood rigid, his face ashen. He took in the apparition before him—the king, a naked, blood-soaked god of war returned from a slaughterhouse.
“Sire…”
Kerr walked past him without a word.
Anora was standing exactly where he’d left her, though she’d lit more candles. The fire was rebuilt. She still wore her robe, her arms crossed over her belly. Her eyes widened for a fraction of a second at the vision of him, then narrowed, taking in the totality of it—the gore, the absolute absence of a single wound on him.
He stopped in the center of the room, the heat from the fire beginning to dry the blood on his skin into a stiff, cracking glaze.
“They’re dead,” he said, his voice hollow.
She didn’t flinch. “All of them?”
“Every last one who came down that hall.”
She nodded once, a sharp, satisfied dip of her chin. Then her gaze softened, just a degree. “The children are secure. The palace is secure.” She stepped forward, reached out, and placed her clean, pale hand against his stained, heaving chest, over his heart. “You are here.”
He covered her hand with his own, a giant’s paw smearing red across her knuckles. He leaned forward until his forehead rested against hers, his eyes closed. The last of the battle-tremors slowly stilled under her touch. The monster, spent, allowed itself to be leashed once more.
“They’ll call it another massacre,” she whispered.
“Let them,” he breathed.
“Let them,” he breathed.
He could still feel her hand on his chest, a small, cool anchor against the furnace of his skin. His blood was hot. Her touch was not. It was the difference between the war outside these walls and the peace they carved within them, however fragile. She didn’t wipe her smeared knuckles on her robe. She left his mark there.
A different scream tore through the momentary quiet.
It wasn’t a sound of pain. It was a sound of violation, of reality itself being clawed apart. It came from down the hall, past the dripping silence he’d created, from the direction of the royal nursery. It was a high, thin, agonized sound that sliced through stone and soul alike. Then another voice joined it, guttural and wet. Anora’s fingers dug into his chest.The children.
————
IN THE NURSERY, AENERIN ABSOLUTE HANDLED BUSINESS.
The door had held for exactly three breaths after the first crossbow bolt thudded into the thick oak from the corridor. Then the rune-lock, a delicate thing of dwarven craftsmanship, had shattered under a concentrated dispellation charm. The six royal guards stationed inside died quickly. Professionally. Two fell to darts coated in something that stopped hearts mid-beat. The other four were butchered in the close-quarters darkness by men who saw in the black.
The twins, Cailan and Elissa, slept on in their shared bassinet, swaddled in soft wool, oblivious.
The lead assassin, a man whose face was a forgettable collection of Orlesian features, signaled with a gloved hand. The objective was simple: confirm the heirs, eliminate them, melt back into the palace’s panic. Two of his team moved toward the draped crib, steel glinting.
They never saw the Elvhen leaning against the far wall, partially shrouded by a heavy curtain. He’d been still for so long he’d become part of the room’s geography. Aenerin’s staff, a gnarled length of ironbark capped with a pulsating viridium focus, moved faster than a thought.Thwick.
The bolt meant for the sleeping infants was smacked from the air, clattering harmlessly against the stone hearth. The assassin stared at his empty crossbow, then at the elf who had somehow crossed ten feet of space without making a sound.
“Evening,” Aenerin said, his voice a dry rustle of leaves.Chaos erupted. Three assassins converged on him. The ones near the bassinet lunged forward to finish the job, only to slam into an invisible, gelatinous barrier six inches from the wicker. A protective ward, shimmering with faint blue light, hummed to life around it. They hammered at it uselessly.
Aenerin didn’t engage the blades. He took a single, deep breath, and his eyes turned the void-black of a starless deep. The air in the nursery thickened, greasy and wrong. The scent of ozone and hot copper bloomed, choking out the lavender used to scent the linens.
The Blood Wound was not a flashy spell. It was a deep, resonant horror.
The assassins within the room stumbled. One clutched his stomach, a low whine escaping his lips. Another dropped his dagger, his hands flying to his temples as veins stood out like dark cords. Their blood, every drop inside them, began to vibrate. To boil in place. It wasn’t fire; it was a crescendo of internal pressure, a revolt of the body against itself. They froze, paralyzed not by magic holding their limbs, but by the indescribable, cellular agony consuming them from within.
Aenerin’s head tilted, birdlike, observing. His black eyes shifted, the voids swirling with a hint of emerald control. He looked at the assassin nearest the window, the one still clutching his crossbow in trembling hands.
The man’s body moved against his will. His arms, screaming in protest, lifted the weapon. He turned, his face a mask of tears and silent screaming, and aimed at the assassin hammering on the ward. He pulled the trigger.
The bolt punched through his compatriot’s eye socket.
Aenerin was already moving. He flowed past the writhing, pain-locked bodies, a shadow in the dim light. He placed his palm flat against the chest of the assassin nearest him. The touch was almost gentle. Under his hand, the man’s blood underwent a violent, alchemical transfiguration. It curdled, separated, its iron becoming acid, its plasma a volatile catalyst.
The elf didn’t incant. He simply drew his hand back, the man’s tunic smoldering where he’d touched it. The assassin stared down at his own chest, a silent, bubbling question in his wide eyes.
Aenerin pivoted on his heel and delivered a brutal front kick to the man’s sternum. The body didn’t just fall back. It launched, hurtling across the nursery like a ragdoll thrown by a giant.
It collided with the other two paralyzed assassins.
The coalesced, corrupted blood in the first body reached its critical mass. The detonation was muffled, wet, and profoundly destructive. A sphere of corrosive gel and bone shrapnel erupted, engulfing the three forms. It wasn’t fire, but a corrosive dissolution that ate through leather, cloth, and flesh with a sickening hiss.
The sound it made was like a hundred eggs cracking in a vat of acid.
When it cleared, a ghastly, steaming slurry painted the far wall and the stone floor. The humming ward around the bassinet flickered, speckled with black gobbets, but held. Not a drop touched the sleeping children.
The nursery door, already splintered, exploded inward.
Kerr filled the doorway, his body a silhouette of gore and tension, the stolen longsword still in his hand. His eyes, scanning for threats, took in the scene: the dead guards, the shimmering ward, the… residue on the wall. His gaze finally landed on Aenerin.
The elf stood calmly in the center of the carnage, his staff now planted on the floor, his eyes their usual sharp, forest-green. He gave a slight, exhausted nod toward the bassinet. The twins, disturbed by the noise, were beginning to fuss, soft mewls rising into the chemical-tinged air.
Kerr’s shoulders, which had been coiled steel, dropped a fraction. He looked from the unharmed children to the elf, then to the horrific remains of the assassins. His jaw worked. He gave a single, slow, approving nod. It wasn’t gratitude. It was the acknowledgment of a job done, and done with a thoroughness that matched his own in the hall.
Aenerin returned the nod, just as curt.
A footfall sounded behind Kerr. Anora stood there, her robe clutched tight, her face pale but utterly composed. Her eyes flew past the two men, past the ruin, and locked onto the bassinet. Seeing the soft glow of the ward, seeing the small shapes moving within, the fierce rigidity in her spine eased by a hair.
“Report,” she said, her voice cutting through the acidic stench.
“Threat in this room is neutralized,” Aenerin said, his voice bland. “The ward will hold until I dismiss it. They are unharmed, and slept through most of it. Surprisingly sound sleepers.”
Kerr finally looked down at himself, at the cracked, drying blood that coated him like a second skin. He looked like something excavated from a battlefield, standing in a room that smelled of a mage’s worst nightmare. A jagged, humorless sound escaped him, not quite a laugh. “We need to… we need to clean this up.”
Anora’s eyes were already calculating, moving from the mess to the implications. “No,” she said softly, then stronger. “Not yet. Leave it.”
Both men looked at her.
“Leave the guards where they fell. Leave the… residue.” She stepped into the room, her slippers avoiding the worst of the muck. She stopped beside Kerr, her presence a clean line next to his brutal chaos. “Let the Council see. Let the courtiers walk past this door and smell it. Let them see the cost of reaching for my children.”
She reached out, not to Kerr this time, but to hover her fingers just above the shimmering surface of Aenerin’s ward. A faint, protective warmth emanated from it. “They sent artists of death into my home.” Her hand closed into a fist. “I want them to see the canvas.”