Lord Summoner's Freedom Philosophy: Grimoire of Love-Chapter 506: Royal Final Battle (4)

"Don’t think this absolves you," she rasped, words gravel-rough from smoke and battle‐screaming. "You’re still a killer."

The sentence should have struck like a thrown knife; instead it landed with the brittle sound of broken glass already on the floor. Lyan felt it, accepted it. He did not flinch, only met her gaze and let the truth stand between them.

"I know," he answered, voice low enough the sound slid beneath the echoing arches. He held the acknowledgement a heartbeat longer so she would taste sincerity. "But I don’t kill when I have a better choice."

He saw the words brush her anger—not quenching it, only confusing it, like wind tilting a candle flame without blowing it out. Inside, Griselda crackled with proud approval, while Cynthia offered the faintest hum of relief. Lyan exhaled through his nose, easing tension from his neck.

Ara’s whisper arose beside them, fragile as a snowflake landing on hot stone. "Kassia... he saved us." The princess’s voice wavered, trembling on the border between loyalty to her sister and reluctant gratitude toward her savior. Conflict painted her face in quick strokes: eyebrows pinched in worry, mouth trembling, eyes wide enough to show the pale ring around each iris.

Kassia’s jaw flexed. Lyan noticed how her knuckles whitened around the hilt of the discarded mirror-blade, fingers twitching as if memory still begged her to swing. Fatigue—deeper than anger—made her arms shake. Her lips parted, but words failed, replaced by a rough breath. She turned her head away, shoulders stiff. The gesture was not surrender, only an admission that she had no reply yet.

Lyan respected the wall she threw up. Some wounds demanded privacy to bleed.

He tugged loose the linen scrap tucked beneath his belt—a red banner once marched under Varzadia’s sun, now faded almost pink. Quick fingers tore it into a long strip. The cloth carried dusty rose-oil scent, a smell from better days; he wondered which parade it had decorated before war twisted meaning. He looped it under Ara’s forearm, the back of his hand brushing her skin. She hissed softly when the fabric touched raw flesh, then stilled, breathing through the pain.

"Sorry," he murmured. "The salve will sting, but it draws the heat out."

He dribbled a few drops of pale green ointment from a vial Belle had pressed on him for "inevitable disasters." It smelled of mint and bitter bark. Ara winced again, but did not pull away. Lyan worked quickly, knotting the strip with the flat, tidy tension sailors used for rigging—muscle memory from a life before demon blood, late nights reading about knots rather than facing them. He finished with an extra tuck so the bandage would not unravel if she slept.

Up close he saw the fine tremor in her lashes, the single bead of sweat rolling down her jaw, the faint shimmer of old mercurial runes still fading from her collarbone. And—because his traitorous eyes always noticed—he glimpsed the gentle curve of her collar beneath torn silk. He inhaled sharply, forced his focus back to the bandage. (Control yourself,) he scolded himself, though he heard no spirit echo it—Lilith’s usual teasing, for once, silent.

A rustle of heavy skirts drew his attention. The Queen approached, the dormant coronet resting in her cupped palms like a sleeping serpent. She moved with the slow caution of someone relearning how to inhabit her own body—the weight of decades spent as an oracle puppet suddenly returned to her shoulders. Up close, Lyan saw the map of fine lines radiating from her eyes, each one a story of words kept behind sealed lips. She lowered herself without ceremony, robes brushing cracked mosaic, a queen kneeling to a mercenary.

"You’ve given us a chance," she whispered. Her voice carried the hush of winter mornings, fragile but unbreakable. She laid two fingers on his shoulder. They were cold, yet the touch carried heaviness, an entire kingdom’s yearning condensed into skin and bone. "Thank you."

Heat darted up Lyan’s throat. Reflexively his gaze dropped—betrayed by old habit—to the gentle dip of fabric at her neckline, to the soft shadow there. Blood thudded in his ears and shame quickly joined it. He snapped his eyes up to a safer target—the mosaic beneath them, where blue tiles fragmented the reflection of torchlight into trembling stars.

"Your Majesty," he said, voice thick, "keep the thanks for those who’ll rebuild. I’m only... finishing old business."

She studied him—he felt the weight of it like candle-wax on his conscience—then offered a sad, knowing smile. In that glance he read that she had noticed his slip of eyes, understood its nature, and chose not to shame him. A moment later the expression faded, replaced by quiet regality, and she shifted to check on Kassia.

The floor pitched slightly as dizziness swamped him. Mana poured out of every pore, beads of sweat turning cold on his skin. Cynthia’s soothing current still streamed through his arms into Ara, and into the Queen, and a thread into Kassia as well—three separate channels drawing from a well already scraped too low.

(You’re burning through more than you have,) Cynthia warned, her mental voice tighter now, anxiety threading through gentleness. (Stop before—)

"I know," he whispered, though his chest fluttered with arrhythmic beats. His free hand found the marble to steady himself, but the polished stone felt slick, as if water ran between palm and rock. Vision tunneled; dark spots burst like ink across his sight. "Too much, too fast."

He swallowed, drew a shaky lungful of air heavy with ash and copper. He could collapse here or improvise. He chose the latter. "We can’t stay in the open," he managed aloud. "There’ll be aftershocks of magic—this hall was a battery. Follow me."

With a force of will that made his knees creak, he pushed to standing. The glaive felt suddenly twice as heavy; he planted its butt and let it serve as a walking staff. "This way," he told the women.

The hidden wing had once been a priests’ labyrinth—he recalled the architecture from an old siege dossier. He guided them through half-collapsed arches, their footsteps echoing off damp stone. Torches sputtered where enchantments still flickered; in other niches, only blackened wicks remained. With every turn he marked subtle cues: swirling dust where fresh air leaked, the distant hum of subterranean machinery, faint boot scuffs less than an hour old. His mind, trained to pattern, kept tally even while fatigue tried to pry his lids shut.

They passed a shattered mirror idol—its face, a serpent devouring a sun, broken into shards that reflected each torch flame a dozen anxious times. Kassia lingered a second, staring into the fractured pieces, perhaps measuring how broken her world had become. Ara brushed her fingers across the frame and whispered a prayer he didn’t recognize.

Finally a low arch opened onto a circular chamber. Stone pews ringed a central dais, runes etched into the floor in spirals that converged on a hollow bronze orb the size of a clenched fist. The orb had cracked centuries ago; a thin vine now crept through it, green life defying forgotten gods. The air carried a bittersweet scent of herbs long dried.

"Ritual hall," Lyan explained, voice rasping. "Ward stones still trace the walls—means it’s shielded from scrying. No one will look here first." He felt along the entrance lintel, found the latch carved to resemble twin fangs, and pressed. Old magic chimed, low and musical. A translucent sheet of violet energy hissed across the doorway then faded, disguised to idle eyes.

He rolled a shoulder, dropping a small travel pack from under his cloak. Inside were two coarse wool cloaks—pilfered from quartermasters for emergencies—flatbread, a flask of watered wine, and three palm-sized charms wrought of twisted silver wire and a single shard of tourmaline each. He handed a cloak to the Queen, then one to Kassia, finally settling the last across Ara’s shoulders. She shivered under the weight—shock more than cold.

"These tokens are keyed to my mana," he told them, pressing one into each hand. "Think of them as silent alarms. If someone hostile breaches the threshold, the stones will warm. If something worse happens, they’ll shatter. If they shatter—hide."

Kassia frowned, suspicion flaring again, but the Queen accepted hers with a gracious nod. Ara traced the gemstone with a thumb, marveling at the faint pulse of residual lightning inside.

Only when provisions were sorted did Lyan allow himself to sink onto a dusty bench. The wood groaned, sending a puff of grey into the torchlight. His stomach rolled. A cut above his elbow gaped, blood seeped through black cloth—one he hadn’t felt earlier. Ara noticed; she gathered a strip torn from her sleeve, crouched at his side.

"Let me," she said, voice still hushed but steadier. Her hands trembled as she cleaned the wound with wine, then pressed the fabric down. Each tie she knotted took two attempts. Lyan watched her brow furrow in concentration, the stubborn set of her mouth. He felt the warmth of her breath on his forearm, the light brush of her hair against his knee.

Griselda’s voice flicked across his thoughts—half tease, half warning. (Little hearts mend quickly after chains break.) He ignored the spark of amusement, focusing on Ara’s face. Smudges of soot marked her cheeks, a crooked streak of dried blood angled across her temple, yet in the soft ritual light she looked improbably luminous.

This content is taken from free web nov𝒆l.com