Chapter 880: Keep The Name For Someone That Needs It [Bonus - ]

Chapter 880: Keep The Name For Someone That Needs It [Bonus Chapter]

The glowing tip of the starlight blade hummed half an inch from Kiera’s throat.

It gave off no warmth at all, only a strange crystalline chill that made the fine hairs along her jaw stand up.

Beneath it, the Second Princess lay flat on her back on the cracked smoking basalt with her chest hitching in shallow ragged breaths that rattled like dry seed pods.

Her white combat suit was split down the front, the weave underneath scorched black and caked with stone dust and blood.

Her loose blue hair lay tangled across her bruised shoulder and the bright gold of her eyes flickered weakly, drowning in pure suffocating humiliation.

Aki stood over her.

The blue silk of her dress barely had a wrinkle in it apart from the scorched collar and the singed tear at her sleeve.

The silver light of the sword washed across her calm face and lit up a soft honeyed smile that would’ve looked almost angelic, if not for the cold dancing in her eyes.

She tilted the blade down a fraction of a millimeter.

The starlight kissed the skin over Kiera’s throat, and a single tiny bead of red welled up beneath the point and ran down into her torn collar.

“Say it, little sister,” Aki whispered. “The magistrates are listening. The Council is listening. Father is listening… Say the words.”

Kiera’s throat worked violently.

Her teeth ground together and her fingers clawed into the soot-stained earth until her nails cracked.

Every scrap of her pride, every year of brutal training in the Yamato mountains and every ounce of arrogance she’d built up sitting on her father’s knee screamed against it.

She wanted to call up one more gale and she wanted to bite through the blade with her bare teeth as well but when she looked up into Aki’s calm unblinking eyes, there was nothing there to bargain with.

If she didn’t speak, that blade would keep going without so much as a tremble.

A ragged choking sob tore out of Kiera’s split lips, bitter as bile.

“I… yield,” she spat, her voice shaking as she squeezed her eyes shut against the shame. “I yield! I concede!”

The words hung in the cold air sounding small and hollow.

PING!

With a soft little chime, the starlight sword dissolved, breaking apart into drifting silver motes that faded away against the grey sky.

Kiera’s whole body sagged against the basalt.

Her eyes fluttered open, and a long shaky breath of relief slipped out of her as the cold point vanished from her throat.

It was over… She’d lost, but it was over…

Aki looked down at her and laughed.

It was a genuinely delighted little laugh and it was the last thing Kiera expected to hear.

Her golden eyes flicked up in confusion. “What’s so… funny…?”

“Nothing,” Aki said sweetly. “I’m just happy, little sister.”

Then she drew her right fist back and drove it straight down into Kiera’s face.

WHAM!

Kiera’s head bounced off the stone.

Her golden eyes rolled up into her skull, her arms flopped out to her sides, and she went completely limp in the dirt, out cold before her hair had even finished settling around her.

Aki straightened up and shook out her knuckles with a satisfied little sigh.

’That one,’ she thought happily, ’was for the knee…’

The senior magistrate’s staff clattered against the bronze plate.

CLANG!

“Princess Aki!” he barked, his filtered voice cracking with alarm. “The duel ended at the yield! Striking a conceded opponent is a breach of—”

“Oh no,” Aki said, glancing down at her fist with wide innocent eyes. “My hand slipped…”

The magistrate opened his mouth, closed it again, and slowly lowered his staff.

The whole dueling field fell into a breathless silence.

Across the terraces, not a single masked Council member moved.

Every eye in the arena was fixed on the prodigy of Yamato sprawled unconscious in the dirt, and on the woman they’d all written off as useless standing over her, shaking out her hand like she’d just swatted a fly.

Then, from the royal pavilion at the center of the terrace, came a heavy scrape of metal.

CLANK!

Every head turned toward it.

The King of the World was standing.

He stood tall at the front of the pavilion with his shoulders squared beneath the navy coat and his sapphire eyes locked on the center of the field, his big hands clenched into fists at his sides and his chest rising and falling in deep heavy breaths.

He’d simply surged to his feet, dragged upward by something raw and instinctive he hadn’t felt in longer than he could remember.

For five long seconds, he stood there alone at the edge of the pavilion then he felt every eye in the arena on him.

His jaw tightened.

Slowly, with stiff mechanical control, he lowered himself back into his seat, straightened the lapels of his coat, set his palms flat on his thighs and scraped every last trace of expression from his face until it was nothing but smooth grey stone.

He looked down through the barrier dome and found Aki standing alone in the middle of the ring.

The King Of The World didn’t raise his voice, but in the dead silence of the arena, his low deep voice carried down to the field like a chisel striking marble.

“…Good.”

To Aki, standing in the dirt far below, it sounded like a cannon going off inside her skull.

Her breath caught, and her fingers curled into the silk of her dress.

…Good.

Not “pretty good.”… Not the bored flat verdict he’d tossed at her in the chamber after she’d erased three tons of star-iron. Just… good.

It was the warmest word he’d ever spoken to her in twenty-five years.

A sharp tangled knot pulled tight behind her ribs.

The small forgotten girl who’d spent years standing at the edges of state dinners, watching her father look straight through her, wanted to cry and in the very same heartbeat, she hated it… hated that one miserable word from that cold man could still land in her chest like that.

The King wasn’t finished.

He lifted his chin, and when he spoke again, his voice rang across the whole arena with the weight of a royal decree.

“Let the registry be corrected,” he said. “As of today, my eldest daughter’s name is restored in full. Aki Zel Castellian…”

A ripple ran across the terraces.

The masked Council members turned to one another, and the magistrates along the rail straightened as if they’d been struck.

The Zel name.

The one he’d quietly stripped from her papers when she was sixteen and had never once mentioned again, handed back in front of the entire World Council like a crown and for a moment, Aki just stood there.

’I…’

She thought about the summit three weeks ago, about standing on that obsidian floor while he said “Kiera Zel Castellian” and let the name land like an anvil and she thought about a tall woman with one arm, leaning on the Grand Table like she owned it, telling the King to his face that Aki didn’t need his name.

Aki smiled.

She lifted her head, looked straight up at the pavilion, and her clear voice carried just as far as his had.

“Thank you, Father,” she said politely. “But I’ll have to decline…”

The arena went dead silent and while the King’s face didn’t move, his hands tightened on his knees.

“I’ve gotten used to my name the way it is,” Aki went on, perfectly calm. “Aki. Lord of Aki’s Wonderland. It’s the name I cleared my trial with, and it’s the name on my land… Please keep the Zel for someone who still needs it.”

She dipped into a small flawless curtsy then she turned her back on the throne and walked away.

Nobody on the terraces dared to breathe.

In living memory, no one had ever refused a gift from the King of the World in public, let alone his own daughter, let alone in front of the entire Council.

One of the masked members on the lower tier actually leaned away from the pavilion, as if he expected the air around it to start disappearing.

The King sat perfectly still.

His sapphire eyes followed the small blue-haired figure walking away across the scorched field, and for a long moment, the air around the pavilion bent and darkened with the faint pressure of Destruction stirring in his blood then it settled.

And at the very corner of his stone-cold mouth, so faint that only Alexander, sitting right beside him, could possibly have seen it… something twitched upward.

Alexander stared at his father’s face and felt the floor drop out from under him.

’He’s… pleased?’ he thought, numb. ’She threw his name back in his face, and he’s pleased?’

Down in the shadow of the northern tunnel, someone else had heard every word.

Kara stood with her back against the cold stone and her hand pressed over her mouth, her shoulders shaking with silent delighted laughter.

’Please keep the Zel for someone who still needs it,’ she repeated in her head, and nearly choked. ’Oh, Aki… You queen. She must have learned it from me…’

Out on the field, Aki kept walking, her shoes crunching across the scorched stone.

’You gave me cold rooms and pitying whispers and a name with a hole in it,’ she thought. ’I filled the hole myself…’

Behind her, two Enforcers hurried onto the field, hauled Kiera’s limp body off the dirt and carried her out through the southern tunnel with her blue hair dangling.

Aki didn’t spare either of them a glance as the titanium gate hissed open.

PSSSSSH!

She stepped through it and out of the arena.

And standing right there in the shadow of the tunnel, leaning against the wall with her ankles crossed and her purple eyes burning with a wicked dazzling light, was Kara.

Aki barely had time to breathe before Kara moved.

SWOOP!

Kara’s one arm hooked smoothly under Aki’s knees and behind her back and scooped her clean off the ground, lifting her flush against her chest in one fluid motion.

“Eep!” Aki squeaked with her hands flying up in startled panic.

The Enforcers at the gate froze with their visors flashing, and a few masked heads on the lower terrace turned to stare.

Kara couldn’t have cared less.

She spun Aki around once with a deep rumbling laugh that Aki could feel all the way through her suit.

“Well, well, well,” Kara purred, leaning down until her lips were a breath from Aki’s ear. “Look at my sweet little Aki… Knocking out your sister after she yielded. Turning down the King in front of the whole Council and Starlight? Really?”

Aki’s face went up in brilliant scarlet flames.

She wriggled in Kara’s grip, but her hands had already wrapped around Kara’s neck on their own, and she buried her burning cheeks in the black wool of Kara’s high collar.

“K-Kara, put me down!” she hissed, though her fingers only held on tighter. “The whole Council is watching! Have you no shame at all?!”

“Not a single drop, little princess,” Kara laughed. “And ’my hand slipped’? I almost fell off the Spire laughing…”

“It did slip,” Aki mumbled into her collar. “Into her face… Repeatedly, in my head, for three weeks.”

Kara laughed so hard her shoulders shook then she tilted her head, narrowed her eyes into a mock-scolding squint, and her grin turned sharp.

“So…” she murmured, dropping her voice into that smooth smoky tone that always turned Aki’s knees to jelly, “you’ve been cheating on me with Ther’Abella behind my back?”

Aki’s eyes flew wide, and the blush raced all the way down her neck.

“I-I was not cheating!” she protested. “She just offered to teach me! She said my Core was right for it! She made me practice every single night and hit my knuckles with a stick whenever my grip slipped… I wanted to keep it a secret. I wanted it to be a surprise for you!”

’That stubborn elf,’ Kara thought, and something warm and a little rueful settled in her chest. ’She’d rather die than admit she likes anyone… and she spent a whole week of nights teaching Aki in secret.’

The mischievous smirk on her lips softened and melted into a quiet and tender expression that made Aki forget how to breathe.

Kara leaned in, and slowly, she pressed her forehead against Aki’s.

The cold ocean wind, the staring Enforcers and the grey walls of the fortress all fell away, until there was nothing but the two of them in a dim tunnel with their foreheads touching and their breath mingling in the tiny space between their lips.

“Aki,” Kara murmured, looking straight into her eyes. “It was the best surprise I’ve ever had. You were magnificent out there… And the name thing? I’ve never been prouder of anyone in my life.”

Aki’s breath caught.

The fierce princess who’d just knocked a Yamato prodigy unconscious and turned down the King of the World dissolved on the spot. A soft fragile smile touched her lips, her lashes fluttered, and a small contented sigh slipped out of her.

“You told him I didn’t need it,” she whispered. “Three weeks ago. I just… wanted you to be right.”

“I’m always right,” Kara murmured, brushing her nose against Aki’s temple.

Aki giggled against her collar.

“You said the island floats, were you trying to make Number 5 annoyed?”

“…For sure and for the record, it is floating.”

She set Aki back down on her feet with slow reluctant care, and Aki wobbled a little and grabbed Kara’s sleeve with her legs shaking now that it was all over.

“Easy,” Kara said softly, reaching down and lacing their fingers together then the confident dangerous smirk was back on her lips as she turned toward the elevators.

“Come on,” Kara said. “Let’s go collect our land…”