The Ashborn Crown Chapter 2 | The Unyielding Suite
In the heart of the Crimson Scale Court's palace, authority collides with something far older and far more dangerous than rank.
Tharion did not move.
Kaelric waited for an answer that did not come.
The room around them kept making noise anyway — the sharp crack of gunfire from the wall-mounted screen, shouted warnings, the flat electronic burst of something exploding in a game far too loud for an enclosed suite. One of the boys on the floor let out a string of frustrated syllables and threw himself back against the carpet without taking his eyes off the screen.
Kaelric’s jaw tightened.
“This,” he said, voice clipped with rising irritation, “is not optional.”
Tharion said nothing.
The silence between them stretched thin and unpleasant. Kaelric turned his attention back to the suite as though sheer force of presence might impose order on it.
It did not.
The children still sprawled exactly where they had been, the boys on the floor and couch arguing over the game, the youngest one of the two pastry thieves rifling through a bowl of dried fruit with the absorbed concentration of someone conducting state business, and the girl in the chair reading as if no one else existed in the room at all.
Kaelric drew himself up straighter.
“You will all put those things down,” he said. “Now.”
No one obeyed.
One of the boys on the floor lifted a hand without looking away from the screen. “Hold on.”
Another explosion shook the game. Someone swore.
Kaelric’s expression darkened.
The girl in the chair turned a page.
Velara leaned against the table with her arms folded, watching him with a look that hovered somewhere between patience and amusement. She looked, Kaelric thought with disgust, entirely too comfortable for someone who should have known better.
“This is the guest wing of the Crimson Scale Court,” he said, each word sharpened and deliberate. “You are not in a barracks, and you are not in a playground, and you will not behave as though this is some roadside inn.”
Velara tipped her head. “Roadside inns usually have worse food.”
One of the boys snorted.
Kaelric turned on her sharply. “You will correct them.”
She raised one eyebrow. “Which one?”
“All of them.”
She glanced around the room. “That’s ambitious.”
Kaelric opened his mouth to reply, but before he could force any more authority into the air, a door at the back of the suite opened with a soft click.
Tharion’s head turned at once.
Kaelric turned a heartbeat later, irritation already returning in full force.
A man stepped out of the bedroom and closed the door behind him as carefully as if he did not wish the sound to carry.
He was barefoot. His shirtsleeves were rolled to the forearms, the top button of his shirt undone, and what remained of a pastry was in his hand. He finished the last bite as he looked toward the main room.
For a moment he simply stood there, taking in the scene.
The children. The game still frozen mid-chaos on the screen. Scattered bags and travel cases.
The boy on the floor with his controller still in both hands. The girl in the chair with her book.
Velara, leaning against the table with the calm of someone who had never once in her life been intimidated by a formal room.
Then his eyes settled on the two uniformed men in the center of the suite.
His expression changed very little.
“I thought I heard yelling,” he said mildly.
No one answered at once.
Kaelric stared at him, the sight of that casual, careless manner sharpening his irritation into something colder.
“And you are,” Kaelric said, “responsible for this.”
The man looked from Kaelric to the room again, as though making sure they were discussing the same children.
One of the boys on the couch lifted a hand without turning around. “Hey, Dad.”
The man sighed faintly, as though that settled the matter.
“Yes,” he said. “I am.”
Kaelric’s eyes narrowed. “Then perhaps you can explain why your children are occupying a restricted suite of the Crimson Scale Court and behaving as though they have every right to do so.”
The man took a step farther into the room, glancing at the screen. “Turn that down,” he said, not raising his voice.
Malther reached for the remote and hit it twice. The explosions dropped to a lower, less objectionable level.
Only then did the man look back at Kaelric in full.
His gaze moved over the formal uniform, the insignia, the posture, and then to Tharion, lingering there a fraction longer than Kaelric liked. Whatever he found, he did not comment on it.
Instead he said, “Can I help you?”
Kaelric went still.
The question was polite. The tone was not deferential.
He was in his own palace. In his own guest wing. During the Council opening.
“You can,” Kaelric said, voice cool and precise. “You can explain why your family has been assigned a suite reserved for high-ranking personnel.”
The man blinked once. “This is the suite they gave us.”
“They,” Kaelric said sharply, “were not to give this suite to ordinary travelers.”
The man’s brow furrowed a little, not with fear, but with the mild confusion of someone being corrected on a detail he considered self-evident.
“Well,” he said, “they did.”
Kaelric took one step forward. The air around him seemed to tighten with the motion.
“You will gather your things,” he said, each word clipped cleanly into the space between them, “and you will relocate to the proper wing immediately. The Council of the Thirteen Courts convenes tonight, and I will not have this level of disorder in a restricted hall.”
For the first time, the man’s expression shifted.
Not in alarm. Not in offense.
In faint irritation.
He glanced at the children again and then back at Kaelric.
“That’s not happening.”
Kaelric’s gaze sharpened. “That was not a request.”
Behind him, Tharion had gone very quiet.
His eyes had drifted, almost without permission, across the room again — over the open bags, the discarded shoes, the jackets draped over chairs — and stopped briefly on a dark coat lying across the back of one chair.
Deep black. Cut with a formality that made his stomach tighten.
The sigil at the collar was visible for only a second.
Tharion’s entire focus narrowed.
Only one dragon wore that coat.
No one laid hands on it without permission. Not if one wished to see another sunrise. It wasn’t casually tossed over a chair as if it were ordinary clothing.
His expression did not change, but he felt the first small prickle of unease settle low in his chest.
Kaelric did not notice, his attention fixed entirely on the man in the middle of the room.
“You will not tell me,” Kaelric said, voice low now, “what will or will not happen in my palace.”
The man met his gaze without moving.
“We were assigned these rooms,” he said evenly. “We came here. The children are tired. They’re hungry. We’re not moving.”
Kaelric’s jaw hardened. “You and your children will pack up and will move now.”
A boy on the floor, still holding his controller, muttered, “Not happening.”
Kaelric’s head turned sharply. “I was not speaking to you.”
“You were speaking pretty loud,” the boy said.
His brother snorted.
The man exhaled slowly, then said, without raising his voice, “Finish the round and save it.”
There was a chorus of groans.
“But—”
“Now.”
Malther paused the game with obvious reluctance. The sudden quiet made the room feel even stranger than before.
Kaelric stared at him as though he could not decide whether to be insulted or appalled.
The man remained perfectly calm.
“I will say this once more,” Kaelric said. “You will take your children, your belongings, and whatever else you have brought into this wing, and you will relocate before the formal dinner begins.”
The man tilted his head slightly. “And if I don’t?”
Kaelric’s eyes flashed. “You are in no position to refuse.”
The man’s gaze held his. “Pretty sure I am.”
Silence hit the room hard.
Velara, still leaning against the table, let out a small sound that might have been a sigh. It might also have been the beginning of a laugh she was suppressing.
Kaelric’s patience, already stretched thin, pulled another notch tighter.
“And who,” he said, each word now edged with clear, dangerous restraint, “do you believe you are?”
The man looked at him for a long moment, as if deciding whether to answer directly or continue letting the situation rot under its own weight.
Kaelric had the distinct and deeply aggravating sensation that no one in the suite considered his presence particularly significant.
Velara pushed herself off the table with a small motion and folded her arms again.
“Okay,” she said. “This is getting stupid.”
Kaelric turned his eyes on her, then back to the man.
“Your name,” he said coldly.
The man studied him.
Then, with every sign of genuine patience exhausted, he said, “I’m their father.”
Kaelric did not blink.
Tharion’s eyes flicked once more to the black coat on the chair, then away.
The father looked at Kaelric, then at Tharion, as if waiting to see which of them would be the first to understand something the other had missed.
Neither of them did.
Not yet.
And Kaelric, standing in the middle of his own palace, had the uncomfortable feeling that the room had already moved past him.
The clock chimed sharply, echoing through the suite like a blade. Seven strikes. Velara straightened slightly, glancing toward Kaelric, a faint smirk tugging at her lips.
“I thought you said you had a dinner to go to?” she asked, her tone casual but pointed. “You mentioned the Flight Lord will be there. If you leave now, you just might make it before him.”
Kaelric paused, assessing the situation. The gears in his mind spun as he assessed timing, distance, and the level of embarrassment he would face should he arrive late. His jaw tightened, and he allowed himself a measured nod. “Perhaps… if I depart immediately.”
He turned slowly to Tharion, his tone deliberate and measured, remnants of irritation still simmering beneath the surface. “You,” he said, the word heavy with command, “will remain here. In this suite. With this family.”
Tharion’s head snapped up. “Wait! What? Here? With them?”
“Until guards can be arranged to escort them from Crimson Scale territory,” Kaelric continued. “You are responsible for them. Do not leave. Do not negotiate. Do not—” he paused briefly, his gaze sharpening—“do anything unwise.”
“You can’t be serious!”
“I am,” Kaelric said, tone unyielding. “I suspect you were involved. You likely invited this… Velara and told her to bring her family. That ends tonight. Not now, not later. Until proper arrangements are made, you stay.”
Tharion’s jaw dropped, frustration bleeding through. “That means—” He spun to look at the suite again, at the chaos, at Velara, at the man who had just stepped out—“that means I’ll miss the dinner. Maybe my only chance to meet the Flight Lord. The Flight Lord will be there!”
Kaelric’s expression was rigid. “Then consider it a consequence of your choices, son. You are not in a position to argue. Your loyalty, and your presence here, are required until the matter is settled.”
Tharion’s fists curled at his sides. Centuries of reverence. Of awe. Of study. Now reduced to this. Every instinct screamed at him to defy his father. But he was trapped. Officially, utterly, and humiliatingly trapped in the middle of the suite, forced to babysit chaos instead of meeting one of the greatest dragons to ever exist.
Velara, observing quietly, gave him a small, sympathetic smile but said nothing. The children returned to their activities, aware of nothing beyond their own controlled chaos. Tharion slumped against the back of a chair, caught between disbelief, irritation, and the resigned understanding that Kaelric’s word, for now, was absolute.
Kaelric gave him a final glance, voice sharp. “Do not test me, Tharion. Remain here, with this family, until ordered otherwise.”
The unspoken implication hung in the air: Kaelric still suspected Tharion of having orchestrated Velara’s presence in the first place. This arrangement would ensure any political missteps stayed contained.
Velara leaned against the table, stifling a grin. “Don’t worry,” she said lightly. “We’ll keep you entertained.”
Tharion’s glare could have boiled steel. Kaelric did not flinch.