ShadowBound: The Need For Power

Chapter 781: The Severance Decree (2)

The sound tore through the chamber with such force that Tharionson surged to his feet, then immediately checked himself when she recoiled from him as if his movement had brought the unseen thing closer. She scrambled backward against the couch, clutching at the robe, her breath breaking into ragged gasps.

"No," she cried, her voice cracking. "No, no, no, don’t open it. Don’t let him look through. Please, don’t let him look through."

"Mother, there is nothing here," Tharionson said, turning fully, scanning the room with every trained instinct he possessed. His Myst stirred beneath his skin, ready, searching, but he sensed nothing. No intruder. No spell. No disturbance strong enough to answer her terror.

"Look at me. Mother, look at me. You’re in your chamber. You’re safe."

The word safe seemed to make it worse.

Seralyne’s scream broke into frantic sobbing, and she pressed her hands over her ears while shaking her head violently.

"He sees, he sees, he sees," she gasped. "The glass remembers. The blood remembers. The decree was not dead. It was not dead."

Tharionson moved toward her before he could stop himself. "Mother!"

She flinched so violently that pain crossed his face, and he froze mid-step. The door opened behind him a heartbeat later, and the healers rushed in with the guards just beyond the threshold. Elowen entered first, her expression tense but controlled, one hand already glowing with pale green Myst. The other two healers moved with practiced speed, one circling toward the side table while the other began forming a stabilizing array between his palms.

"My lord, step back," Elowen said, not harshly, but firmly enough that it cut through the chaos.

Tharionson’s first instinct was to refuse. Everything in him rebelled against stepping away while his mother trembled in the corner like something was devouring her from within. But another part of him, the part that had survived command by knowing when emotion would only make a battlefield worse, forced his feet backward. He moved aside, hands clenched, his eyes never leaving Seralyne.

The healers reached her carefully, speaking in low, layered tones meant to guide rather than startle. Elowen cast first, spreading a soft veil of calming Myst over the queen’s shoulders without touching her directly. Seralyne jerked at the first contact of magic, and for one terrible moment, it seemed the spell would fail entirely.

The second healer adjusted the array, turning it from a suppressive weave into something gentler, almost rhythmic, like a lullaby translated into Myst. The third began murmuring a grounding incantation, not one meant to heal the cause, but one meant to slow the body’s panic response before it broke her further.

Seralyne fought them in broken, frightened motions. She tried to pull away, then seemed to forget where she was going. She whispered the same fragments again, though the words dissolved beneath sobs.

"Severance... don’t open... glass remembers..."

Elowen remained patient, her face drawn with strain as she adjusted the flow of Myst again and again, never forcing too much at once. Slowly, painfully slowly, the queen’s breathing began to ease. Her hands lowered from her ears. The violent trembling reduced to smaller shudders. Her eyes remained wide, but the sharpest edge of the episode dulled beneath the spell’s influence.

Tharionson stood in silence, watching the process as though someone had driven a spike through his chest and asked him to remain dignified around it. He had seen battle wounds. He had seen men lose limbs without making the kind of sound his mother had just made. He had watched knights die with their bodies torn open and their pride intact.

But this was different. There was no enemy to strike. No blood to stop. No wound to seal. Only terror, unseen and unreachable, reducing a queen to fragments while the people who loved her stood helplessly beside her.

At last, Seralyne sagged back against the couch, breathing shallowly but no longer screaming. Elowen remained near her, maintaining the spell for several more moments before slowly easing the flow down.

The other healers adjusted the blankets around the queen and checked her pulse, her eyes, her channels, and the stability of her core. When they were certain the worst of the episode had passed, Elowen stood and turned to Tharionson. Her face carried the careful sympathy of someone who knew sympathy would not be welcomed, but could not fully hide it.

"My lord," she said softly, "I believe it would be best to allow Her Majesty to remain alone for now, apart from necessary healer supervision. Close presence seems to increase the risk of another episode, especially when the person is emotionally familiar to her. Recognition appears to trigger something we cannot yet define."

Tharionson looked at his mother. Seralyne’s eyes were half-lidded now, her face wet with tears she no longer seemed aware of shedding. She was not asleep, not fully, but the spell had dragged her into a fragile quiet that looked too much like defeat.

"I upset her," he said.

Elowen’s expression tightened. "You did not cause this, my lord."

He gave her a look, tired and sharp. "That is not what I said."

The healer lowered her gaze. For a moment, no one spoke. The room seemed heavy with all the things rank prevented them from saying plainly. Finally, Tharionson forced himself to move. He stepped closer only far enough to look at his mother once more, then stopped before he could risk making things worse again.

"Take good care of her," he said.

"We will," Elowen replied. "You have my word."

Tharionson nodded, though the motion felt empty, and turned toward the door. The healers followed him out, leaving one attendant healer just inside the chamber while the others stepped into the corridor. The door closed behind them, and the sound of it made Tharionson feel as though he had abandoned her, even though he knew remaining inside would have helped no one.

For a few seconds, he stood in the corridor without moving. The six knights kept their eyes forward, disciplined enough not to stare, but Tharionson could feel the unease around them. Perhaps they had heard the queen scream. Of course they had. Everyone nearby had. Another sound for the palace to swallow, another rumor waiting to be born by evening. He looked toward Elowen and the other healers, his expression pulled back into something colder because it had to be.

"If there is any change, any word she repeats, anything different from her usual episodes, I am to be informed immediately," he said.

"Yes, High Marshal," Elowen answered.

"And no one outside this corridor is to hear the details of what she said."

Elowen bowed her head. "Understood."

Tharionson’s gaze moved to the knights. "That applies to all of you."

The six men saluted at once. "Yes, High Marshal."

He studied them for a moment longer than necessary, not because he expected a confession to crawl out of their faces, but because suspicion had become a habit he could no longer put down. Then he turned and began walking away from the queen’s quarters, his steps slower than they had been when he arrived.

The farther he moved from the chamber, the clearer his thoughts became, not because the pain had lessened, but because one phrase had cut through the fog and remained there like a blade stuck in wood.

The Severance Decree.

Seralyne had said it too clearly for him to dismiss it as nonsense. Even during the height of her terror, her words had circled back to it.

The Severance Decree. The decree was not dead. The glass remembers. The blood remembers. Don’t let him look through.

Tharionson’s mouth tightened as he moved through the corridor. He searched his memory again, harder this time, dragging through years of lessons, military law, royal history, sealed wartime decisions, old punishments, and private decrees issued under the Magna line. Nothing answered.

There were decrees concerning demon containment, border executions, noble inheritance, emergency military authority, the exile of corrupted houses, and the prohibition of dark mages. There were decrees signed during the Third Demon War, others passed after it, and others written so long ago that only archivists cared about their language. But the Severance Decree did not belong to anything he knew.

He muttered the words beneath his breath as he walked, testing them as though sound might unlock memory. "The Severance Decree."

Still nothing.

That bothered him more than he wanted to admit. If it had come from some obscure local dispute, his mother would not have repeated it in such fear. If it had been meaningless, she would not have returned to it before the episode struck.

And if it was connected to the queen’s condition, the deaths, the court fractures, or Zone 19, then Tharionson had just been handed the first real thread in months. A thread from the mouth of a woman everyone else had begun to see only as ill.

He would not make that mistake.

By the time he reached the next turn in the corridor, his expression had sharpened into something closer to purpose. There were very few people left he trusted enough to speak to without weighing every word like a weapon pointed back at him.

In this crisis, that number had become smaller than he ever imagined possible. But one name remained. Commander Zion had served under him long enough to know when silence mattered, and more importantly, he had never been a man who confused loyalty with flattery. If Zion had heard of the Severance Decree, he would say so. If he had not, he would know where to begin looking without dragging half the palace into the search.

Tharionson continued down the hall, the phrase repeating in his mind with every step.

The Severance Decree.