The Devil at Their Door

The throne room doors thundered shut behind me, the sound reverberating down the corridor like the closing of a coffin lid. Nicholas's face lingered in my mind, so like my own, yet defiant, trembling, fragile. He was no king. Not yet. The air in the halls stank of smoke and fear. My boots echoed across polished stone as I descended the passage, past tapestries that seemed to recoil from my presence, past guards who pressed themselves to the walls rather than meet my gaze. They had seen enough in the throne room to know what I was, what I had always been. A storm given flesh. A shadow that would not stay buried.

Isabella and James's names burned in my mind like iron pressed to skin. It was they who cast me down, who drove the dagger into my legacy and left me rotting in the deep. Now, fate had drawn me through fire and blood to their door. The corridors twisted, and yet I knew the way, as though the Heart itself guided me. The keep’s air grew heavier, thicker, until I reached a corridor lined with gilt-framed portraits. Royal faces stared down at me, solemn and lifeless. Their painted eyes watched in silence as I strode toward the chamber at the end, the royal apartments, where I would find them.

The door was guarded, but guards mean little when fear has already gnawed the marrow from their bones. They stepped aside as I approached, their hands trembling against their spears, and I pushed the door open without a word. The chamber was warm, lit by the golden glow of a hearth. The scent of lavender drifted faintly through the air. For a heartbeat, it was as though I had stepped not into a room of enemies, but into the remnants of a dream. James stood by the window, the weight of years heavy on his frame, his once-proud shoulders bent with age yet not broken. His hair, streaked with grey, caught the firelight. He turned as I entered, and I saw it in his eyes, recognition, and shock.

Isabella sat upon a chair near the fire, her figure wrapped in silk, her beauty dimmed but not extinguished by time. In her lap rested a child, a little girl with dark curls that spilled over her mother’s arm. The girl clutched at a carved wooden toy, her small fingers tracing its edges. She looked up as the door opened, her wide eyes curious, innocent, untouched by the shadows pressing into the room. For a moment, the scene was almost fragile. Almost tender. Then James’s hand went to the sword at his hip.

“Elias,” he breathed, voice hoarse.

Isabella’s lips parted, her breath catching as her gaze locked on mine. Her eyes widened, her face paling, but she did not speak. I stepped forward, the shadows stretching with me, filling the chamber like storm clouds devouring the horizon.

“Did you think me gone forever?” My voice was low, but it carried, each word a dagger. “Did you think the sea had claimed me, that your treachery would be washed clean by time?”

James’s jaw tightened. His hand gripped the hilt of his sword, though he did not draw it yet. His eyes, once bright with fire, now carried the exhaustion of a man who had seen too much. Still, his voice was steady.

“You should not be alive.”
A cruel smile curved my lips. “Yet here I stand.”

The little girl stirred in Isabella’s lap, looking between us with the quiet curiosity of a child sensing storms she could not understand. Isabella’s hand tightened protectively around her daughter, her knuckles white. Still, her voice did not tremble when she finally spoke.

“Blackthorn,” she whispered. My name, spoken as though it were a curse. “You should have stayed buried.”

I laughed, a sound that filled the chamber and made the hearthfire flicker.

“Buried? No. I was tempered. Forged. You, James, you and your whore queen, you made me what I am. You lit the fire that burned away weakness. Now I have returned, not as the man you cast aside, but as something greater.”
James took a step forward, his blade whispering free of its sheath. “Stay away from her. Stay away from all of them.”

The girl let out a soft whimper at the sound, pressing her face into Isabella’s arm. Isabella’s eyes blazed with fury, though her body trembled beneath the weight of the moment. I tilted my head, regarding the child.

“So,” I said softly, almost musing. “Another heir. Qhat lies did you spin to her? Will she grow up believing her father is a king, her mother a saint, and that the man who cast his shadow over her world never existed?”
James’s blade rose. “You will not touch her.”

For a heartbeat, our eyes locked, two men bound by past sins, by betrayal, by blood spilled on the tides. His sword quivered with age, but his spirit did not. I, with the Heart pulsing at my chest, felt no fear.

“You have already lost,” I murmured. “My son sits upon a throne that is not his. Your crown rests on a lie. Your kingdom trembles at my shadow. You—” I sneered, my gaze raking over him,“you are but a broken man, clinging to the scraps of your reign.”

James’s voice hardened, his jaw set like stone.

“Perhaps. Broken or not, I will stand between you and them until my last breath.”

The child whimpered again, and Isabella rocked her gently, though her eyes never left me. There was steel in her gaze, the same steel I remembered from years past, sharpened now by motherhood and loss. She looked not at a ghost, nor at a monster, but at the man she had betrayed, and she met him unflinching.

“Then you will die here,” I said simply, drawing the dagger from my belt. Its blade gleamed wickedly in the firelight, hungry.

The chamber fell into silence, the kind of silence that comes just before a storm tears the world apart. James stood ready, blade raised. Isabella clutched the child to her breast, her defiance etched into every line of her face. The girl stared at me now, her wide eyes innocent, unknowing of the blood that tied us all together. I took one step forward. The floor creaked beneath my weight. The Heart pulsed once, twice, each beat a thunderclap in my chest. A sound split the silence. The heavy clang of boots striking stone. A voice shouting in the corridor. The door behind me crashed open, and light spilled into the chamber.

“Captain!” one of my men barked, his voice sharp, urgent. “They’re here,”

The words cut short. I turned, my dagger still in hand, my eyes narrowing. At the threshold stood a figure cloaked in shadow, his blade drawn, his eyes burning with a fury I knew too well. Nicholas. He had followed. in his gaze, there was no confusion now, only fire.