Chapter 156: Voss

Chapter 156: Chapter 156: Voss

The door opened with a sound too small to matter on its own, barely more than the click of a latch, and yet every head in the room turned toward it as though a horn had been blown across the hall. The pressure that had filled the chamber only moments before still clung to the air, heavy enough that two of the Nobles nearest the shattered window had gone pale trying to breathe through it, their hands braced against the wall for support. They stood frozen mid-step, caught somewhere between fleeing for the door and pretending, for the sake of whatever pride they had left, that they had never been afraid at all.

Theon turned his head last, almost lazily, in no particular hurry to see who had interrupted. But the moment his gaze landed on the figure in the doorway, something in his expression shifted, the tension in his shoulders easing by a fraction, like a held note finally allowed to resolve.

A tall man in the dark uniform of the Imperial Guard stood with one hand resting near the hilt of his sword, filling the frame of the door the way only someone used to command ever could, unbothered by the wreckage scattered across the floor behind him. Captain Voss. The same man who had drilled swordsmanship into Theon back when he was still at the imperial palace, back before crowns and titles had meant anything more than another lesson to sit through.

For a long moment neither of them spoke. Voss took in the room first, his eyes moving with the practiced patience of a soldier cataloguing a battlefield: the battered instructors slumped against overturned furniture, the trembling nobles clutching at each other’s sleeves, the scorched black marks scarring the walls and ceiling that had certainly not been there an hour ago. Only once he’d finished did his gaze settle back on the prince standing at the center of it all, entirely unmarked, entirely calm.

Theon let his pressure go. It vanished all at once, the way a held breath finally leaves the body, and several of the nobles nearly buckled where they stood, the sudden absence of weight almost as disorienting as the pressure itself had been.

Voss’s gaze sharpened just slightly as it fixed on him. "Your Highness. What exactly are you doing?"

"Nothing," Theon said, entirely too evenly.

Voss stared at him. Theon stared back, unblinking, unbothered, and neither of them looked away first, because they both already understood perfectly well what had happened here, and neither saw much use in pretending otherwise.

"I see." Voss exhaled slowly through his nose, the sound almost a laugh with all the humor drained out of it. "We should talk somewhere quieter."

"All right." Theon found, somewhat to his own surprise, that he wasn’t in the mood for a lecture anymore either. Whatever satisfaction he’d taken from the last hour had already burned itself out.

He turned toward the door without further comment. Lyra followed at once, her small footsteps quick to keep pace with his longer stride, and Celesteia moved to follow a beat behind her, already halfway across the room. Theon glanced back over his shoulder before either of them could reach the threshold.

"Celesteia, stay here."

She stopped mid-stride, her expression caught between confusion and something sharper. "What?"

"I’ll come back."

"But—"

"I’ll be fine."

She was clearly unhappy about it, her arms folding across her chest, her jaw setting into the same stubborn line he’d come to recognize over the past weeks, the one that meant she was choosing to let something go rather than agreeing with it. After a long moment she gave a short, reluctant nod. "Fine."

Theon reached for the door handle, then paused before he could step through it, some instinct telling him the room wasn’t quite finished with him yet. He looked back once more, and this time let his gaze sweep across the whole crowd of nobles rather than settle on any single face among them. Whatever warmth had colored his voice a moment earlier toward Celesteia was gone entirely, wiped away like it had never been there.

"If any of you harm even one of the instructors in this academy," he said, quiet enough that the whole room had to lean in just to catch it, the words carrying further for their softness than any shout could have managed, "I will destroy your entire household."

Nobody moved. Nobody so much as breathed. The threat didn’t need volume behind it to land; the pressure that came bleeding back into the room said everything the words themselves had left unspoken. Heads bowed low. Several of the nobles took an involuntary step backward, as though the floor beneath them had tilted. Even Duke Draven, who only minutes earlier had been red-faced with fury, said nothing at all, his fists clenched so tightly at his sides that his knuckles had gone bone white.

Theon turned and walked out without waiting to see the rest of it play out. The door shut behind him with a heavy, final sound, and with it, the confrontation ended. For now.

---

The halls of the Imperial Academy were far quieter than the room they’d left behind, the corridor lit by long shafts of afternoon light falling between the stone columns, dust drifting lazily through the air as though nothing at all had just happened two floors above. Theon walked beside Voss with Lyra close at his side, and for a while none of them spoke, the only sound the echo of their footsteps against old stone.

Eventually Theon broke the silence. "What are you doing here?"

"Word of the Spirit Contracting failure reached the Imperial Palace," Voss said, still walking, his gaze fixed straight ahead down the length of the corridor.

Theon’s expression sobered at once. "My father heard about it?"

"Immediately," Voss replied.

Then Theon asked, "But he couldn’t come himself, right?"

"The Empire has its own fires burning." Voss’s face turned grim, the easy confidence from a moment ago giving way to something heavier. "Your siblings have been at each other’s throats over the succession for months now. His Majesty can’t leave the palace while that conflict is still growing."

Theon nodded slowly, absorbing it without much surprise. "I understand."

"That’s why he sent me." Voss glanced sideways at him. "He ordered me here to check on you in person, since he couldn’t manage it himself."

"All right," Theon said, and left it there, offering nothing more.

But Voss kept looking at him anyway, sidelong glances that lingered a beat too long each time, until Theon finally noticed and turned to meet his eyes directly. "What?"

Voss took a few more steps before he answered, a faint smile creeping slowly onto his face, the kind that came from genuine surprise rather than any attempt at flattery. "You’ve changed, Your Highness."

"Meaning?"

"Your presence. Your aura. The way you move, the way you look at people now." He shook his head slowly, almost to himself. "You were strong when I trained you at the palace, strong enough that I remember thinking you’d make a fine swordsman one day, but this is something else entirely. You’ve grown far beyond anything I could have taught you."

Theon scoffed quietly under his breath. "Not strong enough."

That answer made Voss stop walking entirely for half a step, caught off guard. "What?"

"I’m not strong enough," Theon repeated, not slowing his own pace, forcing Voss to catch up.

Voss studied him for a long moment, searching his face for whatever had prompted that. "You want to become stronger than this?"

"Yes." There was no hesitation in it at all, no room left for doubt.

"Why?"

Theon didn’t answer right away. Instead his eyes drifted down to Lyra, walking quietly at his side, her small hand occasionally brushing against his own as they moved. He watched her for several steps in silence before he finally spoke, choosing his words with more care than he usually bothered with.

"Because I need to protect everyone I care about."

Voss followed his gaze down to the girl. "You mean Lyra?"

"Yes." Theon’s expression firmed, any trace of hesitation gone from it now. "I have to protect her. No matter what it costs me."

The little wolf curled around his neck lifted its head at that, having listened to the entire exchange without offering a word of its own, until now.

"What is so special about this sister of yours?" Fen asked, tilting its small head to one side. "Why do you care about her so much? You act like you’d burn down the entire world if something happened to her."

Theon didn’t answer. His footsteps slowed almost to a stop, his expression clouding over in a way that had nothing to do with the hallway around him, because the question had brushed against something buried deep and rarely allowed to surface. A memory rose up in its place, unbidden, one belonging to another life entirely, back when he had been someone else, in a world that no longer existed anywhere but inside him.

Back when he had been Adrian.