Chapter 34 #2
"The time was right when we were children," I interrupt, the words spilling out before I can stop them. "The time was right when I used to pray to gods I didn't believe in, begging them to bring you back."
My voice cracks on the last word. I clamp my jaw shut, forcing the emotion back down.
I will not break. Not here. Not in front of him.
Solene's eyes are bright with unshed tears. "I'm sorry," she whispers. "I'm so sorry. I didn't know—father never told me any of it. He said you knew I was alive but that it was safer to keep us apart. He said—"
She stops. Looks at father with something new dawning in her expression.
"He lied to me too," she realizes slowly. "Didn't he?"
I almost feel sorry for her. Almost.
But then I look at her perfect robes and her perfect poise and her perfect life, untouched by the chaos that's consumed mine, and the sympathy curdles into something bitter.
She got to be hidden. Protected. Safe.
I got to be sold to a Shadow Lord and expected to die.
"Yes," I say quietly. "He lied to all of us. That's what he does."
Father clears his throat. "We are not here to discuss family matters," he says, his voice smooth as polished stone. "We are here to discuss peace. The Light Court Council has authorized me to offer terms."
"I'm listening." My hand finds Kaan's, a warning. His fingers close around mine, his skin cold from the shadows that cling to him.
"Return to the Light Court. Help stabilize the realm barriers before they collapse completely."
"The barriers?" Kaan's voice goes deadly quiet. I see his attention sharpen to a razor's edge. "Explain. And choose your next words very carefully, because if this is a ploy to separate us—"
"Your war has torn reality itself," Solene interjects, stepping forward.
Her voice carries that trained, musical quality that still grates against my ears—too perfect, too polished.
"The constant clashing of shadow and light magic has created fractures in the Veil between our realms. The kind of damage that took centuries to seal the first time. "
"Not our war," I cut her off, my voice rising. "The Light Court attacked us. Father, on the Council's orders, declared war the moment I refused to murder my husband."
"Semantics," Father dismisses with a wave of his hand, as if the distinction between aggressor and defender is a mere inconvenience in his grand political calculations.
"Truth," Kaan counters, night thickening around his fists. "But continue. What exactly happens when these barriers fail?"
Father's mask slips slightly, revealing genuine concern—or a masterful imitation of it.
"The Veil has already begun to tear. We've documented seventeen permanent rifts in the past month alone.
Creatures are crossing between realms at will—things that should have stayed sealed in the deep places are finding their way through.
" He pauses, letting the weight of his words settle.
"If the barriers collapse entirely, both realms will hemorrhage into each other.
Shadow magic will poison the Light Court territories.
Light magic will burn through yours. The neutral lands between us will become an uninhabitable wasteland where reality simply.
.. stops working. Every village, every city, every person caught in the collapse zone will cease to exist in any meaningful way.
Not dead—unmade. The Council believes we have perhaps three months before the damage becomes irreversible. Perhaps less."
The silence that follows is suffocating. I think of the reality tears I saw shimmering across the sky above the ruined throne room. The wrongness of it. The way Kaan's shadows had recoiled instinctively.
"The Council believes only a union of both courts can prevent it," Father continues, his tone shifting to something almost rehearsed.
"Under their leadership, of course," I say flatly.
"Under proper leadership," Father corrects, meeting my eyes without flinching. "Leadership that hasn't spent the last year destabilizing everything our ancestors built."
Kaan laughs, dark and dangerous. "How generous. Submit or watch everything burn. And conveniently, the only solution requires us to hand over power to the very people who caused this catastrophe in the first place."
"Those are the Council's terms," Father admits. "I'm simply the messenger."
"You've never been simply anything in your life," I say. "What aren't you telling us?"
Father's expression doesn't change, but something shifts behind his eyes—a calculation being made, discarded, replaced with another.
When he speaks, his voice carries the same measured cadence he used during trade negotiations when I was a child, explaining why some sacrifices were necessary for the greater good.
"The Council's preferred outcome is straightforward.
Kaan removed from power. You returned to Light Court jurisdiction, where your.
.. unique abilities can be properly monitored.
" He pauses, letting the weight of his words settle.
"Those are the only terms they'll accept for their cooperation in stabilizing the barriers. "
"Removed from power," Kaan repeats, darkness bleeding at his feet. "What a tactful way to say executed."
Father doesn't deny it.
"Then we have nothing to discuss," I say, and my voice comes out steadier than I feel. "If that's their offer—"
"It's their opening position," Father interrupts smoothly. "All negotiations begin somewhere. The question is whether you're willing to come to the table at all, or if pride will destroy everything both courts have built."
But there's something else. Something that's been clawing at me since I walked into this pavilion, since I saw him standing on that dais like he had any right to judge anyone. The question burns beneath my skin, demanding release, and I can't hold it back any longer.
"Tell me about my baby."
The words drop into the silence like stones into still water.
Father goes utterly still. Not the stillness of surprise—the stillness of a predator who's just been spotted. His eyes flicker, just for an instant, before the mask reasserts itself.
But I saw it. That momentary break.
"What baby?" Solene asks, confusion clear in her voice.
"The child I was carrying." My voice comes out steady, but my hands are shaking. I curl them into fists at my sides. "The pregnancy that ended in blood and grief. The baby I lost."
Kaan has gone terrifyingly motionless beside me. I feel the temperature drop as his shadows spread across the floor, dark tendrils reaching toward my father like accusatory fingers.
"A tragedy," Father says smoothly. "One we all mourned."
"Did you?"
The question hangs in the air between us. I watch his face—really watch it—searching for the truth beneath the politician's mask.
"Of course," he says. "The loss of any child is—"
"Why do you look guilty?"
The words come out before I can stop them, dragged from my chest by the churning suspicion that's been building since I walked through that pavilion entrance.
Father's composure cracks. Just a hairline fracture, quickly smoothed over, but I saw it. A tightening around his eyes. A subtle shift in his breathing.
"I don't know what you mean," he says, but his voice is too controlled. Too careful.
"Nesilhan." Solene steps forward, her face pale. "What are you suggesting?"
I don't answer her. I can't look away from my father's face.
"The assassin who attacked me," I say slowly, pieces falling into place like shards of broken glass. "The one who wore Banu's face. She knew exactly when to strike. Exactly when I would be vulnerable. Exactly where to find me."
My heart is pounding so hard I can feel it in my temples. In my throat. In the empty space where my child used to grow.
"Coincidence," Father dismisses. "A lucky guess by—"
"There are no coincidences with you." My voice rises.
"There never have been. Every moment of our lives has been orchestrated, planned, controlled.
So tell me, Father—how did an assassin get past every ward in the Shadow Court?
How did she know where I slept, when I would be alone, exactly how to strike to kill the child without killing me? "
Silence crashes over the pavilion.
Zoran's face has gone ash-gray. "Nesilhan, what are you—"
"Ask him." I point at Father, my hand trembling. "Ask him how much he knows. Ask him what he ordered."
"This is absurd," Father says, but there's a new edge to his voice. Something harder. Something cornered. "I would never—"
"You would." Rage burns through my veins like fire, and I can't stop the words pouring out. "You would and you have. You handed me to the Shadow Court knowing I might die. You ordered me to assassinate my own husband. You kept our sister hidden while we believed her dead."
My voice breaks, but I force myself to continue.
"You've never once put my life above your political ambitions. So why should my child be any different?"
The silence that follows is absolute. Even the guards have stopped breathing.
Father's face cycles through several expressions—outrage, denial, calculation—before settling on something cold. Something final.
"You want the truth?" he asks, and his voice has changed. Harder now. No more pretense of warmth. "Fine. You want to understand why your pregnancy couldn't be allowed to continue? I'll tell you."
My blood turns to ice.
"That child was a mistake," Father says, each word precise as a blade. "A catastrophic error in judgment that threatened everything we've worked to build. The prophecy spoke of a child born of shadow and light—a child with the power to reshape the realms. Do you have any idea what that means?"
"My baby," I whisper. "You're talking about my baby."
"I'm talking about a weapon." Father's eyes are cold. So cold. "A living weapon that would have been raised in darkness, trained by a monster, turned against everything the Light Court stands for. The Council couldn't allow it. I couldn't allow it."
Kaan moves.
Not toward Father—not yet. He steps in front of me, his darkness poolin us both like a protective barrier. When he speaks, his voice is soft. Deadly. The voice of a predator who's just scented blood.
"Choose your next words very carefully," he says. "Because if they're what I think they are, nothing in this realm or any other will stop me from tearing you apart."
Father doesn't flinch. Doesn't back down. If anything, he stands taller.
"The child was an abomination," he says clearly. "A union of shadow and light that should never have existed. The prophecy spoke of reshaping realms—but it never said in whose favor."
"No." The word tears out of me. "No, you didn't—"
"I gave the order." Father's voice carries through the pavilion like a death knell. "I provided the assassin with the route through your wards. I told her exactly where to strike to end the pregnancy without killing you, because you, at least, could still be salvaged."
The world stops.