Chapter Forty-Three
Reign
Anger still roared through my veins, red-hot and all-consuming as I slid to the floor beside Aelia, framing her still too pale face with trembling hands. How dare that Night bastard push her like this?
“I already told you I asked him to,” Aelia muttered, invading my thoughts.
“But why? Why would you want to delve into that sort of darkness, princess?”
“Because I have to, Reign. We all must do everything we can to win this war, to protect Aetheria. You gave up your own father, for goddess’ sake. This is the least I can do.”
Father. The word rang hollow.
I couldn’t help my gaze from twisting over my shoulder to Kaelith who leaned against the wall, blood dribbling down his split lip.
Gods, could it really be true? I thought I could push it back to deal with at a better time—if such a thing existed—but I needed to know the truth now that fate had brought him right to me.
I couldn’t live with this new doubt. I’d gone long enough without answers.
“Did you find it?” Aelia’s hopeful gaze seared into me as she drew my eyes back to hers. “The Moirai Shard?”
I nodded slowly.
“Oh, thank Raysa!” Her smile grew more brilliant. “You did it, Reign, you really did it.”
“I helped a little.” Ruhl appeared in the archway, his typical smirk twisting his lips before he scanned the dark chamber. “What in all the realms happened in here?”
“Just a little training,” Aelia replied weakly, and if I wasn’t mistaken with a bit of embarrassment as well.
Wrapping her in my arms, I heaved her off the floor and deposited her onto a stone bench in the corner. “Stay here,” I whispered. “There’s something I need to discuss with Kaelith.”
She reached for me, hand curling around my arm. “Reign, don’t.”
“I won’t hurt him.” I gently cupped her chin. “For once, this isn’t about you, princess.” I offered a reassuring smile before I turned toward the male leaning against the far wall.
My shadows surged, sharp and biting, coiling around Kaelith’s throat in an instant.
He didn’t flinch as he stepped forward. “Reign, so nice to see you again.”
“Where were you?” I snarled, dragging him back against the stone wall. “Thirty fucking years ago, where were you?”
His eyes narrowed, not with challenge but with confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“You tell me.” My jaw clenched as I shoved him back again. He hit the wall hard and slid down onto his knees, scraping the obsidian floor. He didn’t rise this time. “You were holding me,” I hissed. “In the vision. From the mirror. That was you.”
Kaelith blinked once. Then again. His lips parted, but no words came.
“You were younger,” I went on, breath coming fast. “Your hair was shorter. Your face softer. You were standing beside a woman with long, dark hair, violet eyes. She was holding a baby swaddled in shadows. That baby was me.”
The words felt foreign in my mouth, but my soul had known the truth the moment the image seared into my mind.
“What in Zaroth’s name are you talking about?” he growled, tipping his head back to look up at me.
“I saw it! In the Mirror of Hidden Truths at the Lupherium in Lunaris.”
He stared at me for a long beat, something like haunted recognition blooming behind his eyes. A long-forgotten memory coming to life. “Gods…” he whispered. “You saw that?”
“You’re not going to deny it?”
“No.” He rose slowly, brushing dust from his cloak. “Because it’s true. That was me.”
I said nothing, my heart pounding so hard I could feel it in my temples.
“The woman,” he said carefully, “was Elaris.”
I froze at the sound of my mother’s name. At the words that confirmed everything… I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard it spoken aloud. The Shadow Court acted as if she’d never existed.
Noxus, it was all true then. This man was my father—
“She was my niece,” Kaelith said softly, interrupting my wild thoughts.
The floor might as well have vanished beneath my boots.
“She brought her son—you—to me once. Just once.” His voice thickened.
“You were only days old, and so small. Your shadows were already active, wrapping around you both like they were afraid of the world. She never said who your father was. I begged her to stay, but she wouldn’t.
She said she had to protect you. That staying would only bring danger. ”
“And then what?” I demanded. “She just… vanished?”
Kaelith nodded slowly. “I never saw her again.”
My fists clenched. “So all this time… gods, you’re my uncle?”
His expression turned pained. “Your great-uncle, technically. My brother, Karnax, must have been your grandfather. He ruled the Night Court long before Helroth. A brutal male, but not a tyrant. He tried to keep the balance. When Helroth rose to power, he betrayed Karnax. Killed him. Stole his crown. And his mate.”
“Vaelora,” Aelia breathed, having somehow appeared beside me.
Kaelith’s jaw tightened. “Your grandmother, Reign. Helroth took her as a prize. A warning. He sent Elaris away when she was only a child. She was nothing more than a reminder of Karnax, his greatest enemy.”
The room spun.
My blood. My family. My whole life had been built on lies. Tenebris. The court. My supposed destiny. I could feel Ruhl’s heavy gaze boring into me from across the room.
I wasn’t just Night Fae and Shadow Fae. I was heir to a stolen throne. Aelia’s throne…
“You didn’t know?” I asked quietly.
Kaelith shook his head. “If I had… Reign, if I had known you were hers, I would’ve come for you.
I raised Elaris after Karnax’s death. She was like a daughter to me.
I loved her. Then, during the chaos of the war, she disappeared.
I feared she was dead, until she returned that day, with you in her arms.”
My shadows writhed violently, seething with the cold pulse of zar and nox combined. Not out of hatred for Kaelith, but for what had been taken. From my mother. From me. From him.
“You swear that’s the truth?” I asked through gritted teeth.
“I swear it on Zaroth,” he replied, solemn and raw. “I would’ve stormed the Shadow Fortress myself, scoured it from top to bottom had I known you were there. Had I known you were in Tenebris’s clutches. I would have done anything to keep you and your mother safe, Reign. Anything.”
I staggered back a step, trying to breathe. Aelia’s hand found mine, fingers tangling between my own.
All this time, I’d thought my fight with Helroth was simply about Aelia and the damned prophecy.
But it was so much more than that. This was about blood. Family. Revenge.
“I’m going to kill him,” I said quietly. “Not just for the realm. Not just for my mate. But for Karnax. For Elaris. For Vaelora. I’ll burn his kingdom to ash if I must.”
Kaelith didn’t argue. Didn’t warn me against such foolishness. He simply bowed his head and murmured, “Then let me help you.”
The balcony where I often came as a child to avoid my father jutted out from one of the highest spires of the Fortress of Umbral Shadows.
It stood hidden behind sweeping obsidian arches that caught the moonlight and scattered it across the marble floor.
I leaned against the balustrade, trying and failing to still my spiraling thoughts.
Above, the stars burned bright, seemingly close enough to touch, their light weaving with the soft glow of the warding runes etched into the balcony’s railings.
A cool breeze carried the scent of rain and the faint sweetness of night-blooming flowers from the royal gardens below.
It felt like the world was hushed and waiting.
But my mind was utter chaos.
Helroth had killed my grandfather, banished my mother, imprisoned my grandmother… Gods, it was too much. A heady surge of zar surged through my veins, coiling like deadly serpents. The flood of power was overwhelming, intoxicating.
Had Tenebris known who my mother was? And how had she ended up in the Shadow Court to begin with? And, the question weighing on me most: what became of her?
Noxus, if only I knew where the realms my father was so that I could finally get the answers I deserved.
“There you are…” Aelia’s soft voice splintered through the agony waging havoc in my mind, breaking through when no one else could.
She slipped her arms around my waist, resting her chin on my shoulder blade as we stared out over the slumbering realm.
“Are you hiding from me?” she whispered into the folds of my cloak, her worry leeching through our bond.
“No.” I heaved out a breath, the fury and overpowering zar receding at her touch. “Never you.” And I meant it. I simply wasn’t ready—or even knew how—to talk about the turmoil in my mind.
She began to hum, the familiar tune soaking into my very bones.
“Sleep, my starlight, soft and bright,
Drift on dreams through silver night.
Moonlight hums a tender tune,
I’ll find you ’neath the fading moon.”
The cuorem pulsed between us and the words suddenly filled my mind. Like a man possessed, my lips moved, singing the lullaby I didn’t know I remembered. It was the one memory I had of my mother, her sweet voice cradling me in the darkness.
I whirled around, pulling Aelia into my arms. “Did you do that?”
She shrugged. “Possibly… I’m not quite certain. I was trying to remember the words to Vaelora’s song and, somehow, together, we must have brought them to the surface.”
I tugged her ever closer, holding her more firmly against my weary form. “Thank you,” I whispered across the top of her head, pressing my lips to her forehead.
“There’s something else I remembered from my chats with Vaelora, something she told me about her daughter.”
My entire body tensed at the pinch of her brows, at the anxiety racing through our bond. I pulled back to look at her. “Tell me.”
“Vaelora once told me her daughter was taken prisoner by the Shadow Fae during the war. She heard rumors… ones that claimed she’d been made a slave by the king.”
Not a servant as I’d surmised, but a slave. A low snarl built in my throat. My fists clenched at my sides, every muscle in my body tightening with fury.
Tenebris.
Of course it had been him. My father had kidnapped my mother. Enslaved and impregnated her. Then what? Had he banished her or had she simply abandoned me?
The air thickened with nox, shadows bleeding from my skin like wrath made tangible. Aelia’s hand on my chest served to anchor me, her soft presence a balm to the storm raging in my blood.
Gods, I wasn’t sure how I’d survive any of this without her.
“I swear it, Aelia,” I ground out, my voice rough with fury. “I will discover the truth. Whatever Tenebris did to her… wherever he kept her…”
“I know you will,” she whispered, and I felt her faith in me, her love. It surged through me as powerful as the anger and determination. It bolstered me. Gave me strength.
“And Helroth…” My eyes blazed as I turned back toward the sea of stars.
“I’ll rip him apart for what he did to my grandfather, to Vaelora, to Kaelith.
To you. For what he stole from all of them.
From all of us. I’m going to find Helroth and free my grandmother from that monster’s grasp if it’s the last gods’ damned thing I do.
He will never harm you or anyone else that is mine again. ”
The oath settled over me like iron. Heavy. Final. Binding.
This wasn’t just about surviving the war or keeping Aelia safe anymore, though she would always be my priority. This… this was about legacy. My grandfather’s. My mother’s. And maybe, someday, my own.
Aelia’s hands framed my face, her thumbs brushing the tension from my jaw. “Then we’ll do it together,” she whispered. “All of it. We’ll make them pay.”
I leaned into her touch, my heart hammering so loud I could feel it in my throat. “Just… not tonight.”
Her brows drew together in quiet concern. “Reign?”
“I’ve missed you terribly, and I need to forget,” I rasped.
“Just for a little while. The blood. The pain. The gods’ damned truths I never asked for.
” My hands skimmed down her arms, fingers tightening at her waist. “Make me forget, starlight. For a few hours, let it be just us. No courts. No thrones. No war.”
Emotion flashed in her eyes, fierce and full of love. She rose onto her tiptoes and pressed her lips to mine.
The cuorem ignited between us, not in an eager frenzy, but in salvation as I deepened the kiss, tangling my fingers in her hair.
Because I knew in her arms, I would find peace. In her kiss, I would find purpose. And in her love, I’d find the strength to face whatever hell would come next.