Chapter 50
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The cathedral breathes. Not with life, but with the slow, frigid exhale of centuries—stone lungs contracting around us, trapping the chill until it becomes something almost sentient.
It seeps through the soles of my heels, climbs the silk stockings I've pulled over my knees, and settles in my marrow like it owns the deed to my bones.
I stand at the front, drowning in black velvet that feels simultaneously like a shroud and like armor made of cobwebs. Too heavy. Too insubstantial. The fabric drags across my shoulders, whispering against my skin, yet it does very little to quell the chill in the air.
Before me: two coffins.
One is gilt-edged and grotesque, rococo flourishes screaming wealth and status even in death—my mother’s. The other is stark, severe, unforgiving planes of polished ebony that swallow the candlelight rather than reflect it—my father’s.
Just like them. As different as night and day but indelibly connected, even in death.
“Your Highness?” The priest's voice is a distant drone, bees in another garden. “The eulogy?”
I blink.
When did I walk to the lectern?
My hands find the cold marble, and I realize I'm gripping it hard enough to turn my knuckles white.
I open my mouth, and words spill out—something about legacy, about sacrifice, about the price of peace.
I don't recognize my own voice. It sounds like Mother's, all clipped consonants and regal distance, as if I'm narrating a documentary about someone else's tragedy.
The crowd blurs. Faces swim in and out of focus like fish behind aquarium glass.
There's Ambassador Voss from Temanburg, dabbing at dry eyes with a silk handkerchief.
Senator Kael, who voted to cut my mother's infrastructure funding three years ago, now weeping openly for the cameras.
A sea of black wool and crocodile tears, each person calculating how this death benefits their portfolio, their poll numbers, their petty ambitions.
How many of you, I think, my gaze scraping across the pews, actually spoke to her? How many saw past the steel? How many knew that she hummed when she thought no one was listening, off-key and tuneless, some half-remembered lullaby from her own childhood?
How many of you saw my father tremble? How many noticed the way his hands shook when thunder came, how he'd hide in the library with the curtains drawn, reading poetry to the shadows?
None. They saw the masks. The benevolent, powerful alpha and her devoted omega. That's what the history books will say.
Would they still think that if they knew what she had done?
Would they mourn a monster?
I hate myself for having these thoughts, especially now, at my parents’ own funeral. But they persist regardless, residing in the dark corners of my heart where resentment festers like mold.
But I also remember—
The fishing trip when I was six. The way Father's laughter cracked across the lake like a whip, startling the birds from the trees, when I finally hooked my first trout.
How he'd pressed a chocolate into my palm before dinner, his eyes crinkling with conspiratorial delight, and said, Don't tell your mother.
He was soft in a world that devoured softness. I loved him for it. I hated him for it. Now, standing over his coffin, I don't know which feeling wins. Maybe neither. Maybe both, tearing me apart like wolves with a shared kill.
And Mother.
God, Mother.
She never held me like a daughter. I was the princess first, the weapon second, her legacy third.
I remember the etiquette classes that chipped away pieces of myself until I was polished smooth as marble, the political lessons delivered with the same detachment others used to order lunch.
I remember watching her sign execution orders, her face unreadable as granite, while I stood in the corner, wondering if she'd ever looked at me and seen something other than a project nearing completion.
But I also remember—
The fever. I was twelve, burning up with some infection that had the doctors murmuring in hushed, worried tones.
She'd sat on my bed, her spine rigid even on the soft mattress, and brushed my hair.
Her hands had been surprisingly gentle, the way I'd always imagined a mother's hands should be.
She'd sung something under her breath, a lullaby in a language I didn't recognize, her voice so soft I thought for years I'd invented it. A hallucination of affection.
Maybe I did. Maybe grief is just another kind of fever, and I'm hallucinating now.
My chest constricts, but this time, it's not grief—not entirely. It's fear, sharp and electric, shooting through my veins like poison.
Because three miles away from us, in a private hospital that smells of antiseptic and impending doom, Teddie is fighting for every breath.
The cure isn't working.
I gave him everything the Noths fucking had, and still his fever climbs. Still his body rejects the so-called cure like a foreign invader.
If I lose him too—
I can't finish the thought. My knees threaten to buckle, the cathedral tilting dangerously, but then—
Warmth.
It crashes into me like a wave against a seawall, sudden and solid and saving me from drowning.
Ridge's calloused hand finds the small of my back, his palm rough even through the velvet, grounding me like an anchor thrown into deep water.
He's directly behind me, his jaw tight beneath the beginnings of a beard he's let grow these past terrible weeks.
Tension radiates off him, the barely restrained violence of a man who wants to break things but settles for standing guard instead.
“Easy, Princess,” he murmurs, low enough that only I can hear. His voice is gravel and grit. “Breathe. I've got you.”
To my left, Colter shifts. His mask reflects the cathedral's stained glass in fractured colors—ruby and sapphire and gold—hiding his face but not his worry.
I don't need to see his expression to feel it, heavy as humid air before a storm.
His hand brushes mine, just for a second, a question and an answer all at once.
Behind me, Luka's presence is quieter but no less real.
I can practically hear his mind working, cataloging every exit, every threat, every variable in the room.
He's probably counted the number of tiles in the ceiling, memorized the faces of every mourner, calculated the statistical likelihood of an attack.
His anxiety is a comfort, strangely. It means someone is paying attention to the dangers I'm too broken to see.
And then—Kylian.
He presses against my side, all sharp angles and unhinged energy, a live wire in human form. Where the others are steady, he's chaos, but it's a chaos that somehow steadies me when the world tilts.
“Anyone you want me to stab?” he whispers, lips brushing my ear. “I'm bored. Say the word. The ambassador with the fake tears looks like he'd bleed pretty.”
A hysterical laugh bubbles in my throat, inappropriate and ugly. I swallow it down, but he feels my shoulders shake and presses closer, his hand finding mine and squeezing until our bones creak.
My mates. My alphas. The only reason I'm still standing.
And then I’m being led away, back to the very front pew, where I’m nestled between the loves of my life as I try not to fall apart at the seams.
The priest drones on about eternal rest and heavenly kingdoms, but I'm counting heartbeats. Ridge's, steady and slow. Kylian's, rabbit-fast and eager. Mine, stuttering and uncertain.
When the final prayer ends, when the soldiers come to carry the coffins away, I don't cry. I think I've forgotten how. Or maybe the tears have frozen, suspended somewhere between my ribs where I can't reach them.
The crowd stirs, velvet whispers and the creak of old wood, and then—
Chaos.
The press swarms like hornets from a kicked nest, microphones thrust forward like weapons, questions battering me from all sides, sharp and stinging.
Colter growls and attempts to shield me. Ridge quite literally bares his teeth at a particularly persistent asshole. Luka places his hand on the small of my back and herds me toward the back exit.
“Princess Brylee! Princess! How are you feeling?”
“What's next for Hypso? Will Teddie be taking the throne immediately?”
“Is it true that you’re still pursuing peace with Nóthos? Is Prince Stefan actually in residence in the palace? What does that mean? Were they behind the attack on your parents?”
“Where is Prince Theodore? Why isn’t he here?”
“Back the fuck off!” Kylian rumbles, reaching for the dagger he always keeps on his person.
I reach out a hand to stop him.
This…
This is my fight.
He uses weapons.
I use my words, honing them into blades sharp enough to cut skin.
My face moves without my permission, muscles pulling into something composed, something regal.
Mother's training, finally useful for something other than giving me nightmares.
I arrange my features into the mask she taught me to wear—the perfect princess, the unbreakable heir, the girl who doesn't bleed in public.
“My brother sends his regrets,” I say, and my voice is steady despite the earthquake inside me, tectonic plates shifting and grinding. “He's currently overseeing the final preparations for the peace accords with Nóthos. A fitting tribute to our parents' vision of a unified future.”
The lie tastes like ash and copper, like blood from a bitten cheek. Teddie hasn't opened his eyes in thirty-six hours. The last time I saw him, his skin was the color of old parchment, and his hand in mine felt like holding a bundle of twigs that might snap if I squeezed too hard.
But the press eats it up, scribbling notes, already crafting the narrative. Prince Teddie, the dutiful heir, working even in grief. The royal twins, united in purpose even in tragedy.
They don't know that I'm shattering.
They don't know that every word I speak is a betrayal of the truth sitting heavy as stones in my stomach.