Chapter 146
(Author POV)
(Kingdom Of Viremont)
The room was quiet, but there was no peace in it.
Lucien sat on the edge of his bed, staring through the tall windows of his chamber. Beyond the glass, Viremont stretched beneath a darkened sky, its familiar streets unusually still.
The kingdom was surrounded.
Veiled Thorn mages had established barriers around the borders while Varynthar's army waited beyond them. Solithium-infused weapons had been positioned at strategic points, and dark magic hung over the land like a sickness.
They had not managed to breach the kingdom yet. Theo's stabilising spell was the only thing holding the defenses together. The Archmage had reinforced the kingdom's protective barriers days ago, and somehow, against all odds, they were still standing.
But the people were running out of time.
Lucien's gaze drifted toward the fields beyond the city.
The crops had begun to wither, livestock had fallen sick or simply collapsed without warning, and wells that had once supplied entire villages were becoming contaminated by the dark energy spreading through the land.
Even the air seemed heavier than it had before.
Viremont was dying slowly.
Inside the palace, the king and queen were constantly surrounded by ministers, generals, and nobles arguing over dwindling supplies and impossible choices.
The royal court had become a place of whispered conversations, sleepless nights, and increasingly desperate attempts to find a way out of a situation that seemed to have none.
And in the middle of all of it, Lucien had received news that had made everything else feel insignificant.
Theo had told him that Cassiane and Rhaevan had been sent on a deadly mission to retrieve a powerful relic. They had succeeded in finding the Core, but Veiled Thorn had attacked them, and Rhaevan had supposedly died during the mission.
Lucien closed his eyes.
He missed his brother.
His friend.
His companion through countless battles and more wars than either of them cared to remember. Rhaevan had stood beside him through some of the darkest moments of his life, always calm when Lucien was reckless, always steady when everyone else was losing their heads.
But the loss that hurt in a different way was hers.
Cassiane.
His chest tightened.
He had heard the news three days ago.
Cassiane had been poisoned, declared a traitor, and then, as though that alone wasn't cruel enough, her body had supposedly been thrown into the wild to be devoured by beasts.
There had been no funeral, no grave, and no final farewell.
Lucien lowered his head.
For years, people had looked at him and seen the Crown Prince of Viremont. Some feared him, others respected him, and many simply measured every word they spoke in his presence, careful not to offend the future king.
Cassiane had never cared about any of that.
She had teased him, mocked him, argued with him, and laughed at him whenever he deserved it. She had dragged him into ridiculous situations whenever she thought he needed something to take his mind off his responsibilities, and somehow, whenever he was hurting, she always seemed to notice.
She had seen the person beneath the title.
She joked with him when everyone else was busy bowing.
She had stood beside him when everyone else expected him to remain strong.
She had treated him like Lucien.
Not the Crown Prince.
Just Lucien.
His mind drifted back to the first time he had met her.
She had been sitting in the palace, enjoying the food by herself, and something about her had immediately caught his attention. They had met only once after that, before she mysteriously disappeared from his life.
He hadn't thought much of it then.
Four years later, he heard about a girl from a powerful lineage who might be able to help save their kingdom. Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined that girl would be Cassiane.
Their time together during the festival had given him the chance to know her properly, and the more he did, the more he liked her exactly as she was.
She was beautiful, funny, carefree, and utterly unlike anyone he had ever known.
She carried herself with a confidence that made it impossible to ignore her, and there was something uniquely Cassiane about the way she could turn even the most ordinary moment into an adventure.
He wanted to know her better.
He wanted her in his life.
So he had offered her his friendship, and Cassiane, in her own peculiar way, had accepted.
As the days passed, he found himself thinking about her more often than he should have.
When they were kidnapped, he had been strangely relieved simply to have her beside him, even with danger closing in around them.
When an attack meant for her came, he had acted without thinking and taken the blow himself.
When he finally woke, the first person he had searched for was Cassiane.
That was when he realised just how deeply he had come to care for her. She was no longer simply a friend. Somewhere along the way, without him even noticing when it had happened, he had started falling for her.
But he had also realised something else.
Her heart belonged to someone else.
His friend.
Rhaevan.
And no matter how much Lucien cared for her, he knew she would never look at him the way she looked at Rhaevan.
He had seen it long before either of them had been willing to admit it. He had seen the way Rhaevan looked at her, the way his attention instinctively followed her even when he pretended it didn't, and the quiet, almost frightening depth of his devotion.
Lucien knew he could never love her with that kind of terrifying loyalty and reverence. More importantly, he knew that what Rhaevan felt for her was something he would never want to stand between.
So, before his own feelings could complicate what they had, he stepped back.
It wasn't easy, but he had made peace with it.
He would rather see two people he loved find happiness together than turn their lives into a competition over feelings that had never belonged to him in the first place. Cassiane and Rhaevan were far more important to him than the possibility of being chosen by either of them.
Besides, those two idiots had been completely oblivious to what they felt for each other.
Someone had to give them a push.
Lucien had tried.
More than once.
He had nudged them toward each other, teased them, created opportunities, and watched with increasing disbelief as neither of them seemed to understand what was happening.
Then Cassiane had told him she was leaving.
Lucien still remembered the look on Rhaevan's face that night, and he was almost certain the fool had heard their conversation.
He had offered Cassiane a place in Viremont, somewhere safe where he could protect her while she figured out what she wanted and, perhaps, finally figured things out with Rhaevan.
He had thought he could keep them both safe.
He had thought there would be time.
But nothing had gone according to plan.
A tear slipped down Lucien's cheek.
He didn't bother wiping it away.
"You're really gone..."
The words barely left his lips.
He stared at the floor, his chest aching with a grief he had been trying to contain since the news arrived.
He hadn't even said goodbye.
His fingers curled tightly into his hair as his breathing grew uneven.
He had failed.
The thought had been sitting inside him for three days, growing heavier with every passing hour.
He had failed Cassiane.
He had failed Rhaevan.
And outside those walls, he was failing his kingdom.
He had spent his entire life being prepared for this moment. Every lesson, every battle, every sacrifice had been meant to prepare him to protect Viremont and the people who depended on him.
Yet here he was, sitting inside his room while the enemy surrounded his kingdom and the people outside slowly suffered.
What good was being Crown Prince if he couldn't protect the people who mattered to him?
His hands tightened in his hair.
"I should have done something."
His voice cracked.
He lowered his head as his shoulders trembled, another tear falling silently onto the floor.
For the first time in his life, Lucien had no clever remark to make, no teasing smile to hide behind, and no plan he could pretend would fix everything.
There was only the unbearable weight of everything he had lost.
And the terrible knowledge that he had no idea how to get any of it back.