Chapter 26 #2
Opened it again, helpless, eyes too bright behind her lenses, as if she couldn’t decide whether asking me a question would get her killed or only humiliated.
Selene’s prayer didn’t stop. If anything, it sped up, her hands clasped so tightly it looked painful. Her lips moved faster, quieter, like she was trying to drown out the sight of me with devotion.
Lyra didn’t hesitate.
Lyra reached under her cloak and pulled out a blade.
The sound of metal leaving its sheath was clean. Certain.
Her eyes locked on me like I was nothing but a target.
She stalked forward.
The guards dropped me.
Not gently.
Not even carelessly.
Like they were done holding something unpleasant.
My knees hit the floor first. Pain shot up my thighs. My palms caught my weight a second later, and the stone was warm under my hands from the hearth, warm enough to feel wrong in Icespire. I sucked in a breath that trembled on the exhale.
Lyra stopped a few feet away, blade angled downward, ready.
“Your Majesty,” she said, voice layered with satisfaction. “May I kill the imposter on the spot?”
My laugh came out broken. Dry. Bitter.
She really couldn’t even let me finish starving first.
Ciaran’s gaze didn’t leave me.
It pinned me there.
Amber eyes like molten light, furious and intent, as if he could burn truth out of me by staring hard enough.
“No,” he said.
Lyra’s expression didn’t change, but her grip tightened. “She deserves?—”
“I said no… I have questions for her.”
The room went tight with his words. Even Vivienne’s posture stiffened. Selene’s prayers faltered for half a heartbeat before rushing back even faster.
Ciaran lifted his chin slightly, eyes flicking to his wives with the same cold authority he’d used a moment ago.
“You will return to your bedchambers,” he ordered. “All of you.”
Vivienne’s lips parted like she wanted to argue, then thought better of it.
Lyra looked furious, but she didn’t move against him. Not fully.
Therynne hesitated, gaze flicking to me again, and something in my chest twisted at the look on her face.
It wasn’t fear.
It was horrified understanding.
Selene rose slowly, still whispering, hands never unclasping.
One by one, they turned to go.
Vivienne walked past first, her scent trailing behind her, something sweet and expensive and painfully alive. She didn’t look at me again, but her shoulders were tense, like seeing me had scraped something raw inside her.
Lyra passed next, lingering just long enough to let her knife hover a little closer to my cheek. Therynne followed, steps quick, head down like she was trying to make herself invisible.
As she walked by me, something fluttered from her sleeve.
A scrap of paper.
Small. Folded.
It landed near my knee like an accident.
I moved without thinking, shifting my weight so my knee slid over it, pinning it to the floor. Hiding it beneath my body the only way I could.
No one seemed to notice.
Not the guards.
Not Ciaran.
But my pulse wouldn’t slow, and my mouth went even drier.
Because whatever was written on that paper, it was the first thing I’d been given in days that wasn’t pain.
Ciaran just kept eating, slow and deliberate, like the room wasn’t holding its breath around him, like I wasn’t on the floor with my hands bound and my stomach so empty it hurt to exist. He tore bread with his fingers, dipped it in something rich and steaming, chewed as if he could savor flavor while someone else starved at his feet.
That was the point.
It wasn’t interrogation yet. It was demonstration.
My body betrayed me again, a low, humiliating sound from my stomach that made heat crawl up my neck. I hated it. Hated that hunger made me honest in ways pride couldn’t control. The smell of food clung to my lungs. Every inhale felt like a punishment.
Ciaran lifted his gaze at last.
Warm amber. Cold intent.
“Hello, Elara.”
The way he said my real name turned my stomach. Not because it was wrong. Because it was right. Because he used it like he was reclaiming something, like he’d peeled off the costume and was finally addressing the person underneath.
I didn’t answer.
I kept my eyes on the floor in front of him, jaw locked, trying to remember what silence used to feel like before it became a weapon people used against me.
He swallowed another bite and leaned back in his chair as if this amused him.
“So interesting,” he murmured, “that I’m meeting you like this.”
I stayed still, listening, because my mind was sluggish and fogged and wrong. I could feel it, the hollow ache inside my skull where something important used to live. The memories that tried to surface came up blurred at the edges, like they’d been scrubbed too hard and left nothing but smears.
Ciaran’s voice slid on, smooth as oil.
“I felt like I knew you,” he said. “For a moment, I truly did. But apparently what I knew was a lie.”
I swallowed. My throat scraped like paper.
His fingers tapped the edge of the plate once, soft as a threat.
“And you remember,” he added, “how much I hate lies.”
Then he asked it, casually, like he wasn’t about to drag the answer out of my ribs.
“Was any of it real?”
The question sat between us and waited.
I should’ve kept my mouth shut. I knew better than to feed a king my words and expect him not to choke me with them.
But all I had left was truth, and even that felt slippery, stripped down to the bare bones.
I lifted my eyes to him. Met that molten stare. Let him see I wasn’t begging.
“Everything but my name and where I came from,” I said.
It came out rough, but it held.
Ciaran’s expression didn’t change. “Is that so?”
I exhaled a laugh that wasn’t humor, just disbelief. The sound scratched my throat raw. “You’re looking at me like I betrayed some great romance.”
He didn’t blink.
So I leaned into it, because if he wanted a performance, fine. I could bleed on command.
“I don’t remember every detail you’re so desperate for,” I said, voice tighter now, anger threading through the fog. “But I remember enough.”
My stomach clenched again, hunger rolling through me like a wave, but I forced the words out anyway.
“I was put on a ship and sent to you,” I said. “As a wife.”
Not love.
Not devotion.
A wife the way kingdoms used women. A living signature on paper.
“Regardless of who I am,” I said, holding his gaze, “that is the truth. I was a marriage built on a lie. Not because I wanted it. Because you all did.”
I swallowed, my mouth dry, my body trembling with exhaustion and fury.
“You made me bow at your feet,” I said quietly. “You made me swear allegiance to you. And you want to sit there and ask me if it was real?” My lips curved. “If you think that’s real,” I told him, “then I have bad news for you.”