Chapter 43 Seren
Chapter forty-three
Seren
Moments passed by, too quiet as not a single one of us moved to speak first. The only sound was the shifting of metal on metal, and metal on stone, as the guards shuffled their feet in discomfort.
Claudian appraised me coldly and clinically, as a scientist might study an undesirable species of insect.
I hardened my features into a mask of impassivity, turning away from his calculating presence, but I thought of every time I had seen him in my dreams. I thought of every time I had seen Ayla and Théo and Safiya.
I wondered, not for the first time, how it was possible that my visions had granted me glimpses of every important person I had met, months before it had come to pass. Was it chance? A connection that tied us together? Images granted to me from the Goddesses themselves?
Ayla stood beside me, head downcast. Her hands wrung together nervously.
Prince Claudian’s stare was glacial, and gooseflesh rippled across my bare biceps.
“Did you really think your plan would work?” I broke the uneasy silence.
Claudian answered with a satisfied look. One that said he had succeeded in something, if it was only not being the first to break.
He looked at Ayla, speaking to her instead of me. His expression turned from disgust to an approximation of love as his gaze moved from one cousin to the next. “I did this for you, Ayla. For the both of us. Didn’t your mother deserve to be avenged? Shouldn’t the crown rest upon your head?”
“You did this for you,” Ayla said in a voice thick with unspent tears.
“You have admitted as much. You killed my mother. Maybe she was not the woman who carried me in her womb, but she raised me as a little girl. She read stories to me and held me close when I scraped my knees. I knew her. I had the time to love her, but not enough, because you took her from me.”
“You did not belong to her,” Claudian growled, emotion finally breaking across his stony face. His manipulative bounds could only stretch so far, it seemed. “You belong to me.”
“I belong to no one but myself,” Ayla countered, but her statement lacked conviction, as if she were not sure the words were true.
Claudian laughed—low and keening—like he knew as much.
“You admitted to wanting to rule from behind me. That I would just be some figurehead, a pretty face for the public to admire while you puppeteered Acsilla from the shadows. You admitted that you think me incapable.” Ayla drew a long, shaky breath.
“So, I just have one question for you. Did you ever love me? Or was I only ever a pawn in your game of revenge?”
Her lips pressed closed as soon as the words were out, as if she could not bear to let him see them wobble as her distress poured forth. I moved closer to her side in silent support. I understood far too well the pain of a parent's betrayal.
“I saved you! When your mother was dying, it was I who cut you from her body. My hands were coated in her life’s blood.
When Tarquin cast you to the side, I was the one who was there for you all these years.
And yet, you ask me if I have ever loved you?
” Claudian spoke in a low, dangerous tone. His eyes narrowed.
Ayla began to cry in earnest. “But it wasn’t enough. I was never enough. If you truly loved me, you would have raised me as your own. You would not have bothered with the plots and ploys. I should have been enough.”
His gaze softened in a way that I found unconvincing, performative.
“Ayla, I think we should go. You’ve said what you needed to say.” I laid a hand on her shoulder and turned her away from the cell before Claudian could attempt to manipulate her further.
She nodded, brushing tears from her cheeks.
“You think your cousin will protect you better than I have? Love you like I do?” The prince laughed, a harsh sound of bitter amusement. “She won’t. I may have lied to you about her motivations—withheld her identity—but she will be the reason you lose everything. That is the truth.”
“You were very nearly the reason she lost everything,” I spat, moving between them. “I would never take advantage of someone I claim to love, but you clearly have no such qualms. You are no longer necessary. We will find a way forward, together, and you will remain here to rot.”
“Seren is right,” Ayla whispered. “You have taken advantage of me, time and again, and as much as I wish I might have known the man you were before all of the pain and hurt, I only know this version of you. I regret allowing you to treat me so poorly for so long.”
We retreated to the stairwell. Claudian’s eyes burned against my back, acidic in nature.
“You will not survive what is coming without me,” he said with a note of finality.
I turned to face him once more. “And what exactly is coming?”
Prince Claudian merely shrugged, rumpled and battered but ever clinging to his unbothered facade.
I was sure it was only another plan to free himself, to earn his way back into our good graces and put him in a position to seize power.
Ayla and I looked at each other, resolve in our eyes, and began to climb the stairs. The space darkened around us, the lights grew dimmer and sparser once more, but the feeling of foreboding that had once been had lifted.
The hard conversations were over.
Evil had been thwarted.
It was time to move forward and figure out, together, what the future of Acsilla would look like.