Chapter 31
THE OTHER HEIR
Nesilhan
Three days have passed since we returned from the Forgotten Grove to find our world in ruins. The only good that has come from it is that my ability to lie has continued to return over the passing days.
Three days of war councils, logistics meetings, and watching Kaan remind his remaining faction lords exactly why they should fear him.
The gathering two nights ago was everything I expected—Lord Riza's barely concealed ambition, Lady Asena's predatory assessment, the careful dance of loyalty and self-preservation that defines Shadow Court politics.
Kaan handled it masterfully, all dark humor and casual threats, the Shadow Lord they remembered emerging from whatever grief had softened him.
But through it all, one question has haunted me: the Twilight Heir.
The rumors Zoran shared that first night have been circling my mind like vultures.
A young man, they said. Around my age. Wielding both light and shadow magic.
I told Kaan my suspicion, that it might be my sister.
He listened. He didn't dismiss me. But we agreed to wait for more intelligence before drawing conclusions.
Now, sitting in the war council chamber with steam rising from my untouched tea, I have a terrible feeling that the waiting is over.
The war council chamber feels too small for the weight of what we're about to discuss.
It's one of the few rooms in the palace that survived the devastation intact—half the structure lies in ruins, but this chamber endured, as if the ancient magic woven into its stones knew we would need it for this moment.
I sit at the table, watching the others file in—Kaan taking his place at the head, Yasar settling beside me, Elcin positioning herself where she can see all exits, and Emir entering with scrolls tucked under his arm looking marginally less like death than he did three days ago.
At least the healers finally tended to his broken arm; he moves without the careful stiffness that marked his injury when we first arrived.
The tea tastes like ash in my mouth. Everything tastes like ash lately.
Ever since we returned from the Forgotten Grove to find our world crumbling, I've felt disconnected from simple pleasures.
Food, warmth, comfort—they all feel empty when measured against the weight of what we've lost. What we failed to protect while we were gone.
Zoran arrives last, and something about his expression makes my stomach clench.
He carries himself like a man bearing news that will shatter worlds.
The expression he wears is one I've only seen a handful of times—gentle but implacable, as if he's steeling himself to deliver a blow that will change everything.
My heart begins to pound. Whatever he's learned about the Twilight Heir, it's not good.
"We have updates on multiple fronts," Kaan begins without preamble. "Emir, start with the Fae."
"Our scouts have spotted the Fae army marching toward our borders," Emir says. "They should arrive within the week. Queen Morwenna appears to be honoring her bargain, twenty thousand warriors, as promised."
A ripple of cautious relief moves through the room. Twenty thousand Fae warriors won't tip the scales entirely, but it's something. More than we had three days ago.
"That's the good news," Kaan says flatly. "Now for the rest. Zoran?"
Zoran's jaw tightens. "My spies brought intelligence that changes everything."
He spreads a map across the table, marking positions with swift, precise movements.
"Lord Taren isn't sending armies anymore.
He's coming personally. The entire Light Court military machine, every legion, every battlemage, every creature bound to their service.
The largest force they've assembled in five centuries. "
My blood goes cold. "How large?"
"Conservative estimates put it at over two hundred thousand soldiers. Elite forces, all of them. They'll be here within the week."
The silence that follows is deafening. Two hundred thousand. We have perhaps thirty thousand remaining after the losses we suffered while trapped in the Veil. Even with the Fae, assuming they actually fight alongside us instead of pursuing their own agenda, we're outnumbered four to one.
Four to one. The numbers spin in my mind like a death sentence.
I've read enough military histories to know what those odds mean.
Massacre. Not a battle, but a slaughter.
And at the head of that massive force will be my father—the man who raised me, who taught me to read by lamplight, who used to brush my hair when I was small.
Coming to destroy everything I've built, everyone I've chosen to protect.
"And the Twilight Heir?" Kaan asks, his voice carefully neutral. I feel his gaze flick to me briefly, he knows what I've been dreading. What I confided to him that first night.
Zoran's expression shifts. Something painful crosses his features.
"That's why I called this meeting." He reaches into his coat and withdraws a small portrait—the kind Light Court nobles commission for formal occasions. "My spies managed to obtain this. It was being circulated among the Light Court nobility as proof of the heir's legitimacy."
He sets the portrait on the table.
For a moment, I don't understand what I'm seeing. The face in the portrait is feminine, not masculine. Young, my age, perhaps a year or two younger. Golden hair like mine, but darker. Eyes that shift between amber and something deeper, more shadowed.
But it's the shape of her face that stops my heart. The line of her jaw. The curve of her cheekbones.
She looks like me.
She looks like my mother.
"The rumors were wrong," Zoran says quietly. "The Twilight Heir isn't a man. It's a woman." He pauses, his voice dropping. "Nesilhan, I'm so sorry. It's her. It's our sister."
My sister.
The words steal the breath from my lungs.
"That's impossible," I hear myself say, but my voice sounds distant, disconnected. "She died. They said she died."
"There was no body," Zoran says gently. "I checked the records. The healers claimed she was too fragile to be viewed, that it would upset Mother too much. Father handled all the arrangements personally."
Personally. Of course he did.
"He took her," I whisper. The room is spinning. The portrait blurs before my eyes. "He took her and told us she was dead."
"The intelligence suggests she's been raised in a hidden facility in the northern mountains," Zoran continues, his voice heavy with grief yet he has managed to separate himself from this news, as if she isn’t his sister also.
"Trained since childhood to wield both light and shadow magic.
Father's been... shaping her. Molding her into exactly what he needed. "
"A weapon," Kaan says quietly. His shadows have gone very still, the way they do when he's controlling something volcanic. "He forged her into a weapon to use against her own sister."
The nausea hits me without warning. One moment I'm sitting at the table, the next I'm stumbling to my feet, my hand pressed to my mouth as my stomach rebels against the horror of what I've learned.
"I need—" I manage to gasp, "I need air."
I barely make it out of the chamber before my body betrays me completely. In the hallway beyond the war room, I fall to my knees and retch, my stomach emptying itself as if trying to purge the poison of these revelations. My sister is alive. My father stole her. Everything I believed was a lie.
This can't be happening. This can't be real.
But the cold stone beneath my knees, the bitter taste in my mouth, the way my hands shake as I try to steady myself, it's all brutally, inescapably real.
My family isn't what I thought it was. My father isn't who I thought he was.
My entire life has been built on foundations of sand and blood.
Footsteps echo behind me, and I know without looking that it's Yasar. Not Kaan, his footsteps are heavier, more deliberate. Not Elcin, hers have a different rhythm. Yasar's steps are almost silent, liquid, the way he moves when he's hunting or stalking. But right now, they sound gentle. Concerned.
"Nesilhan." His voice is soft, careful. "Let me help you."
He kneels beside me, one hand moving to steady my shoulder while the other gathers my hair away from my face. The gesture is so unexpectedly tender that it breaks something inside me. Fresh sobs tear from my throat.
"She's alive," I whisper. "My sister is alive, and they turned her into a weapon to use against me."
"I know," Yasar says quietly. "I'm sorry."
Sorry. As if that word could possibly encompass the magnitude of this betrayal. As if anything could make this better. But the kindness in his voice, the way he stays with me while I fall apart, it reminds me that not everyone in my life is built on lies. Some bonds, at least, are real.
But then the fury rises again, hot and bright and looking for a target. And Yasar is here, being kind, being gentle, and suddenly I'm furious at him too. Furious at the bond that ties us together, furious at another choice that was made for me, another chain around my neck.
"Don't," I snarl, jerking away from his touch. "Don't touch me. Don't pretend to care."
He goes very still. "Nesilhan—"
"You're just another chain, aren't you?" The words come out poisonous, designed to hurt. "Another decision made for me by other people. Another way to control me."
It's not fair. I know it's not fair even as I say it. Yasar didn't choose this bond any more than I did. But the rage needs somewhere to go, and he's here, and I'm tired of being grateful for scraps of kindness in a world that keeps taking everything from me.
My hand moves before I can think, cracking across his face in a sharp slap that echoes off the stone walls.
Yasar's head snaps to the side, but he doesn't move away. Doesn't retaliate. Just takes it, the way he's taken everything else I've thrown at him since this bond formed between us.
"Feel better?" he asks mildly, turning back to face me.
The question makes me want to hit him again. I draw back my hand, fury blazing through me like wildfire, but this time he's ready. His fingers close around my wrist, not hard enough to hurt but firm enough to stop me.
"Take your hands off my wife."
Kaan's voice cuts through the hallway like a blade, deathly quiet and absolutely deadly . I turn to see him standing in the doorway of the war room. His dark eyes are fixed on Yasar with an intensity that promises violence.
Yasar releases my wrist immediately, raising both hands in a gesture of surrender. But there's something like amusement in his gaze, a little smile playing at the corners of his mouth that suggests he's not particularly intimidated by Kaan's threat.
"Of course," Yasar says smoothly, getting to his feet. "She's all yours."
The grin he flashes me before he walks away is pure mischief, as if he's enjoyed this entire dramatic scene.
As if my breakdown and fury were somehow entertaining to him.
I want to be angry about that, but somehow the sight of his irreverent smile makes me feel a little more human.
A little less like I'm drowning in other people's lies.
Then Yasar is gone, and it's just Kaan and me in the hallway. Just my husband and the wreckage of everything I thought I knew about my life.
Kaan approaches slowly, the way he might approach a wounded animal. His shadows have calmed, no longer lashing around him like whips, but I can see the tension in every line of his body. The fear.
"Nes," he says softly. "Talk to me."
I look up at him from where I'm still kneeling on the cold stone, and something breaks inside me all over again. Not with fury this time, but with exhaustion. With the bone-deep weariness of someone who has been fighting for too long and learned that the war was rigged from the start.
"You were right," I whisper. "My suspicion, it was right. He took her."
Kaan kneels beside me, close enough that I can feel the warmth radiating from his body but not touching. Not yet. Waiting for permission.
"We'll get her back," he says with quiet conviction. "We'll find a way."
"What if she doesn't want to be saved?" I ask. "What if she truly believes I'm the enemy?"
"Then we show her the truth," Kaan says simply. "The same way you showed me."
I reach for him then, my fingers finding his hand in the dim light of the hallway. His skin is warm, real, anchoring me to something solid in a world that's suddenly full of quicksand.
He cups my face in his hands, thumbs brushing away tears. I didn't realize I was still crying. In the shadow-dimmed hallway, his dark eyes look almost gentle.
"They think they've broken you," he says quietly. "They think they've destroyed everything you care about and left you helpless. But they made one crucial mistake."
"What's that?"
"They left you alive." His power pulses around us, not threatening but protective, wrapping us both in living darkness. "And now you know exactly what they took from you. Your sister. Your family. Everything you thought was real."
I lean into his touch, drawing strength from his unwavering certainty. "They think they've won by bringing forward their chosen heir."
Kaan's smile is sharp as a blade. "They have no idea what they've unleashed."
I think of my sister, the girl I never knew, the weapon my father forged in secret. Does she know who she really is? Does she know she has a sister who mourned her? Or has my father buried that truth so deep she'll never find it?
It doesn't matter. I'll dig it up myself. I'll tear through every lie he's ever told her until she sees the truth.
She's my blood. And no matter what he's done to her, no matter what he's made her believe, I will not let him use her against me.
I will get my sister back.
Or I will burn the Light Court to ash trying.