Chapter Fifty-Six
KAEL
The room hasn’t taken a breath. Not since the words Little Star.
Elyssara stands frozen, her eyes hollow with disbelief, and every muscle in my body screams to move to her—to shield her, to steady her—but I can’t tell if touching her would save her or shatter her.
Lesara Dawnmere.
Alive.
Untouched by the years that broke her daughter in half—that’s the part that makes anger rise in my veins, sharp and hot.
I flick through memories, trying to make sense of this—how did we not see this coming? I rifle through moments; the way Gellesk calls her Princess, the Nymerians never once referring to her as Queen, but the one that demands my attention is Tarrakai. You are not Queen yet.
They all knew, and no one fucking told her.
Elandor’s babbling about records and Memory Orbs, Seren’s got tears streaking her face, but all I can hear is the pounding in my skull.
Because if Lesara lived… that means she left my fucking Starbound to face this world alone.
“Explain,” I grit out between bared teeth, and I feel the muscles in my jaw flicking with tension.
Lesara blinks at me, taken aback by my forceful tone.
But I won’t blunt my edges.
Because all I can see is Elyssara, five years old, mud-streaked and starving, left to find home in the shadows instead of her mother’s arms.
And this woman—this mother—looking at her like a miracle instead of an apology.
My hand tightens around the hilt of my dagger.
My gaze wraps around Elyssara like a protective shield.
“She left you,” I say, low and sharp.
Lesara’s eyes flick to me, startled. “You don’t under—”
“The fuck I don’t.” My voice cuts through the chamber. “You ran. You hid. While she starved.” I drop my voice into a low, lethal weapon. “She’s your daughter.”
Elyssara turns toward me, lips parting—a warning, maybe a plea, maybe even a realization—but I can’t stop.
“Do you know what your ‘Little Star’ became, Your Highness?” I snarl. “A thief. A killer. A girl who learned to survive in the dark you left her in.”
The room goes death-still.
But my words ache to find their mark, just as my blade does.
Even the candles seem to pull back in fear of me.
Lesara’s shoulders cave, and for the first time, she looks small—not royal, not radiant. Just human.
Elandor whispers something about necessity, about prophecy, but I don’t care. Because all I can think is that my Starbound lived her whole life believing she was alone. Believing she was nothing.
And the woman who could have stopped it is standing right in front of her.
I know that kind of loneliness—the one Maldrak fed me like poison. I lived it. And I’ll be damned before she ever tastes it again.
“Perhaps if you could just listen for a moment, Kael?” Elandor interjects softly.
So I spin to him, eyes slicing through his softness like a blade through flesh. “You will never make me understand. So at least give me information we can use in the war that neither of you will ever face,” I bite.
Lesara steadies herself, but her voice trembles.
“I’ve been working on fixing it. Like… somewhat of a puppet master,” she admits. “I connected the rebellion with Zerynthia’s mission through Gellesk. Built channels beneath Thalmyr’s reign. We’ve been trying to break the threvenar.”
Her gaze flicks to Elandor, then to me. “It’s more sophisticated than any of us realized.
It moves through the bloodstream like a hunter tracking prey—only the prey is memory itself.
Any recollection that undermines the crown’s truth, the threvenar hunts it down, devours it, and sends it to the Orbs.
Every lost truth becomes a ghost wandering the realm. ”
She exhales, exhausted, older than she looks. “That’s why the people don’t remember the monarchy. Why even I had to hide. They’ve stripped history from our blood.”
I laugh once, sharp and humorless. “And while you hid, she bled.”
Lesara’s face twists with pain, but I don’t stop. “You talk of puppet strings and lost ghosts, but all I see is a mother who let her daughter be swallowed by the dark.”
She opens her mouth to respond, but I step forward, voice cutting and deliberate, every word a blade: “The difference between you and her, Your Majesty, is that puppet masters stay behind the curtain. The puppets face the world.”
The room goes silent.
Elandor’s quill stops moving. Seren’s tears glint in the low candlelight. Even Ronyn—usually the one to cut tension with a sardonic remark—has gone still. Despondent. And I can see the pain in his face, too. I can see the way he aches for Elyssara’s heartbreak—the trauma that never needed to exist.
Lesara’s hands tremble. “You think I don’t know what I’ve done?” she whispers. “Every night, I’ve prayed to the Stars that she survived. That she’d find her way back to me. That the rebellion might mean something if she lived.”
“Prayers,” I bite. “You reduce the existence of the brightest Star in all the realms to a figurehead for the rebellion?”
For a moment, no one moves. The tension in the chamber feels alive, like the air itself is braced for a blow.
Then movement—small, fragile.
Elyssara.
She takes one step back, her chest rising too fast, eyes glassy and far away. Like she’s falling inward. Like the weight of two decades is finally crushing her.
Her lips part, but no sound comes.
The tether between us flares—fear, heartbreak, disbelief—then collapses into static.
I move before she can.
In two strides, I’m at her side, my arms catching her just as her knees buckle.
“She’s alive,” she whispers, but it’s not joy. It’s devastation. It’s too much truth for one body to hold.
“Enough,” I murmur, callous and final, eyes never leaving Lesara. “She’s done for now.”
Lesara starts forward, instinctive, but I lift a hand—flat, silent, absolute. The gesture of a man who’s started and ended wars. Who’s bent fate itself to his will.
“You’ve said enough, Your Highness.”
Elandor opens his mouth to protest, but one look from me shuts him up.
“Take today,” I say, my voice turning to command. “We depart for Zerynthia at the moon’s peak.”
The declaration drops like a hammer, reverberating through the room.
The rebellion has its puppet master. The truth has its proof.
And I have my war and my woman.
“We have a war to face.”
I turn, gathering Elyssara against my chest. She’s trembling, eyes open but unfocused, like she’s trapped between past and present.
Her breath brushes my collarbone—uneven, shattered—and something in me fractures to watch it.
“I’ve got you, darling,” I whisper, steady, unshakable.
Because I will hold her together until she remembers how to do it herself.
I gesture to Ronyn and Seren to join us, because she’ll need them. I’ll need them to execute my plan.
Without another word, I carry her from the chamber, the sound of my boots echoing through the stone halls.
Behind us, no one dares to speak.
Not the queen who hid.
Not the scholar who archived it all.
Not the rebellion that waited.
Just silence.
And the promise of war.
But I hold her to my chest like I can shield her from them. From the world.
Elarion Castle’s halls drench us in guttering candlelight.
Its softness a stark contrast to the war raging inside my mind.
The fury that blazes in my chest at the mother who left her to starve.
To fight every day of her godsforsaken life in the fucking Virellin slums. What she did was not love.
It was politics wrapped in an altruistic disguise.
And I won’t fucking tolerate it. Not when it comes to her.
My boots pound against the pale floors like a soldier marching to battle. I descend the library stairs, turn corners, stalk down hallways until Seren’s ragged breathing cuts through my focus.
But I don’t slow. I won’t stop until she knows she’s safe.
I push open the chamber door with my shoulder and cross to the bed draped in blankets the hue of vanilla and cinnamon. The sunlight spilling through the lattice window catches the gold flecks in her hair, the bruised violet under her eyes. She looks both infinite and breakable.
I lower her carefully, tugging the blanket to her shoulders, but she doesn’t move. Just stares blankly ahead as if she can’t fathom her mother’s resurrection. Or maybe it’s the erasure of witches, the binding of dragons, Maldrak, the fucking Memory Orbs. All of it.
Ronyn stands in the doorway, jaw clenched. He’s never looked more like a soldier.
“Stay with her,” I tell him. “Keep her safe.”
He nods once, moving to sit by her side. “With my life,” he vows.
I press a hand to Elyssara’s hair, a wordless promise, then turn to Seren still lingering in the doorway.
“Seren,” I say quietly, “I need your help.”
Her brows knit, but she doesn’t ask.
She just follows.
There’s one more thing I need to do—because holding a secret from her is now an act of betrayal. Even if she knows I’m holding it.
The moment the door shuts, the strategy begins.