Chapter 299: The Collision

The palace corridors breathed with crystal clarity as Eris walked through them, her skin still buzzing with the particular satisfaction that came from watching an enemy realize… too late… that they’d underestimated you.

Vetra’s face when Eris had named the spell. The flicker of genuine fear when she’d warned her about the spell book consuming her from within. Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.

Her mind was already spinning, calculating, plotting the next moves in this game that had stopped being civilized the moment Vetra decided to murder witnesses with mind control magic. No more diplomatic maneuvering. No more careful political chess.

Vetra was too smart for that approach. Too meticulous. She covered her trails, eliminated loose ends, cut off connections before they could be traced back to her. The proper channels… courts, councils, evidence presented to nobles who might actually care… wouldn’t work.

So Eris would do what she’d always done best.

She would burn.

Not recklessly. Not with the wild, uncontrolled rage of her first life’s final days. But with the methodical, sadistic precision she’d perfected over years of making enemies regret crossing her. The calculated cruelty that had made kingdoms tremble and mothers whisper her name as warning to misbehaving children.

The Villainess. The real one. The woman she’d been trying so hard to leave behind.

Perhaps it was time to stop trying.

The palace seemed more active than usual as she walked. Servants rushing past with unusual urgency, their arms full of linens and flowers and decorative nonsense. Everyone bustling with the kind of frantic energy that spoke of deadlines approaching.

Wedding preparations, probably. Two days away now.

Eris barely registered it. Her mind was too occupied with pleasant fantasies of Vetra’s downfall to care about floral arrangements.

She needed to find Soren. Needed to tell him about the confrontation, about Vetra’s reaction, about the grimoire and the very real danger that woman posed not just politically but magically.

He’d been in council earlier. Probably still there, dealing with the fallout from Cassius’s murder and the general chaos that seemed to follow them like smoke.

Eris turned toward the council chambers, her steps purposeful, her mind already composing what she would say.

And then she saw them.

Ophelia. Walking toward her through the corridor, her face glowing with that particular contentment that came from carrying life.

And beside her…

Rael.

The world stopped.

Just stopped, as though someone had reached into the machinery of time itself and wrenched it to a halt.

Her son. Her baby. Standing in a Nevareth corridor wearing travel clothes and clutching Ophelia’s hand with the comfortable familiarity of a child who’d grown used to a substitute mother.

Recognition crashed through Eris like a tidal wave.

Of course. Of course she recognized Ophelia. The heroine. The gentle, kind woman who’d replaced her in Caelen’s bed and apparently in Rael’s heart. The woman who was everything Eris wasn’t… soft where Eris was sharp, warm where Eris burned, beloved where Eris was feared.

And if Ophelia was here, if Rael was here, then…

Caelen.

The realization struck with the force of a physical blow. Caelen was here. In Nevareth. In this palace. Somewhere close enough that his wife and son were wandering the corridors.

Why? Why would he…

But none of that mattered. Not really. Not when Rael was standing right there, so close she could count his eyelashes, so real she could hear his breathing.

Her son. The child she’d carried for nine months while fire raged inside her. The baby she’d held once, briefly, before Caelen had decided she was too dangerous to be trusted near him.

She hadn’t seen him in over a month. Since the night she went to his room.

The emotion hit her like drowning. Like burning. Like every terrible thing she’d ever experienced compressed into a single moment of unbearable pressure.

She didn’t know what to do. Didn’t know what to say. They’d never been close… how could they be?… and now he was here with his father’s face, staring at her with the color of her eyes and her white hair and an expression she couldn’t read.

They were still walking toward each other. The distance closing.

Ophelia smiled when she was close enough… genuine, warm, utterly guileless. “Lady Eris! What a pleasant surprise.”

“What are you doing here?” The words came out sharper than Eris intended, confusion bleeding into her tone.

Her eyes dropped to Rael. Five years old. So small. Looking up at her with something between curiosity and uncertainty and…

Was that fear?

“Say hello to your mother, Rael,” Ophelia urged gently, her hand on the boy’s shoulder.

Rael hesitated. His mouth opened, closed. He shifted his weight from foot to foot, small hands twisting in the fabric of his shirt.

He didn’t know how to approach her.

Worse… he was scared.

The knowledge opened something in Eris’s chest, something old and familiar and viciously painful. A wound that had never healed because it kept being reopened, over and over, every time her son looked at her like she was something to fear rather than someone to love.

Courtesy of Caelen. Courtesy of years of poison dripped into innocent ears. Your mother is dangerous. Your mother is cruel. Your mother doesn’t care about you the way I do.

It wasn’t news. She’d known for years that Rael feared her more than loved her.

But knowing didn’t make it hurt less.

She pushed it down. Buried it beneath ice that would have made Soren proud. Ignored the way her heart was screaming, ignored the desperate need to drop to her knees and pull her son into her arms and beg him to remember that she loved him, that she’d always loved him, that everything she’d done wrong had been done out of not knowing how to be anything but what she was.

Instead, she turned her gaze back to Ophelia.

“What are you doing here?” The question came again, more forceful this time. Borderline aggressive. Demanding.

Ophelia’s smile never wavered. “Caelen decided we should visit Nevareth. To congratulate you and Emperor Soren on your upcoming wedding. It’s such a joyous occasion, after all.”

Of course he did.

Of course that bastard had decided to show up. Two days before her wedding. With his pregnant wife and the son who’d been taught to fear her.

What are you playing at, Caelen? What do you want?

Eris looked down at Rael again. Her baby. Her little boy who wasn’t so little anymore, who was growing up without her, who probably barely remembered her voice or the lullabies she used to hum when she thought no one was listening.

She wanted to hug him. Wanted to kiss his forehead and smell his hair and hold him close enough to feel his heartbeat. Wanted to be the mother she’d never learned how to be.

But he was looking at her like she was a stranger. Or worse… like she was exactly what Caelen had told him she was.

A monster.

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