Chapter 79: The threat to the crown.

Chapter 79

The heavy thud of the throne room doors closing behind Caleb sounded like a coffin lid snapping shut.

Isabella tried to move, to run toward the servants’ quarters where she knew Bella was hiding, but the vision kept dragging her along in Caleb’s wake, keeping her to a man who was unknowingly walking away from his heart.

In the armory, the air was cold amd still. Caleb worked with a grim efficiency. He strapped on his leather vambraces and buckled his sword belt, his face a mask of steel.

But Isabella saw the truth in the way his fingers lingered on the hilt of his blade—not out of readiness for war, but out of a deep, vibrating anxiety.

“One week,” Caleb muttered to the empty room, his voice a jagged rasp. “I only needed one more week to get her out of this place.”

He grabbed his heavy traveling cloak and headed for the stables. The courtyard was bathed in the sickly grey light of pre-dawn.

A single horse stood saddled, its breath huffing in white plumes in the chill air. Beside the animal, leaning against a stone pillar with an air of poisonous arrogance, stood Lucian.

Isabella’s breath hitched. She watched as Lucian straightened up as his brother approached. “Riding out so early, Brother?” Lucian asked, his voice dripping with mock sympathy.

“And on the eve of your own gala. Father certainly knows how to pick the most inconvenient times for a massacre.”

Caleb didn’t stop. He checked the horse’s cinch, his back to Lucian. “The border is in trouble. Duty doesn’t wait for celebrations.”

“True, true,” Lucian stepped closer, his boots crunching on the frost-covered gravel. He reached out, patting the horse’s neck, his eyes fixed on Caleb’s profile.

“Don’t worry about things here in the capital. I’ll make sure everything is… looked after. Your interests, your duties… your belongings.”

Caleb froze.

He turned slowly, his hand resting on the pommel of his sword. The air between the brothers turned lethal. “If you so much as breathe in her direction, Lucian, I will forget we share the same blood.”

Lucian held up his hands in a gesture of innocence, though his eyes burned with a dark triumph. “I was talking about the guest list, Caleb. Why so tense? Who is she, Selena? You should focus on the north. It’s a long ride, and Oakhaven is such a… vulnerable place.”

Isabella felt a cold sweat break out. He’s mocking him, she realized with a shudder. He’s gloating because he knows Caleb is riding into a void.

Caleb didn’t answer. He swung himself into the saddle, looking down at his brother with a gaze that could have withered stone. “I will be back in three days. See that you remember your place.”

With a sharp kick, Caleb spurred the horse. The animal bolted toward the main gate, Isabella stood in the center of the courtyard, watching the gates swing shut.

She turned to look at Lucian. The moment Caleb was out of sight, the “brotherly” mask vanished. Lucian’s face contorted into a look of pure, unadulterated malice.

He didn’t head back to his room. Instead, he turned toward the North Wing—toward the laundry and the servant’s dormitories.

“The stage is set,” Lucian whispered to the wind.

The world began to spin. The courtyard dissolved, the frost turning into ash. A sharp, stabbing pain flared in Isabella’s chest as the vision shifted violently.

She wasn’t in the courtyard anymore. She was in a small, cramped room filled with the suffocating scent of lye and wet wool.

Isabella gasped, her stomach turning as she saw Lucian standing up from a small, creaking bed.

He wasn’t a man who had just committed a crime; he looked like a man who had simply finished a tedious chore.

With slow, deliberate movements, he tugged his silk tunic back into place, smoothing the fabric with hands that didn’t tremble.

Isabella watched, her soul screaming in the silence, as he buckled his belt and straightened his cloak with clinical precision.

Below him, Bella was a wreckage of a human being.

She had collapsed into the center of the thin mattress, her body curled into a tight, defensive ball.

She was wailing—a raw, agonizing sound that seemed to tear through the very fabric of the vision. Her hands clutched Caleb’s fur sheet that was gifted to her to her chest, her knuckles white, her golden eyes staring at the wall with a lifeless and broken expression.

The tragedy was suffocating; the one place she felt safe had been turned into a site of violation.

Lucian glanced down at her one last time, his lip curling in a sneer of pure disgust. “Stop that pathetic noise,” he spat, his voice cutting through her sobs like a whip.

“You act as though you’ve lost something of value. My brother must be more desperate than I thought if he found beauty in this. You weren’t even worth the effort, you little half-breed wretch. You’re just as hollow as the mud you came from.”

He turned on his heel and walked out, the heavy wooden door swinging shut with a finality that felt like a death sentence.

“No! No!” Isabella dropped to her knees beside the bed. She was wailing too, her chest heaving with a sympathetic agony so sharp she felt her own heart might stop.

She reached out, her ghostly fingers trying to touch Bella’s shaking shoulder, but her hands swept through the girl like smoke. “I’m sorry, Bella… I’m so sorry.”

Bella’s cries shifted to broken, hitching gasps. She looked at the door with a terror so deep it transcended time.

Suddenly, the door burst off its hinges. Princess Selena stepped into the room, flanked by three massive guards in iron breastplates.

She was dressed in a gown of flashy gold, her face set in a mask of radiant victory. “Don’t touch her!” Isabella screamed, lunging to her feet. She threw a punch at the nearest guard, but her fist passed through his armor without a sound.

She tried to stand between them, but they walked right through her, the icy chill of their presence making her vision flicker.

Selena didn’t look at the bed with pity. She looked at Bella’s ruined state and let out a short laugh.

“Look at you,” Selena mocked, stepping closer until the hem of her gold dress brushed against the dirt on the floor. “The ’Princess of the Shadows’ finally looks the part. Did Lucian enjoy his little prize, or did he find out how cheap the silk truly was?”

Bella tried to shrink further into the wall, her voice gone, only a terrified whimper escaping her lips.

“Grab her,” Selena commanded. “Take that fur from her—it belongs to a Prince, and it’s been defiled enough. Drag her to the throne room. The King wishes to see the mistress that was a threat to the crown.”

“No!” Isabella threw herself at Selena, clawing at the woman’s face, but she was nothing but a shadow watching a massacre.

The guards reached down and violently yanked the sheet away. Bella screamed, a high, piercing sound that shattered the last of the room’s peace.

They grabbed her by her hair and arms, her nakedness and vulnerability exposed to the cold air, and dragged her off the bed and across the rough stone floor.

Isabella watched, her eyes streaming with tears, as Bella’s fingernails scraped against the floor, trying to find a handhold that wasn’t there.

“Selena!” Bella shrieked, her voice breaking. “Sister, please!” But Selena didn’t even look back as the procession marched toward the throne room, leaving a trail of broken dignity in their wake.

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