Chapter 80: Assassination attack

Chapter 80

The transition was jarring. The damp, cramped room dissolved into the high, vaulted grandeur of the throne room.

But the air here was no longer filled with the scent of incense and royalty; it felt heavy, stagnant, and thick with the smell of a brewing execution.

Isabella stumbled as she appeared in the center of the hall, her heart stopping at the sight before her.

This wasn’t just a private family matter. The King sat upon his throne, his face a mask of disappointment and cold fury.

But surrounding him was a sea of faces—advisors in heavy velvet robes, stern-faced lords of the high council, and commanders of the royal guard.

Every eye in the room was fixed on the entrance. The doors groaned open, and the guards didn’t just walk Bella in—they threw her.

Bella’s naked form hit the cold stone floor with a sickening thud. She skidded several feet before collapsing into a trembling, kneeling form in the exact center of the hall. She tried to cover herself with her bruised arms, her hair matted and hanging over her face, but there was no hiding the shame they had forced upon her.

Isabella looked around, her shock turning into a cold, paralyzing dread. Why are there so many people? This wasn’t an accidental discovery.

This was an audience. They had been waiting for this. The advisors held scrolls, the lords whispered behind their hands, and there, standing just to the right of the King’s throne, was Lucian.

He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, looking down at Bella with the same indifferent gaze one might give a crushed insect.

He had changed his clothes again; he looked pristine, royal, and utterly devoid of the sin he had just committed.

Isabella realized with a jolt of horror that this was a trap designed to do more than just punish Bella. It was a calculated political strike.

By bringing the council here, Lucian and Selena were ensuring that even if Caleb returned, he could not save her.

The law of the land was now the audience, and the law did not forgive a “half-breed” who had “seduced” the Crown Prince.

“The prisoner is present, Your Majesty,” Selena announced, her voice ringing through the silent hall like a death knell.

she walked past Bella’s shivering form, not sparing a glance at her own sister’s agony.

The King stood, his shadow stretching long and dark across the floor, reaching until it swallowed Bella whole.

“Bella of the Southern kingdom,” the King’s voice boomed, devoid of the fatherly tone he had used with Caleb.

“You stand accused of high treason, of the corruption of the royal bloodline, and of practicing the forbidden arts of seduction to destabilize the crown.”

“No…” Isabella whispered, her voice lost in the vastness of the room. “She didn’t do anything. He loved her!”

Bella looked up, her golden eyes—usually so bright—now dull and glazed with a soul-crushing despair.

She looked toward the advisors, then toward her father, the visiting King, who stood among the lords with his back turned to her.

Finally, her gaze landed on Lucian, a spark of recognition and plea flared in her eyes but Lucian didn’t flinch. He didn’t blink.

He simply leaned toward the King and whispered loud enough for the council to hear, “It is as I feared, Father. She has no remorse. She believed her status as a ’sister’ to the Princess would protect her from the consequences of her filth.”

A murmur of disgust rippled through the lords.

“The evidence is clear,” the High Advisor stepped forward, unrolling a parchment.

“The Crown Prince has been led astray. His sudden reluctance to wed, his distractions—it all traces back to this… thing.”

Isabella lunged toward the King, screaming at the top of her lungs, “She’s royalty too! Why can’t she get married to Caleb. They love each other!”

But she was a ghost in a memory, a witness to a history that had already been written in blood.

The King raised his hand, and the room went deathly silent.

“The blood of the Sovereign must remain pure,” the King declared. “To protect the future of the empire and up hold it’s dignity. Since the Crown Prince is not here to defend his honor, the council has reached a decision.”

He looked down at Bella, his eyes narrowing. “You are stripped of your name. Your father here disowned you and now you are condemned to nothing more than an offender.”

Bella let out a broken, strangled cry, her forehead hitting the cold stone as she sobbed.

She knew what that meant. “The execution shall take place in three days’ time,” the King’s voice rang out. “We shall wait for the Crown Prince to return from the border so that he may bear witness to the price of his own folly. Let him see the fruit of the seed he dared to sow.”

Isabella felt the cruelty of it like a physical blow. They weren’t just killing her, they were timing it to shatter Caleb’s spirit the moment he stepped back into the castle.

Beside the throne, Selena’s face contorted, her eyes flashing with a sharp, unsatisfied greed. She stepped forward, her golden gown shimmering under the torchlight.

“Forgive me for the interruption, Your Majesty,” Selena said, her voice dripping with practiced humility, “but as the woman whose future marriage was the target of this girl’s conspiracy, I believe I have a right to provide input on her penance.”

Lucian’s eyes flickered toward her, a silent warning in his gaze—a look that told her to keep quiet and stay within the plan. But Selena was drunk on her own power.

The King turned to her, his brow furrowed. “And what would you add, Princess?”

“The law demands her death, yes,” Selena said, circling Bella’s kneeling, naked form like a vulture.

“But the law also demands that a traitor be broken before they are extinguished. I would have her flogged—one hundred times—before she is thrown into the dungeon to await her end. Let the court see the true nature of the ’royal’ blood she claims to carry.”

Bella let out a broken sob, her forehead pressed against the stone. She couldn’t even find the words to beg.

She knew the truth, the only man who would have fought the world for her was leagues away, riding into a shadow.

“So be it,” the King declared.

Isabella watched in a trance of horror as a guard entered the hall, carrying a long, spiky cane that glinted with jagged edges. The court leaned in, a collective, morbid breath held in the air.

The first strike fell.

CRACK.

Bella’s scream ripped through the vaulted ceiling, a sound of such pure agony that Isabella doubled over, clutching her own back. With every strike, Bella’s pale skin was torn open, crimson ribbons blooming across her spine.

Ten. Twenty. Thirty.

Isabella closed her eyes, hot tears streaming down her face, her hands clamped over her ears to drown out the wet, repetitive sound of the cane and Bella’s diminishing wails.

But the sound was inside her head, vibrating in her bones. Eventually, the screaming stopped, replaced by a low, wet whimpering that finally faded into a terrifying silence.

When Isabella opened her eyes, the throne room was gone.

The scent of blood and incense was replaced by the smell of damp pine and horse sweat. She was in a dense, dark forest. The grey light of the northern border filtered through the trees.

The sound of hooves reached her ears. Prince Caleb was there, riding hard, his cloak billowing behind him.

He looked haggard, his eyes fixed on the path ahead, driven by an urgency he couldn’t quite name.

Suddenly, a chorus of whinnying horses erupted from the thicket. Arrows hissed through the air like angry hornets.

Caleb’s horse reared, and he was forced to leap from the saddle as a dozen men in dark armor surged from the shadows.

“Who sent you?” Caleb roared, drawing his sword in one fluid motion. “Speak, or die where you stand!”

The assassins didn’t speak. They moved with the coordination of elite soldiers. Caleb fought with the ferocity of the ’Prince of Death,’ a blur of steel and shadow.

He parried, thrust, and carved his way through the attackers, but the numbers were against him.

A blade sliced across his thigh; another opened a deep gash along his ribs. He managed to fell the last of them, leaning heavily on his sword as blood soaked through his tunic.

He was alive, but the injuries were severe. The ride that should have taken three days would now take a week—if he could stay in the saddle at all.

Caleb breathed heavily, his face pale with shock. He limped toward one of the fallen men and kicked the body over. His breath caught in a gasp.

There, pinned to the man’s chest, was the crest of his own kingdom. The royal lion of the Sovereign.

“My own men…” Caleb whispered, his voice trembling with a sudden, horrific clarity. “This wasn’t a border raid. This was an assassination attack”

He looked back toward the south, toward the home that had just tried to murder him. “Bella,” he rasped, his eyes wide with terror.

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