Misty Kilr had once walked through palaces with the assurance of soone who believed influence could be stitched into a hemline or secured through whispered favors. She had kissed the rings of power and pretended they belonged to her. But today, she sat in shackles. Beige fabric, state-issued and too stiff, clung to her arms. Her wrists ached from the cuffs. Her throat itched from silence.
And every eye in the courtroom was watching her fall.
Christian’s army of lawyers had turned paperwork into weapons, each affidavit and certified copy a blow to her na, her dealings, and her carefully cultivated illusion of control. Words like "forgery," "coercion," and "contractual fraud" were thrown across the chamber with clinical precision, and Misty couldn’t find her footing in any of it.
She had built her empire out of half-truths and borrowed favors. She had promised her son as a commodity, not a child. And now?
Now Lucas had vanished from her control, reborn under the silk-and-gold protection of House Fitzgeralt and that ruthless woman, Serathine.
She glanced across the chamber. The boy seated up front, perfectly composed, radiant with power, was unmistakably Lucas. Or so she believed. And he didn’t flinch as they dragged her na through the dirt.
He had changed.
He no longer needed her. Worse, he had outgrown the sha she used to weaponize.
The fear twisted into sothing hotter. Pettier.
If they wanted to bury her, she would make sure they’d choke on the dirt.
When the justiciar asked if she had anything to say, Misty’s voice rang out before she could reconsider.
"If this court wants the full truth, perhaps it should ask the Emperor why he never claid his son."
A silence slamd into the chamber.
Every noble stilled. Even Christian’s legal team hesitated mid-turn.
Misty smiled, slow and poisonous. "Lucas Kilr is the son of Caelan of Palatine. You think my cris are terrible? Then ask why a reigning Emperor let his own child be sold."
Gasps.
Whispers.
Caras clicked softly in the back.
She lifted her chin as if the weight of that final, desperate swing gave her back a asure of power. "A simple paternity test will prove it. If you dare."
She didn’t say it to protect Lucas. She said it to chain him. To tie him to the throne in the most public, scandalous way possible. If she was going down, she’d scorch the path behind her.
Let the Empire deal with the fallout.
Let Caelan explain how he let one of his heirs be bartered like a trinket.
Let Lucas suffer through bloodlines and headlines and the kind of spotlight he would never be able to walk away from.
Because if Misty Kilr had to fall...
...she’d take legacy down with her.
—
Serathine D’Argente had survived palace coups, foreign sanctions, and worse, charity galas hosted by fools who thought legacy ca in embroidered linen. But this? This was theater.
She sat motionless as Misty Kilr delivered her bombshell with the smug detachnt of a woman who thought her words could still shape the world around her.
A son of the Emperor. Claid in front of nobles and justiciars, clergy and courtiers.
She could already feel the ripples this would send across the court.
Beside her, Ophelia Kilr inhaled sharply, audibly. The girl looked pale, her manicured fingers clenched around the hem of her sleeve. Serathine didn’t look at her. She didn’t need to. She could feel the confusion radiating from the girl like perfu. Her lips parted, then pressed together, the gears of implication grinding far too slowly behind those glassy eyes.
Of course Ophelia didn’t know. Misty had kept her children in the dark, Lucas most of all. Fed them stories shaped for obedience, twisted love, and survival. And now that the mask had cracked.
Ah, there it was.
Ophelia turned toward the front of the court, her gaze zeroed in on the young man seated beneath the imperial crest. Lucas.
She stood. Barely. One trembling step.
A silent, almost laughable act of desperation.
As if she could reach him. As if she had any right to.
The guards shifted before she could take another breath.
A gloved hand blocked her path. "Sit, miss. You do not have permission to approach the court seats."
"But that’s my brother," Ophelia hissed, her voice tight with sothing that might’ve been grief. Or guilt. Or both.
"No, darling," Serathine murmured, her tone as smooth and biting as a blade honed on silk. "That’s a shadow. The real Lucas wouldn’t waste a blink on this circus. He has better things to do than watch a mother he no longer claims make a fool of herself."
Ophelia’s head whipped toward her, eyes wide with a flash of betrayal. "You knew?"
Serathine offered her a patient smile, folding her hands in her lap like a woman watching her garden bloom from thorns. "Of course I did."
It was a quiet blow.
And Serathine didn’t need to raise her voice to make sure every noble in their row heard it.
"Now sit," she added, eyes fixed forward again. "It would be a sha to miss the next act."
Across the courtroom, the justiciars had not moved. Neither had Christian Velloran. But his eyes had narrowed slightly, finally pried from Lucas’s double.
And Misty, poor deluded Misty, still thought she had control of the narrative.
The great doors of the Imperial Courtroom opened with a groaning weight that silenced even the whispering nobility. Every head turned.
The royal guard stepped inside, not the usual ceremonial pair, but eight fully ard officers in dark grey, bearing the Emperor’s crest stamped in crimson on their shoulders. The sound of their boots struck like hamrs against marble, echoing with the kind of finality that suggested no one would be leaving until the Crown allowed it.
At their head walked Commander Taren Elgaard, a man with the posture of a drawn sword and a reputation for escorting enemies of the Empire straight to their final audience. He simply walked to the front bench, where Misty Kilr sat in her ill-fitting uniform, cuffed and smug from the poison she’d just flung into the air.
The Emperor was not in the room. But his will had arrived.
A sealed folio was placed before the court justiciars. Thick. Stamped in wax. Taren said only four words as he stepped back:
"By His Majesty’s order."
The head justiciar, an older man with ice-colored brows and the patience of stone, cracked the seal and began to read.
There was no need for a preamble.
To the Imperial Court and Noble Assembly
The woman known as Misty Kilr has, as expected, invoked her final desperation.
Gasps swelled through the gallery. Not from the contents yet, but from the tone. It was Caelan’s voice, preserved in ink.
Her attempt to weaponize truth as leverage was foreseen.
The justiciar flipped to the second page, already losing color.
She claid, under oath years ago, that the child she bore, a male, oga-typed heir, died of heart failure one week after birth. The child, however, lived.
A shudder ran through the court.
Docunts enclosed include
The forged death certificate.
Signed dical falsification from an exiled physician.
Transfer records for the child’s removal from public registry.
Paynt trail traced back to an offshore clergy account.
dical traces of systematic abuse.
Misty went still, blood draining from her face as each line landed like a blow.
The Emperor was not inford by the mother. Instead, this revelation reached the Crown through a whistleblower connected to the child’s household tutor. The tiline of deception is verified. The concealnt was intentional. Treasonable by statute.
Ophelia made a small, broken noise beside Serathine. But Serathine didn’t look. Her eyes were locked on Misty.
Because Misty didn’t just look humiliated now.
She looked afraid.
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