Chapter 100: Yours
"Does anything ever not have a deeper reason?"
Angela slowly closed her book, placing it on her lap. "Don’t mind what Cecilia said," she replied, her voice cool. "It was a mont of sentint. It’s not one of my prouder Chapters."
"Tell , Angela," Stevan insisted, the plea raw in his tone. "If you haven’t noticed by now, I want to know. I need to know who it is I’m..." He trailed off, unable to finish the sentence with—in love with.
She turned her head then, smiling. "I don’t want you to know more about , Stevan. I just want you to own . To be the only key that fits this lock. Knowledge complicates possession."
"I’m not the kind of man who can own sothing I don’t understand," he countered, his jaw tight.
"But you are the kind of man who will fuck soone he doesn’t understand," she fired back with a sass in her voice. "Repeatedly. With gusto."
"Angela..." he sighed. "Just answer the question."
She held his gaze for a long mont, the playfulness draining from her eyes. "I killed them," she said, the words flat, factual. "The slavers. The ones who were rounding up Werebear children from the northern marshes, treating them like livestock because their clan was ’perceived as lesser’. I had them turn on each other. Killing their wicked wives and parents."
She paused, watching the truth dawn in his eyes. "Then," she continued, "I used the ensuing scandal, the blood on my hands, as my ticket. My excuse to be placed here. In the deepest, most secure hole the Empire has. To enter your world, Stevan."
She leaned forward. "No one should have been able to lock
up. I am Angela May Iondora. I let them. I told on myself."
Stevan closed his eyes shut.
"And I..." she added, "am a woman. As long as n with the right bloodline are still being bred in the Iondoran court, I will never, ever be allowed to rise to the throne. The crown is a dead end for ."
Stevan’s eyebrows drew together, sorrow and understanding etching his face.
"Unless I beco Emperor myself, I could never be with soone like you openly. A commoner. A guardsman. You would be a scandal, a weakness to be eliminated."
She shrugged. "So I found a better way. I can be here. In this dungeon. Where the rules are different. Where I am a prisoner, and you are the warden. Here, in the dark, I can be yours. Not a princess."
"Just yours."
***
The escape from the Iondoran dungeon was a silent dissolution. Cecilia led the way in the torch-flickered dark, while Oathran’s Dragon Tongue urged guards to look the other way. A deeper shadow he was, his presence bending the very light and sound around their small group.
Arkai and Eastiel flanked them, their senses mapping every breath and footfall in the labyrinth above. They slipped past checkpoints in silence. By the ti the first shift change stirred the prison’s upper levels, they were already gone.
Before anyone realized, they had beco just like another group of travelers in the moonlit road beyond the empire’s capital borders.
"Can we trust her?" Eastiel asked in the crisp air outside the empire’s capital borders. His lion’s tail gave a single, restless flick. "More specifically, what’s different about this alchemist she’s dangling compared to every other slippery charlatan out there?"
"I have a few guesses," Cecilia shrugged, her gaze distant, already turning over the pieces Angela had left on the board.
The three n exchanged a look. Their initial skepticism about the imprisoned princess was now tempered by a cold and grudging assessnt. In hindsight, they could see the terrifying contours of her genius. The kind of mind that could, in fact, outmaneuver them in so specific arenas.
The most telling evidence was her reaction to Cecilia’s story. She had raged, wept, sworn vengeance... but her ultimatum was clear. She would only unleash hell if Cecilia was dead and couldn’t do it herself.
There was a trust in that boundary. It spoke of a belief that Cecilia was fully capable of writing her own revenge as long as she drew breath.
Cecilia’s own offer was the sa. She hadn’t tried to break Angela out because she thought her friend was powerless. She’d offered a new strategy because she hated the cage, not the strategist inside it. It was a shift in tactics, not a dismissal of the general.
The most personally conflicted by this was Eastiel. He had been the first to declare war, to summon armies for vengeance when he believed Cecilia lost, after all. His way was fire and blood and honorable conquest, a lion’s roaring grief made manifest.
But Angela... Angela would have done it Cecilia’s way.
The quieter, colder, more insidious way. The way that traded battlefield glory for sleepless nights and psychological ruin. That targeted pride and sanity instead of flesh. She would ensure the guilty suffered in the exact asure of their sins without dragging a single innocent into the grave.
It was, he was forced to admit, arguably more cruel.
"Cecilia, can I tell you sothing?" Eastiel’s voice was uncharacteristically quiet, cutting through the crackle of the campfire.
She turned to him, half her face painted in warm, dancing light, the other half lost to the night. "Hm?"
"I’m sorry," he said. "What I planned... the war, the crusade in your na... it’s exactly the kind of bloody, indiscriminate vengeance you would have never wanted."
The sheer scale of the loss he’d been ready to orchestrate rose in his mind. A tide of faceless soldiers, burned villages, collateral grief. If she had truly been watching from so afterlife, she would have cursed his na with every soul he’d sent prematurely to et her.
But instead of the frosty disapproval he expected, Cecilia let out a soft chuckle. "No," she corrected gently. "In any other scenario, I’d have wanted you to wage that war."
Eastiel flinched, utterly blindsided. "What?"
"Think about it," she said, her eyes glinting with a cunning light. "If you’d gone marching north, Angela would have had no choice. She’d have broken out of that cell to commandeer your army. She’d have beco your strategist, your brilliant, terrifying general."
"And with that power..." Cecilia’s gaze drifted to the starry expanse above, a wistful smile on her lips. "She could have taken Iondora’s throne, forged a real peace from the ashes... and finally, publicly, married the man she loves."
Cecilia sighed, then nodded. "Yes. Maybe I should have died. That way, your two elder brothers would have joined , and I could have married them both in the afterlife."
"BWAHWAHWHAHWHAHAHAH!"
Oathran’s burst of laughter shook his shoulders as he clutched his stomach. "Oh, that was perfect!"
Arkai, too, broke into a deep, rumbling chuckle. "As long as I arrive in that afterlife without the volcano burns," he mused, rubbing his arm absently. "Or I won’t stand a chance competing with Elder Brother for your affection."
"What about ?" Eastiel interjected, a frown etching deep lines into his brow. A crushing pain tightened around his ribs. "The three of you dare to sche about leaving
alone to suffer in this cesspit of a world?"
Cecilia leaned her weight against him, resting her head on his shoulder and wrapping her arms around his left arm. "It’s the responsibility of the warmonger," she teased, her voice a soft murmur near his ear. "You carry your sin with pride, Lion King."
Eastiel’s jaw tightened, the weight of her words... the forgiveness in them, the brutal practicality, the love... pressing down on him. "Cecilia..."
She tilted her head up, her sea-glass eyes catching the firelight. "I love you," she whispered, the words for him alone amidst the night sounds. "I love you so very much, Eastiel."
.
.
.
.
.
----------------
WE MADE IT! ?? 100 ChapterS!!!
Congratulations, everyone! To every single reader who has made it this far, this milestone is ours! Thank you for turning this story into a journey we’re taking together.
All my love and confetti,
Sugar! ??
Reviews
All reviews (0)