Chapter 78: Unravel
"Father... it seems... you have lost quite a lot of your mory," Arzhen said, his voice carefully calibrated to balance concern with a gentle correction.
"Yes, I am aware of the holes in my mind," Anton replied, frustrated. "But that does not explain this." He gestured vaguely toward the direction of the front gate, as if seeing the vast army still arrayed beyond.
"You ca here to collect , not to lay siege. Why bring a war-host? Were it not for your uncle’s grace, marching such a force across sovereign territories would have sparked a dozen diplomatic fires. Offense would have been the least of it," Anton finally ntioned, digging and picking on every flaw.
"Father..."
"No. Do not ’Father’
with that placating tone. Tell
what is happening. Actually, do better. Summon your wife. I will hear the truth from her. She has always had a clearer view of this family’s workings than any of us," Anton started to mock.
"My love, please," Elara interjected. "Let us explain a few things first. The world has... shifted."
"Yes, Brother," Arkai added patiently, though a fine thread of suspicion now wove through it. "It appears a great many events have been omitted from your recollection. Or, perhaps, as your own final letter to
suggested... you truly were no longer being inford of anything within your own house?"
It was a jab. A needle-thin and perfectly placed thrust.
Arkai felt the atmosphere in the room crystallize. From this point, he knew, the escalation would be swift and brutal.
"My love..." Elara began again, her hand fluttering to her chest. "We tried to tell you before. Arzhen and Cecilia... they have drifted apart. The bond, the marriage... it no longer worked anymore. We cannot force two souls to remain chained where there is no love."
Anton shot to his feet. The movent was too quick for his ravaged body, so he swayed, gripping the edge of the table, but his eyes blazed with a fury that was decades deep.
"What?! What do you an, ’no love’? SHE IS YOUR BONDED MATE! What madness is this?!" He turned his burning gaze on Arzhen.
"I know there has been no love from your side, you ungrateful whelp! But she loves you! She is the only one in this world who ever truly did! You fool! Where is she?! You will find her and apologize on your knees this instant!"
"She left, Father!" Arzhen snapped, the strain finally cracking his controlled fa??ade.
Anton stared, his rage freezing into pure shock. "What?"
Across the table, both Arkai and Anton’s own knowledge of the truth forced them to fight to keep their expressions neutral. Left? You butchered her and stole her heart.
"Left?" Anton whispered. "She is the Saintess. If she has left your side, then you go to the Temple, and you bring. Her. Back."
"She is no longer the Saintess," Arkai said, his voice cutting through the familial storm.
He then proceeded to narrate the public story. He spoke of the return of Ruby Vaiva, the ’true’ Saintess, blessed with clear divine prophecy.
Of the relentless campaign to discredit Cecilia’s years of service, painting her ticulous work as the clever fraud of a desperate fake. Of the grand coronation ceremony from which Cecilia was conspicuously absent.
He described the sneer that had greeted her na, the triumphant cheer over the proceedings, the way the Temple and the court had simply... moved on. He did not embellish. He did not accuse. He simply laid out the cold and humiliating sequence of events as the world believed them to have happened.
Anton listened, his face growing paler, his hands trembling on the table. When Arkai finished, the old tiger’s voice was a shredded whisper. "But... she is your bonded mate. She is bound to you, forever. What do you an she ’left’ and you did nothing?"
"She insisted on leaving," Arzhen said, his jaw clenched. He took over. His expression shifted into anger, sorrow, and defensive guilt. Quite a conflicted regret.
"She had spent the last year searching for the leth Flower. She had found it. Then she ca to
and insisted on using it," Arzhen said coldly.
The flower’s power was invoked. The bond of seven years dissolved into light and nothingness.
He claid.
"What was I to do? Chain her? The bond was gone. Her will was clear. She walked away, and I could not stop her."
Arkai could not believe he was being forced to sit through this with a straight face. He had known the lies would co. He had steeled himself for the performance.
But hearing the story of the leth Flower, twisted into a tale of her willful departure, delivered with such... righteousness? It ignited a volcanic fury in his gut. Every muscle in his back was a cord pulled taut enough to snap.
"Then it all must have been your fault."
Anton’s voice cut through the fabricated grief, low, seething, and final.
BLAM!
The old tiger lord’s fist ca down on the heavy oak table with a crash that made the cutlery jump. He surged forward in wrath, and pointed a trembling finger directly at his son’s heart. "HOW FOOLISH OF YOU TO LOSE THE ONE GOOD THING THAT EVER HAPPENED TO YOU?!"
"Anton...!" Elara stood, her tears, now seemingly genuine ones of panic, beginning to flow. "Please, calm yourself!"
"HOW DID YOU RAISE HIM BEHIND MY BACK?!" Anton roared, whirling on her, his focus a white-hot lance. "I only ever taught him to be a good man! An honorable lord! YOU—!"
He staggered, clutching at his chest, the physical toll of his fury was finally too much.
"My love—please! Your health!" Elara darted forward to support him.
He swatted her hand away. "You and your pitiful, crawling ambition," he snarled, his voice dropping low. "Did you think I was blind? You and your dreams of being the Capital’s queen bee..."
"You pushed that Ruby Vaiva girl on him years ago, that noble’s darling, and let him prattle to the world that she was his ’only love’!" His eyes burned with a lifeti of observation now turned to acid. "LOOK AT WHAT YOU HAVE DONE TO OUR SON!"
The explosion was genuine, everything broke under the weight of betrayal and grief for a daughter he’d loved more than his own blood.
Arzhen trembled, not from fear of his father’s anger, but from the shock of witnessing it directed, for the first ti in his life, at his mother. The woman Anton had only ever loved and cherished.
Elara burst into fresh devastated sobs. "WHY IS IT MY FAULT?! ANTON, HOW COULD YOU SAY SUCH CRUEL—"
SLAP!
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