Chapter 179: The Disfigured Sister

Daniel's POV

I ignored Ivy's ridiculous laugh and turned to Lila.

“What are you doing here, Lila?” I asked, voice low and rough from unused anger.

"Shut up, you..." Lila replied, still unnervingly calm. She folded her arms like a queen waiting for someone to finish a joke. "I'm Ivy Blackwood not Lila. Don't test me, dog."

"If you're Ivy, then I'm the king's mistress you freak," I replied and Ivy chuckled, stifling a laugh.

"Silence!" Lila's voice sliced through the hall. Ivy tapped my arm, demanding to be set down, and I obeyed because the world was unpredictable enough without me being stubborn.

Ivy looked between Lila, the other version of herself, her mouth shaping the word wow like a child seeing a magic trick.

She looked back at me and then grinned, loud and messy. "Daniel, can you believe this? I have a disfigured sister!" she yelled, pointing at Lila's missing arm.

My hand shot to my face like I might be able to palm the nonsense away.

Ivy’s smile widened. She looked amused and carefree, as if Daddy would ride in and save the day because she is his sweet princess. Can't she sense the danger? She didn't realize the palace bends to power, not to pretty faces…and right now, she has enough to be worried about because fucking Lila is here!

Before any of us could say another word, Lila flicked her hand, a small imperial gesture. Guard…dozens of them, sudden and efficient… closed in with the kind of synchronization I didn’t like.

Steel and leather swallowed the sunlight. Men seized Ezra first, twisting his arms behind his back. Other hands grabbed me; I shoved, cursed, and then felt hands clamp around my shoulders and wrists. Ivy struggled, grinning like a madwoman who’d been given front-row seats.

"Lock them all up in the dungeon," Lila sneered, voice dripping with contempt. "Even the beta and the witch too," she spat at our feet, every syllable a contemptuous weapon.

The guards obeyed without asking and closed in on us.

Ivy's POV

I woke up to an oddly familiar scene…that impossible, delicious scent that felt like home and fire and everything I hadn’t known I wanted.

It was warm cedar and wet stone after rain, with a ribbon of something sweeter under it…like browned sugar and broken promises. It made my teeth ache and my knees wobble.

Nyxara kept pacing inside my head, chanting mate, mate, mate, like a flatmate who won’t stop playing the same song.

I threw one eye open and braced to see whoever owned that scent, whoever had my whole body humming like a tuning fork.

Instead I stared at an incomplete version of myself. So that’s her? The evil twin who murdered her mother? What a sore sight.

She looked like a doll whose battery had died mid-smirk: one hand missing, makeup running, hair trying to be royal and failing. She had that ridiculous royal-blue gown clinging to the wrong places, which only made her look smaller, angrier, and less official.

Nyxara was panting inside me, every muscle in my chest a tight wire, urging me to lunge, tear that smirk off the girl Daniel called Lila. I could almost feel wolf claws under my skin. But I stayed still. Sensible? Not exactly. Smart? For once, I gave myself a slow clap.

This wasn’t the time to start a one-woman apocalypse when the kingdom’s a mess and the guards had more opinions than sense.

Then the man beside Daniel barked like he’d swallowed gravel. “How dare you think of laying your hands on me! I’m the beta of this kingdom! Shina is the sorceress! Have you all lost your minds?” He growled, puffing chest out the way men do when they want everyone to forget their size.

Guards bowed like reeds. One mumbled, “Forgive us, Beta, but the king gave his seal. We obey the new Luna’s word or we lose our heads.” Heads nodded; knees hit the floor.

New Luna. New everything. Great. I took a breath and felt the room tilt.

“New Luna?” the Beta sputtered. “I brought the queen back!” His voice cracked, and he pointed at me. I darted my chin down faster than a cat avoiding a bath.

Nope. Do not involve me in royal madness today. I do not accept titles. Do not pin coronets on me like paper hats.

Still, the scent…that cedar-and-rain thing…kept threading into my nose, lulling me, making my vision soft at the edges. I was dizzy and oddly pleased, like someone had set off a joy-smoke bomb.

The copied version of me screeched, “You dare hesitate on my command?!” like a banshee who’d been trained in courtly screaming. I almost laughed out loud.

This was peak absurdity. She looked like an Annabelle doll with a bad haircut. Despite her dramatic proclamation, the guards on her side fell to their knees again, apologizing in a chorus so sincere it sounded like a flea circus.

She snapped orders to another set of guards…“Throw them into the dungeon! Flog these dogs who question me!” and the new boys didn’t even flinch at the Beta’s protests. He kept shouting for Shina to do something. “Why are you quiet, Shina? Do something. What’s going on?” His voice bounced off the stone and landed in my ears like a mosquito.

Shina…the supposed sorceress…only shook her head, closed her eyes, and let the guards take her away like some tired statue. That was when I decided I’d had enough of being polite.

This whole drama is ridiculous.

“Hold on.” My voice cut through the chaos like a rusty blade. Silence folded weirdly around me. “You mean to tell me…” I turned to Daniel, and all the humor drained out of my mouth because this seemed like a good moment for threats and consequences.

“You dragged me, knocked me out, brought me here for the freaking royal cause you kept talking about, and now a scary version of me wants to lock me in a dungeon because she’s the queen? Make it make sense, Daniel, or I swear to God you won’t like what I’ll do.” I growled angrily, Nyxara's voice mixing with mine.

Daniel opened his mouth, but Lila’s voice sliced him off. I raised my hand and looked fully at her. “I wasn’t talking to you, freak,” I said, because subtweets are for peasants.

Her face changed then…not into anything human, but more like someone peeling an orange and revealing sludge.

On the other hand, the sorceress turned, the look of defeat vanishing in her eyes and in its place, a victorious smile. “Ah,” she purred, “maybe we aren’t doomed after all.”

Lila growled, stumbling forward like she wanted a dramatic entrance and then crashed into the kind of threats that make you want to roll your eyes so hard your skull clicks.

She said she’d taken my place, my name, my identity in the eyes of the man fate kept for me. She said there was nothing I could do. She spoke like someone who had read the villain handbook and highlighted the important bits.

I arched a brow because the universe apparently loves when I stay snarky at inappropriate times. “Oh, broken sweetheart,” I said, voice syrup-sweet and deadly. “Is that your résumé? Because it’s tragic.” I let the words hang there, soft and mocking. Lila’s jaw tightened.

Before I could pat myself on the back for excellence in sarcasm, she slapped me.

Hard.