Chapter 46 A SHOCKING REVELATION II
(HAVEN)
I laugh.
Not just a chuckle but a real laugh because what he said is just so funny. The sound bubbles out of me before I can stop it, sharp and disbelieving, echoing too loudly in the quiet room. It feels wrong, inappropriate, but if I don’t laugh, I might scream at him for saying something so absurd.
“What do you mean she was never imprisoned?” I ask, folding my arms over my chest like that might hold me together. “My husband himself told me that he was part of the team that locked her up in Euron.”
I watch Tyren closely as I speak, waiting for something; confusion, irritation, guilt.
Anything to explain what he just said. Instead, he simply stares at me.
The silence stretches, thick and uncomfortable, and suddenly I’m very aware of my breathing, of the way my heart beats too fast, too loud. My laugh fades, leaving behind a hollow feeling in my chest. What if I’m wrong? What if everything I think I know is wrong?
Tyren claps twice.
The sharp sound makes me flinch.
Before long, the door opens and a servant girl steps in, her head bowed low, eyes fixed on the floor.
“Go and tell Imogen and Amelyn that I would like to see them in my study right now,” he commands.
His voice is calm. Too calm.
The servant bows and leaves without a word, the door closing softly behind her.
Silence envelopes the room as he goes back to his desk and returns to reading the files spread before him, as though I’m no longer here. As though he hasn’t just shattered something fundamental inside me with a single sentence.
I stare at him, disbelief slowly morphing into irritation.
Is this a game to him?
I pace once, then twice, my boots tapping against the marble floor. My thoughts spiral despite my efforts to rein them in. If my mother was never imprisoned in Euron, then where has she been all this time? And who—or what—was locked away in her place?
And why would Auren lie?
The door opens again a few minutes later, pulling me from my thoughts. Amelyn enters first, her expression guarded, followed closely by Imogen. They both take a seat on the couch across from Tyren’s desk, glancing between him and me with open curiosity, and concern.
They must be wondering what I did that made the King summon them in his office.
“Is there any problem, your highness?” Imogen asks when five minutes pass and Tyren doesn’t say anything. I can sense the worry in his voice as he slowly glances between me and the king.
Still, Tyren doesn’t respond. He keeps reading, turning a page as if no one has spoken at all. The scratch of parchment against parchment grates on my nerves.
I’m at the verge of losing my cool when he finally speaks.
“Princess, mind telling them what I told you?” he says without looking up from his work.
I hesitate.
The words feel strange in my mouth, unreal, like I’m repeating a bad joke that’s gone on far too long.
“He said my mother was never imprisoned in Euron,” I say.
It sounds strange even to my ears, and I can’t help the small, disbelieving chuckle that escapes me afterward. Amelyn stiffens beside Imogen, her brows knitting together.
Imogen turns to Tyren slowly. “Please, can you share what makes you think so?” he asks, doubt filling his voice, though there’s an undercurrent of something else there too, curiosity, maybe even fear.
Tyren finally sets aside his papers. He leans back in his chair and interlaces his fingers on the desk, his sharp gaze settling on Imogen.
“Souls kept in Euron don’t have access to the outside world,” he says.
His eyes flick briefly to Imogen, as if waiting for confirmation.
Imogen nods slowly. “That is correct. Euron is sealed. Absolute.”
Tyren smiles faintly, like a man pleased to have his thoughts validated. “See, when I spoke to Auren and he told me your mother was reaching out to you, I didn’t believe him. Like I said, souls in Euron don’t have access to our world.”
My stomach twists.
I think of the whispers, the warmth I sometimes feel in the dead of night, the strange pull in my chest that feels like longing mixed with grief. I always assumed it was hope. Or madness.
“But Athalia does,” Amelyn points out, leaning forward. “She reached out. She crossed over.”
Tyren’s gaze sharpens as it lands on her. “I only believed that when she came to me.”
My breath catches.
“She came to you?” I ask before I can stop myself.
“Yes,” he says with a nod.
The room feels colder suddenly, like a draft has slipped through invisible cracks in the walls.
“At first, I thought it was just a figment of my imagination,” Tyren continues, his voice quieter now, more contemplative. “Until she reached out and touched me. Her hands were cold as ice, like she belonged to a faraway realm.”
My skin prickles.
I don’t know whether to feel relief or terror. Part of me wants to cling to the idea that my mother is—was—real, that she wasn’t just a ghost born of desperation. But another part of me recoils at the implications. Her skin might be cold as ice, but I never entertained the thought that maybe she might belong to another realm.
If she wasn’t in Euron… then where was she?
“But hold on,” Imogen says, raising a hand before I can speak again. His tone shifts, becoming sharper, more analytical. “If we didn’t imprison her, then who was it that turned into a monster and was locked up?”
The question hangs heavy in the air.
My heart pounds as I look from Imogen to Tyren, dread pooling low in my stomach. I don’t know why, but some instinct deep inside me screams that I already know the answer—and that I won’t like it.
Tyren doesn’t hesitate.
“Eurolys.”