Chapter 47 Chapter Forty-Seven
A sudden screech shattered the silence.
Kaelani surged to her feet, her chair toppling backward with a loud clatter against the stone floor. Whispers ceased and startled glances from the nearby revelers were drawn by the sudden commotion.
The six warriors who had escorted her instantly snapped to attention, spears drawn with deadly precision. The gold-veined tips glowed faintly as they leveled them at her chest.
Kaelani didn’t flinch.
Her eyes burned as she stared past them, fists clenched at her sides. “What have you done to her?” she demanded, voice trembling with rage.
Draevyn didn’t so much as lift a brow.
He swirled the last of his wine, watching the dark liquid dance before bringing the goblet to his lips. One slow sip. One long moment of silence.
Then: “Nothing she didn’t deserve.”
The words struck like a slap.
She took a bold step forward—met instantly by the threatening hiss of spears adjusting, tips grazing the air in warning. Still, she didn’t back down.
“Deserve?” Her voice cracked with disbelief. “She looks like she’s been starved. Beaten. Caged. Who deserves to be treated like that?”
At last, Draevyn’s gaze slid toward her—measured, cool, unreadable.
“You seem to feel quite strongly for someone you do not know,” he mused, leaning back as if this were nothing more than idle conversation. “Or am I mistaken… do you know this woman?”
Kaelani hesitated.
The resemblance screamed at her—bone-deep and undeniable—but the truth was still a haze, barely formed and impossible to grasp.
“…No,” she said quietly. “I don’t know her.”
The woman—slumped on the flagstones, slowly lifted her head again.
Her sunken eyes locked on Kaelani, and for the first time… she smiled.
It was small at first—slanted, strange, almost childlike. Then it widened. Twisted.
Draevyn’s voice was casual, almost amused. “And you?” he asked, turning slightly toward her. “Do you know this girl?”
The woman’s smile faltered—then she laughed.
A quiet, breathless sound at first.
Then louder.
And louder.
Until it bordered on maniacal.
Nymera’s laughter echoed through the night, unhinged and visceral, like something cracked open inside her.
Kaelani stared, frozen. Confused. The crazed sound didn’t match the gaunt, broken woman slumped on the ground before her. “What’s wrong with her?” she asked quietly, eyes flicking to Draevyn.
He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he turned lazily toward Nymera, brow arched with mild amusement. “That’s a good question,” he said, voice like silk brushing over steel. “What is so funny, Nymera? Please… do let us all in on the joke.”
Nymera’s laughter slowed—but didn’t stop. Her face twisted into a grotesque smile as her head lolled back. Her voice, raspy and hoarse, still managed to carry through the courtyard.
“I’ve been waiting years for this moment…” she rasped between chuckles. “Took her long enough to realize what she was.”
Suddenly, the air turned razor-sharp in Kaelani’s lungs.
Nymera’s head snapped forward, eyes gleaming with feral delight. “Surprise!” she cackled, a blend of hysteria and triumph in her voice. “Here is your long-awaited queen, my lord. Half Fae…” Her lip curled. “Half gutter-born mongrel.”
Her laughter rose again, shrill and wild—until a sharp crack silenced it mid-gasp.
The man who’d gone to fetch her stood over her now, arm still raised from the blow. Nymera collapsed sideways with a whimper, the manic grin still twitching on her face.
Kaelani’s stomach twisted.
“What is she talking about?” she whispered, more to herself than anyone else—but the question hung in the air like a blade waiting to drop.
Draevyn tilted his head, goblet still cradled between his fingers. “Are you saying…” he drawled, “that Kaelani is your daughter?”
Nymera’s laughter only deepened—rasping, guttural, deranged.
The man who had slapped her—tall, cruel-eyed, with a hand like iron—grabbed the chain at her neck and gave it a savage yank.
She was forced upright, bones creaking under the strain.
“Lord Draevyn asked you a question,” the man growled.
Nymera’s eyes locked on Kaelani—wild, alight with something between hatred and satisfaction. Her lips peeled back into a sneer.
“Yes,” she spat. “I birthed that thing.”
Kaelani’s stomach dropped. Her heart lurched painfully in her chest. Behind her ribs, her wolf whimpered—a soft, wounded sound no one else could hear.
Nymera’s voice sharpened as she stepped forward, chains clinking like broken lullabies. “I lay with a Lycan. A stupid, pitiful, horny man. So easy to seduce.” Her grin curled like venom. “Dream after dream, he’d be there—already giddy, cock so hard he could barely breathe, just waiting for me to mount him. Just a few bounces and he was convulsing beneath me.”
Nymera leaned closer, her voice turning reverent and poisonous all at once.
“He gave me a boy first. Just like the others did. But that wouldn’t do. No—I needed our precious queen.” Her head tilted, tangled hair spilling over her shoulder as her lips parted in a warped smile.
“And finally… you were conceived.”
Kaelani stared at the woman—her mother—like the world had tilted beneath her feet. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. The words clung to her like oil, thick and suffocating.
Her voice came out quiet, shaken. “The boys…?”
Her eyes searched Nymera’s twisted face. “There were boys before me? What happened to them? Where are they?”
Nymera didn’t speak right away.
She just smiled—an ungodly, slow-creeping smirk that chilled Kaelani to the bone.
Draevyn’s tone turned razor-sharp, deceptively calm. “Go on, Nymera. Tell her about the boys you birthed. Tell her why you earned that cell I allow you to rot in.”
A flicker of madness sparked behind Nymera’s eyes, her voice void of remorse—only dark pride.
“I killed them. I killed them all.”
The courtyard fell deathly silent.
Kaelani’s heart sank. Her head shook once—then again, harder. Disgust. Disbelief. Denial. All of it.
“No…” she whispered. “Why? Why would you do that?”
Nymera’s grin stretched, her teeth gleaming like a predator’s.
“Oh, believe me,” she purred. “I wanted to kill you too. But this…?” Her voice turned dreamy, intoxicated. “This is so much sweeter.”
Her eyes gleamed with lunacy, the kind that set entire worlds on fire.
“All my life, the seers said I was chosen. Destined to be the Queen of Shadows. I was pampered. Worshiped. Not just by our people—but by the Lord of Shadows himself.”
Scorn danced across her features. “Imagine being told you were born for a throne… only to wake up one day and hear them say: ‘We see more clearly now.’That I wasn’t destined to wear the crown—no…”
She sneered. “I was destined to birth the one who would.”
Nymera’s voice turned venomous.
“What a glorious fuck-you from the gods.”
She let out a broken laugh—half unhinged, half guttural pain.
“That was my destiny. That was my title. And if I couldn’t have it—then no one could.”
Her eyes glittered with something ancient and vile. “It was my birthright. I’m the last true descendant of the Unseelie royal bloodline.”
She leaned in, breath heavy with hatred.
“So I decided to taint yours. To spit on the prophesy. To fuck a dog and birth a mutt.”
Nymera’s laughter erupted again—sharp, fractured, echoing across the stone walls.
“Lord Draevyn will never accept some half-blood as his queen. Neither will the court.”
Kaelani stood trembling, her entire body locked in a silent war between fury and heartbreak. Tears burned hot at the corners of her eyes as the weight of everything she’d just heard pressed down on her chest like a stone slab. Her hands clenched so tightly at her sides, her nails pierced skin, drawing tiny crescents of blood.
“You’re a monster,” she whispered, voice cracking like ice underfoot. “I’m ashamed to have come from something so disgraceful.”
Nymera didn’t flinch. She merely rolled her shoulders and smirked, bored by Kaelani’s pain. “Life is full of disappointments,” she cooed. “Better get used to it, Kaelani.”
She spat the name like venom, like it tasted wrong in her mouth. Then she laughed—low and grating.
“Your father must’ve had some pathetic streak of affection for you,” she added, mock-thoughtful. “Changing your name the way he did… Lani.”
Kaelani blinked, caught off-guard.
Nymera’s smirk twisted into something crueler. “Wanna know what that means in Vaelorin?” She tilted her head, hair falling over one crazed eye. “Rejected one.”
Her voice dropped into a chilling murmur. “I wrote it on the blanket you were swaddled in. Not in ink, though. I stitched it myself.”
She leaned in, eyes glinting with a deranged spark. “Well—Kill Lani, to be precise.”
The laughter that followed was shrill and fractured. Her voice rose into singsong mockery, each repetition like a blade to Kaelani’s heart.
“Kill Lani. Kill Lani. Kill Lani. Kill Lani.”
She laughed as if it were the funniest thing she’d ever said—though the sound was snuffed out almost as quickly as it came.
Kaelani’s scream tore from the depths of her chest, raw and primal. A blinding violet light detonated from the palm of her outstretched hand, slamming into Nymera like lightning unleashed from the heavens. The woman’s body jerked violently, muscles seizing, spine arching as power flooded through her—merciless and wild.
Gasps echoed across the courtyard. Warriors stepped back, jaws slack. Spears trembled in stunned hands. Even Draevyn was utterly mesmerized. Something in his eyes shimmered—like he had just witnessed divinity burn through flesh.
And then… silence.
Nymera’s body crumpled to the ground, unmoving. Unconscious… or worse. No one dared check.
Kaelani stood in the eye of her own storm, shoulders heaving, her eyes flickering, still glowing faintly violet as her power receded.
Then, as if the strings holding her together finally snapped, she collapsed.
Her knees hit the stone with a resounding thud. She fell forward, face in her hands as the sobs came—loud, gasping, guttural sobs that shook her entire frame. Years of armor, of forced strength, of silent survival… shattered in seconds.
She had never let anyone see her cry. Never dared.
But this pain was too deep. Too suffocating.
The woman who birthed her had never loved her. The man who fathered her threw her away. And she—she had been nothing but a pawn in someone else’s prophecy.
Kaelani didn’t hear the footsteps. Only felt the gentle tug at her shoulder—fingertips warm and steady, anchoring her through the haze of sobs.
She lifted her head, blinking through tears that clung stubbornly to her lashes.
Draevyn stood above her.
No smirk. No mockery.
Only a strange, quiet solemnity in his eyes.
He lifted her—slowly, reverently—as if raising something sacred from the ruins. Then, with a tenderness that stole the breath from her lungs, he wiped the tears from her cheeks. One slow pass. Then another. His thumb lingered at her jaw.
“A Queen,” he said softly, “should never kneel before anyone.”
She blinked at him, heart stuttering in her chest.
Then, without letting her go, he turned her slowly to face the court.
“You let them kneel before you.”
And they did.
The silence cracked—and like a tidal wave of obedience, every soul in the courtyard—warriors, nobles, onlookers, even the stone-faced guards—dropped to their knees.
Heads bowed. Spears lowered.
Kaelani stood trembling—shattered, uncertain, and crowned by a fate she never even asked for.