Chapter 105 I never meant to hurt you
Chapter 105 I never meant to hurt you
The autumn chill had settled deep into the stone walls of the Citadel, but inside the master suite, the air was uncomfortably warm, thick with the heavy, sweet scent of crushed nightshade blossoms and bruised lavender.
I stood by the arched window of the nursery, watching Kaelen and Lyra stack a precarious tower of wooden blocks while Kael supervised from the doorway, his arms crossed over his chest, his mismatched eyes soft with amusement. Everything was peaceful. The New Dawn had held its promise for over two years, bringing quiet trade, open borders, and a domestic harmony I never thought I would experience.
And yet, for the past three days, a strange, persistent heaviness had settled into my bones.
I reached down, pressing a hand against my lower abdomen. There was no physical pain—nothing like the sharp, cosmic contractions of the twins' birth. Instead, it was a dull, hollow tightening, a sudden, rhythmic pulling sensation that felt entirely wrong, as if something deep inside my biological clock was being artificially wound up, ticking backward toward an emergency release.
"Mama, look! High!" Lyra giggled, floating a wooden block three feet into the air before letting it drop safely into Kaelen's waiting hands.
"Very good, little dragon," Kael murmured, walking over to them and kneeling down to ruffle Kaelen’s fine white hair. But the moment he stood back up, his head snapped toward the nursery door, his golden and emerald eyes narrowing into a sharp, focused glare. Through our lifelong blood-bond, a sudden flash of protective tension raced from his mind to mine. "Aria. Do you smell that?"
I inhaled deeply, blinking against a sudden wave of lightheadedness that made the nursery walls sway. "It's just the new botanical incense," I said, my voice sounding strangely thin to my own ears. "Elara brought it this morning. She said it was meant to help the children sleep through the teething nights."
Kael crossed the room in two long, silent strides, his tall frame cutting through the warm air like a blade. He didn't look at the children; he walked straight to the small porcelain burner resting on the side table, where a dark, purple-tinted oil was simmering over a low flame.
He picked up the small dish with his bare fingers, ignoring the heat, and brought it close to his face. The moment his breath touched the rising steam, the oil didn't just evaporate—it hissed, turning an oily, toxic shade of pitch black before crystallizing into a fine, gray powder.
"Nightshade and blood-thorn," Kael growled, his deep voice dropping into a sub-zero monotone that made the temperature in the room instantly plummet. "This isn't incense, Aria. This is a targeted, airborne labor-induction curse."
My breath hitched. I stumbled backward, my hand flying to my stomach as a sharp, violent cramp ripped through my lower body, doubling me over with the force of an unnatural contraction.
"Aria!"
Kael was beside me in a fraction of a millisecond, his strong arms catching me before my knees could hit the floor. His face was a mask of absolute, feral terror, his golden eye blazing with a terrifying sun-bright fury. Through the bond, his mind was a rushing river of absolute panic and cold, calculating murder.
"The children," I gasped, clutching his forearm as another wave of unnatural heat swept through my veins. "Kael, get them out of here—"
"Kenneth!" Kael roared, his voice carrying down the stone corridor with enough force to rattle the hinges of the heavy oak doors.
Commander Kenneth burst into the nursery a second later, his sword half-drawn, his face pale with alarm. "Sire! What—"
"Take the children to the inner solar," Kael commanded, his voice shaking with a suppressed, lethal rage as he scooped me up into his arms, bridal-style. "Lock the master wards. Do not let anyone—anyone—enter or leave this Citadel."
Minutes later, I lay flat against the obsidian table in the subterranean ritual chamber, the cool black stone pressing against my back, offering a brief, meager relief from the internal fire burning through my system.
Kael stood over me, his hands glowing with a bright, steady stream of royal sovereign magic as he pressed his palm against my lower abdomen, actively filtering the toxic nightshade residue out of my bloodstream. Every time his magic met the cursed poison, a thin wisp of black smoke rose from my skin, hissing like water on hot iron.
"It's a slow-acting metabolic trigger," Kael said, his jaw clenched so tightly a muscle ticked in his cheek. His mismatched eyes were locked on my face, watching my every breath with an intensity that bordered on frantic. "It doesn't use raw force. It mimics the natural hormonal frequency of a late-stage pregnancy, trying to trick your body into an immediate, violent expulsion."
"Why?" I panted, gripping the edges of the obsidian table as another wave of artificial cramping subsided.
"The eastern borders are pacified. Malakor's soul-anchor was burned to ash. Who could even access the private apothecary to brew a blood-thorn curse?"
"Only someone with unrestricted access to the inner keep," a cold, flat voice answered from the top of the obsidian stairs.
We both looked up.
Commander Kenneth stood at the entrance of the subterranean chamber, his broadsword completely unsheathed, his expression a mixture of profound shock and cold fury. Between his heavy leather-clad hands, he dragged a struggling, trembling figure forward, shoving them down the stone steps until they stumbled and fell hard against the bottom tier.
It was Elara.
Her pale face was entirely drained of color, her fingers clutching the folds of her gray linen apron so tightly her knuckles were translucent. She didn't look up at the high obsidian altar. She kept her eyes glued to the dark stone floor, her lower lip trembling violently.
Kael stopped channeling his magic, his hands dropping slowly away from my waist. The temperature in the subterranean room didn't just drop—it froze solid, a thick layer of white frost racing across the obsidian floorboards in a fraction of a second.
"Elara," I whispered, the word tasting like ash in my mouth. A sharp, devastating pain bloomed in my chest that had nothing to do with the curse and everything to do with the hollow betrayal echoing through the room. "You... you brewed the nightshade?"
Elara let out a muffled sob, pressing her forehead against the cold stone. "I had no choice, My Queen," she choked out, her voice breaking into ragged pieces. "Please... you have to believe me. I didn't want to hurt you."