Chapter 89 Elena /Xavier POV
Meanwhile at the palace.
Inside the plush sanctuary of the royal guest wing, Leo paced the length of the silk-carpeted floor, his face a carefully constructed mask of grief.
Every few minutes, he would press a dry handkerchief to his eyes, letting out a performative sob loud enough for the guards in the hallway to hear.
"Oh, my dear friend," he would moan to the empty air. "To be lost in such a tragic accident. The kingdom will never recover from the loss of King Xavier."
But beneath the mask, Leo’s heart was dancing. He had seen the way the ceiling of the Sanctum had buckled.
He had felt the tremor that shook the palace foundation. No one, not even a man with Xavier’s mana capacity, could survive being flattened by ten tons of ancient obsidian and the subsequent mana-bomb.
He was already mentally moving his furniture. He saw himself in a sprawling estate in the southern highlands, far from the reach of the monsters and the politics of Drakmor.
He would have a title, Duke Leo, perhaps. He had served his purpose; he had paved the way for the Silver Sun, and in return, he was to be a man of infinite leisure.
The gold, he thought, a greedy shiver running down his spine. Any moment now, the courier will arrive with the first installment. Life begins today.
A sharp, frantic knock at the door made him jump. He smoothed his tunic, wiped his eyes one last time, and opened the door to a messenger whose face was the color of curdled milk.
"The payment?" Leo whispered, his eyes gleaming with anticipation. "Is it here?"
"Sire... there is no payment," the messenger wheezed, clutching his knees. "The Merchant Guild... it was robbed. The Silver Vault is empty. Everything meant for the Northern Gate...and for you… it’s gone."
The world seemed to tilt on its axis. Leo’s hand went to the doorframe to steady himself. "Empty? What do you mean, empty? That’s impossible! That gold was secured by—"
"A girl," the messenger interrupted, his voice trembling with fear. "A girl with an emerald ring. They’re saying it was Elena Heart. She took it all, My Lord. Every last core."
Leo’s breath hitched, a cold, oily dread sliding down his throat. It wasn't the loss of the money that hit him first—it was the implication.
Elena Heart was supposed to be the scapegoat. She was supposed to be a corpse in the rubble. If she was alive, and if she had the audacity to rob the Guild...
She wasn't alone.
"King Xavier," Leo whispered, his voice cracking. The name felt like a death sentence “Imposble!”
He lunged for the messenger, grabbing the boy's collar, his eyes bulging with a sudden, frantic terror. "The bodies! Did they find the bodies in the Sanctum? Tell me they found the King’s body!"
"No, My Lord! The rubble is being cleared, but... they found nothing but dust and a single, bloodied glove belonging to the guard, James. The King is missing."
Leo let go of the boy, stumbling back into the room. The grief he had been faking suddenly became very, very real, but it wasn't for Xavier—it was for himself.
He could see it now: the "dead" King emerging from the shadows like a vengeful wraith, Elena Heart at his side with the wealth of the world on her finger.
"He's alive," Leo whimpered, his hands beginning to shake uncontrollably. "He’s alive and he knows. He knows I opened the gate. He knows everything."
The silence of the room suddenly felt like a trap. The shadows in the corner seemed to lengthen, taking the shape of a man with blue eyes and a crown of soot.
Leo’s mind raced, he couldn't stay here. If the Silver Sun found out the gold was gone, they would discard him. If Xavier found him, he would be executed for high treason.
He scrambled toward his heavy mahogany desk, frantically pulling open drawers, throwing papers onto the floor. "I have to leave. I have to get out of the city before the sun rises."
He grabbed a small leather pouch of personal coins, pathetic compared to the fortune he had been promised, and began shoving jewelry and small mana-stones into his pockets.
Every sound in the hallway made him flinch. The clank of a guard's armor sounded like the sharpening of an executioner's blade.
"Damn you, Elena!" he hissed, his voice high and thin with hysteria. "Damn you for not staying dead!"
He looked toward the balcony, the rain-slicked city of Drakmor stretching out below. He had dreamed of ruling it, of owning a piece of it.
Now, it was just a giant hunting ground, and he was the prey. He didn't wait for a carriage. He threw a dark cloak over his shoulders, his eyes darting around the room like a trapped rat, and vanished into the servant's passage, his teeth chattering in the cold morning air.
The betrayal had been perfect. The plan had been flawless. But as Leo fled into the dark, he realized the terrifying truth: a King with nothing left to lose was far more dangerous than a King on a throne.
Xavier POV
The rain in the lower districts didn't smell like the perfumed gardens of the palace; it smelled of salt, struggle, and the sharp, metallic tang of the mana pouring off the woman standing beside me.
I watched Elena through the haze of the downpour. She looked like a shadow given form, her new silk-steel armor shimmering like oil on water.
On her finger, the emerald ring pulsed with a rhythmic, emerald light, the heartbeat of my stolen kingdom.
How did she know about it?
Did she really have a vision? A dream?
I had spent years sitting on a throne of gold, yet I had never felt as powerful as I did standing in the mud of a mercenary camp, watching the woman I was supposed to have executed rewrite the laws of reality.
Every breath I took felt like a victory over the obsidian dust that should have filled my lungs. Leo, Grace, the unknown shadow in the North, they had calculated my death to the second. They hadn't accounted for the variable that was Elena Heart.
As the Black-Iron Ravens began to mobilize around us, their armored boots splashing in the mire, I felt a grim, cold satisfaction. They were no longer looking for a king to serve; they were looking at a ghost they couldn't afford to ignore.
The commander’s tent was a cavern of heavy canvas, smelling of wet wool and the sharp, metallic tang of the mana-stones scattered across the central table.
Outside, the rhythmic thud-thud of the Black-Iron Ravens striking camp provided a war-drum soundtrack to my thoughts.
I watched Elena. She was leaning over a map, her charcoal-grey silk-steel armor catching the dim lantern light.
Her fingers, stained with the ink of the maps and the blood of her own sacrifice, traced the ley lines of the kingdom with a precision that bordered on the divine. But as she pointed to the North Gate, I saw it: a minute tremor in her hand.