Chapter 48

Kaelen’s POV

“My parents were murdered too p>

The words hung in the sterile air of the medical wing. I hadn’t planned to say them. Not like this. Not sitting on the edge of a cot with Elara’s tear-streaked face inches from mine and the ghost of her grief still echoing off the stone walls.

But her story had torn the door off its hinges. And now the thing behind it was clawing its way out whether I wanted it to or not.

Elara didn’t speak. She just looked at me with those ice-blue eyes—Frostfang eyes, I knew that now—and waited. The same way I’d waited for her.

I exhaled. Slow. Measured.

“I haven’t told anyone the full truth of that night,” I said. “Not even Cassian. He knows the official account. Everyone does. The Emperor and Empress, assassinated in the imperial study. A rogue infiltration. Case unsolved.” I looked down at my hands. They were steady. They shouldn’t have been. “But the official account is a lie. Or at best, a fraction p>

“Tell me.” Her voice was barely above a whisper. No demand in it. Just presence.

I leaned forward. Elbows on my knees. The position made my wrinkled uniform pull tight across my shoulders, and I was suddenly, absurdly aware of the tension coiled in my muscles. My back ached. My neck was stiff. None of it mattered.

“My parents had a good marriage,” I started. “Or I thought they did. My father was… stern. Disciplined. A soldier before he was an emperor. My mother was warmer. She laughed easily. She used to sing while she brushed her hair at night—old northern folk songs that she said her grandmother taught her.” I paused. The memory was razor-edged. “I worshipped her p>

Elara’s hand found mine. I didn’t pull away.

“When I was thirteen, things changed. My father became distant. Gone for long stretches. My mother stopped singing.” I swallowed. “He took a mistress. A woman named Patricia, one of my mother’s personal attendants. A servant in our household.” The words came out flat. Toneless. The way I’d trained myself to say them over the years so they wouldn’t cut.

Elara’s fingers tightened around mine.

“I didn’t find out the truth of their affair until much later,” I continued, staring at the blue glow cycling through the healing crystals in the wall. Steady pulse. Steady pulse. “By then, the damage was irreversible. And there was Gareth. The child Patricia had with my father p>

“Gareth.” Elara repeated the name carefully.

“My half-brother. The prince who was once your betrothed.” I looked at her. Made sure she understood. “His mother was the woman who destroyed mine p>

Something shifted behind Elara’s eyes. Recognition. Connection. The threads of two separate histories weaving together.

“When the truth came out, it was catastrophic,” I continued. “My mother was devastated. Humiliated. The divorce was brutal—my father had the power of the throne behind him, and Patricia had his ear. My mother was given limited custody. Custodial visits every other weekend and Wednesday evenings.” I heard my own voice go hollow. “She went from being Empress to a visitor in her own children’s lives p>

“That’s cruel p>

“It was systematic.” The old anger stirred. I held it down. “Patricia moved into the palace. Gareth was legitimized as a prince. My mother was erased from court as though she’d never existed. And I p>

I stopped. This was the part. The part I never said out loud.

“You were caught in the middle,” Elara said softly.

“I was furious,” I corrected. “Not caught. Furious. At my father for his betrayal. At Patricia for her ambition. At the entire court for bowing and scraping to a woman who’d torn my family apart.” I ran a hand through my hair. It was tangled. I didn’t care. “And I punished my mother for it p>

Elara frowned. “What do you mean p>

“I was eighteen,” I said, the guilt hitting like it always did. A fist to the center of my chest. “She had a scheduled visit. One of her designated evenings. I was supposed to go to her quarters in the outer palace. Spend the night. Have dinner.” My jaw locked. Released. “I didn’t go. I was angry—not at her. At everything. At the situation. At feeling like a pawn being passed between two households. So I went to a friend’s home instead. Stayed the night there. Told myself I’d see her the next visit p>

The crystal hum filled the silence.

“There was no next visit p>

Elara’s breath caught.

“I came home the following morning,” I said. The words were coming out mechanically now. Detached. The only way I could get through them. “The palace was in chaos. Guards everywhere. Blood on the floor of the main corridor. I pushed through to my father’s private study p>

I closed my eyes.

The image was seared into me. Permanent. It lived behind my eyelids and surfaced in dreams and quiet moments and the space between breaths.

“My mother was there. In my father’s study.” My voice dropped. “She’d come to the palace that evening—the evening I should have been with her. The guards said she arrived looking for me. She went to my father’s study when she couldn’t find me in her quarters p>

“Kaelen p>

“She was torn apart.” I said it simply. Because there was no gentle way. “Whatever—whoever—attacked them didn’t just kill her. They destroyed her. My father was beside her. His throat cut. The imperial safe behind his desk had been forced open. Sensitive documents—military positions, territorial agreements, intelligence reports—all gone p>

The silence that followed was absolute.

Elara didn’t try to fill it with words. She shifted on the cot, leaned forward, and pressed her palm against my cheek. Her hand was cool. Steady. I leaned into it without thinking—a reflexive surrender I wouldn’t have allowed from anyone else on this earth.

“And Patricia?” Elara asked quietly.

“Vanished.” The word tasted like poison. “Gone that same night. No trace. No trail. The palace’s defenses had been breached from the inside—someone had shattered the ward crystals along the eastern corridor. Someone who knew exactly where they were hidden and how to dismantle them p>

“An inside job p>

“Without question.” I opened my eyes. Met hers. “Patricia knew the palace layout intimately. She’d lived there for years. She knew the guard rotations, the crystal placements, every servant passage and hidden corridor.” My hand curled into a fist against my knee. “And she disappeared on the exact night my parents were slaughtered. The same night the imperial safe was emptied p>

“You think she orchestrated it p>

“I think she was at least part of it. Whether she planned the whole thing or was working with someone—I don’t know. But she’s the thread that connects everything. And she was never found p>

Elara was quiet for a long moment. Her thumb traced a slow line across my cheekbone. Back and forth. Gentle. Grounding.

“And Gareth?” she asked.

My jaw tightened. “He was only twelve when the murders happened. Just a boy. I know that. But he’s Patricia’s son. Her blood. And in all the years since, I’ve watched him grow into a man consumed by resentment and entitlement.” I shook my head. “I’ve never trusted him. I can’t. Every time I look at him, I see her p>

“That’s why you despise him p>

“I despise him because he’s earned it.” My voice hardened. “But the distrust—the suspicion—that started the night his mother vanished and my parents were found in pieces p>

I leaned back against the headboard of the cot. Exhaustion was settling over me like a physical weight. Not the kind sleep could fix.

“After their deaths, I inherited the throne. I was barely a man. Didn’t know the first thing about governance or diplomacy or managing an empire that suddenly had no emperor and no empress.” A hollow laugh. “My mother’s closest friend—a woman named Claire—stepped in. She’d been my mother’s confidante for years. She helped me hold the empire together in those first chaotic months. Kept me from destroying everything in my rage p>

“She sounds remarkable p>

“She was.” I paused. “She is. But even Claire doesn’t know all of it. No one does.” I looked at Elara. “Until now p>

The weight of that admission sat between us. I had carried this for so long—the guilt, the fury, the unanswered questions—that sharing it felt like removing a piece of my own skeleton. Lighter and more fragile at once.

Elara held my gaze. Those Frostfang eyes—clear as winter lakes—burned with something that wasn’t pity. Wasn’t sympathy.

It was recognition.

“Your parents,” she said slowly. “Mine. Both Alpha families. Both murdered. Both betrayals from within.” Her brow furrowed, a profound realization settling over her features. “By the Moon Goddess… Kaelen, what if it wasn’t a coincidence? The Goddess weaves fates together, and this cannot be random p>

The thought had already taken root. I’d felt it forming the moment she described the organized rogue attack on the Frostfang Duchy. Rogues didn’t coordinate like that on their own. Someone directed them. Someone with knowledge, resources, and a reason to target the most powerful Alpha bloodlines in the empire.

“It may not have been,” I said carefully.

Elara straightened. Despite the exhaustion hollowing her cheeks, despite the tremor still visible in her hands, something fierce and unbreakable moved behind her eyes.

“Then we find out,” she said. Her ice-blue eyes caught the pale light from the windows and held it—steady, bright, unyielding. “Together. Carefully. We find the truth about what happened to both our families.” Her voice didn’t waver. “We owe it to them, Kaelen. To everyone we lost. We find the truth—and we make it right p>