Free Web NovelChapter 160: Chapter 160
It came from the ring that sat on top of the vanity, the ring his mother always wore. She was never without it. As though checking to make sure, his gaze dipped down to her bare fingers and his heart raced.
Jayran couldn’t tear his gaze away from the ring glinting on the vanity. His heart thundered against his ribs, a thousand thoughts racing through his mind. That ring had never left his mother’s hand. Not since he could remember. For it to be sitting there now, something about it felt wrong.
He felt her nails dig deeper into his skin, dragging him back to the present. The sharp sting of pain flared across his throat, but he bit back a wince. Her goal was to hurt him, to punish him for stepping out of line and he refused to give her the satisfaction of seeing him in pain. He wouldn’t let her see how much she could still hurt him, though deep down, he knew she already knew.
The air in the room grew heavy, almost suffocating. With every passing heartbeat, the tension mounted. Her nails had sunk deep enough to draw blood. A thin, crimson line trickled down to the base of his neck.
"You will back down," she said, her voice pitched low and it somehow made her sound even more dangerous. "You will fix what you have done and offer Hairan your loyalty and unwavering support."
The command snapped Jayran’s attention back to her, tearing his focus from the vanity. She didn’t need to say it outright, he could hear the unspoken threat lingering behind her words.
Nheera always spoke as though her word was law, as though the world would rearrange itself simply because she told it to.
Her grip around his throat tightened again when he failed to respond immediately, daring him to defy her. She could crush his windpipe if she truly wanted to. She could do much worse and they both knew it.
Never in his life had Jayran imagined that he could hate his mother. But in that moment, standing before her with blood running down his neck and her hand around his throat, he could feel the hatred was there.
The thought of telling her to do her worst flashed through his mind, but he swallowed it down. Just like fighting back, defiance of any form would only make things worse.
He hated it but he forced himself to do the only thing that made sense if he wanted to walk out of that room alive. He smiled.
"You know how competitive Azul and I can be," he said, his tone light as he tried to placate her enough for her to let him leave. "We take things too far sometimes. I was only supporting Ragnar because of the wager, that’s all." The words burned on his tongue, but he forced them out anyway. "At the end of the day, the throne belongs to Hairan. Nothing I do will ever change that."
The words tasted like ash in his mouth but he still rushed to say them before he second guessed himself. Because the truth was that there was nothing he dreaded more than the idea of Hairan sitting on Marzen’s throne.
Hairan should never be king and the more his mother tried to force his hand, the more resolute Jayran became. He would not let it happen.
Nheera studied him, her cold eyes searching for any hint of deceit. Then, slowly, she loosened her grip. Her fingers slid away from his throat, leaving behind angry red indents in his skin.
"Instead of being such a nuisance," she said, smoothing her skirts as though nothing had happened, "why don’t you make yourself useful by helping your brother win over the rest of the courtiers?"
Jayran recognized the dismissal in her tone immediately. He bowed his head, forcing composure into his movements. "Yes, Mother." freeweɓnovel.cøm
When he straightened, his gaze flicked once more to the vanity and froze. The ring pulsed faintly with light. A faint eerie glow, subtle enough that anyone else that wasn’t staring straight at it might have missed it. But Jayran saw.
He didn’t breathe, didn’t blink. And just like that, the glow vanished.
His mother said nothing. She hadn’t even noticed the change in him, barely paying attention to him now.
Jayran turned to leave, every instinct screaming for him to get out of that room before she decided to change her mind. And as the door closed behind him, one wild, impossible thought cam to him unbidden, a thought that quickly rooted itself deep in his mind and refused to let go.
*****
"How could you have let this happen?" Laheir bellowed, his voice echoing off the stone walls of his parlor. His fists clenched so tightly that his knuckles blanched white as he paced in sharp, agitated strides. "You reassured me that you had everything under control and yet you went ahead and let Ragnar ruin everything! How incompetent could you possibly be to sit back and watch this happen?"
The servants had long since fled the room, leaving only the faint crackle of the hearth to fill the heavy silence that followed his tirade. Laheir’s fury was palpable, rolling off in waves.
He had a private chamber in the palace, one he made use of often. It was an indulgence granted by the king himself. But Laheir had decided it would be unwise to remain there tonight, not while tempers were still high.
The king’s sudden announcement still rang in his ears, every word searing deeper into his pride. It was better to retreat to his own home for a while.
He was livid, not only because Ragnar had somehow uncovered the rebels’ main camp, but because the king had chosen to make a spectacle of it. Even worse was that Zeriel had publicly hinted at something as unthinkable as naming Ragnar as his heir.
The king didn’t even consult him about it first. Laheir was the king’s chief advisor, his most trusted confidant, but that didn’t stop him from being blindsided before the court like any other onlooker.
The betrayal stung.
Zeriel had never done anything like this before, never made a decision so monumental without first seeking Laheir’s opinion on the matter. That, more than anything else, unsettled him. Something had changed, and Laheir could feel it.
Yannick sat in an armchair in front of him. He chose to remain silent throughout his father’s tirade, eyes lowered, shoulders rigid under the weight of his fury. But it got to a point that he could no longer stay silent anymore.
Yannick looked up at his father and glared. freewebnovel.cσ๓
" Do you think that I would have let this happen if I knew what Ragnar was planning?" Yannick said, eyes hard.
" Yes, because you were so confident that you wouldn’t get caught that you allowed yourself to become careless. Ragnar has been looking for a way to pin the entire rebellion on you since rumors of your involvement first started making the rounds and now you just handed it all to him on a silver platter. How easily you have forgotten all that I taught you." Laheir said angrily.
" The rebels might be in the king’s custody but that doesn’t mean I will get caught. They wouldn’t have let me walk out of the palace freely if they suspected me." Yannick tried to argue but Laheir only sneered at him in disdain.
" You are not only careless, you are also stupid as well." Laheir said. "Perhaps I need to remind you that those rebels in the dungeons are not like royal soldiers who would gladly die to protect their leader. They are a local militia made up of men whose loyalty you bought with gold. They didn’t swear any oath to you." Laheir seethed. "If the choice was ever given, your life or theirs, they will always choose theirs, and when that fool Gerard finally coughs up the identity of the person who has been giving the orders, you will hang with the rest of them. And I will become a laughing stock, ousted from society. Not just me but your brothers as well. Everything we ever worked for will be gone before you even draw your final breath with the noose tied around your neck."
Laheir was breathing heavily by the time he was done speaking, his chest was heaving.
" Then it’s best that you return to the palace and continue whispering in the king’s ear again. You are very good at that, are you?" Yannick said, trying to act like his father’s words hadn’t affected him. But all it would take was someone looking into his eyes to see how frightened he was.
The thought of being killed and having people gawk at his corpse terrified him more than he could explain with words.
Yannick pushed past the fear and continued. " You have many nobles in your pocket, even the queen, herself. Perhaps now is the time to start collecting old debts."
