Free Web NovelChapter 485: Chapter 485
The journey back to the palace had been a tense and silent one.
Jayran walked with his family through the corridors, past the servants and guards who lowered their gazes as they walked by, and he had barely said a single word in hours. There was nothing to say. The burial was done, the final rites had been observed, and whatever the day had demanded of him he had given it. Now there was only the hollow, directionless feeling that came after, the kind that left a person not quite knowing what to do with their hands. freeweɓnovel.cøm
He should have gone to his chambers. He should have changed out of the dark clothes he had worn since morning, clothes that still carried the faint smell of burnt incense. He should have eaten something, or slept, or done any of the sensible things a person did at the end of a long and difficult day. Instead, without consciously deciding to, he found himself moving toward the throne room.
He wasn’t sure what he expected to find there. Clarity, perhaps. Or maybe he had come there seeking some final piece of his father and of the relationship between them that had always been too distant, and in some moments, had felt completely non existent. freewebnovёl.ƈom
His father had not been cruel to him and his brothers. Zeriel had simply not been very interested in them. His attention had always been directed elsewhere, toward his royal court, his politics, and the long rotation of mistresses and lovers that he had never made much effort to hide.
His sons had grown up in the margins of his life, acknowledged when necessary and otherwise left to their own devices. Jayran had understood this early and had stopped waiting for something different. But understanding this had not made the times that his father disappointed him feel painless.
And yet the loss of a parent was its own particular thing, regardless of what the parent had been. It twisted a person up in ways that were irrational.
Jayran had felt it today in small, unexpected moments and he had not known what to do with any of it. He still didn’t. Which was perhaps why he was here, walking toward the throne room, hoping that standing in a room would give him the closure that the actual burial had not and help him understand this hollow feeling in his chest.
He pushed open the grand double doors and stepped inside.
The sight that greeted him caused him to halt.
Azul was sitting on their father’s throne with one leg crossed over the other, relaxed in a way that suggested he had been there long enough to get comfortable. He looked up when Jayran entered, and his expression didn’t change even when he noticed the disbelief on his brother’s face.
Jayran stood in the doorway for a moment, taking in the sight as his initial shock melted, replaced by irritation.
"What do you think you’re doing?" he demanded, moving further into the room.
Azul’s gaze drifted over him with a kind of mild assessment. "I knew you were foolish," he said. "I didn’t think you were blind as well."
"Have you no respect at all?" Jayran spat. "We just buried our father and this is what you choose to do?"
Azul didn’t move from his spot, and he didn’t show the slightest indication that he felt he owed Jayran an explanation.
"Father doesn’t deserve any of our respect," he said. "Frankly, I don’t think he would know the meaning of the word. You want me to show him reverence when he never showed any to his own family? Not in all the countless times he flaunted his affairs and his lovers. His mistresses received more of his attention than any of his sons ever did. So what respect are you referring to, exactly?"
Jayran said nothing. There was no good answer to that, and Azul knew it.
Azul gave him a strange look, one Jayran couldn’t quite decipher. "I have always envied you, brother. Do you know that? I envied the fact that you were the only one of us who never bothered trying to get his attention. Hairan lashed out at everyone around him. Ragnar joined the army. And I killed whoever father wanted me to kill. I did it for years, until that was the only thing I was good for. His loyal hound." The words came out without particular bitterness, more like a plain accounting of fact, which somehow made them worse. "But you never did any of that. Even when we were young, you already seemed to understand that none of it would matter, that no amount of effort would change anything. It’s genuinely embarrassing how long I kept trying. I should have stopped much sooner than I did."
Jayran watched him. He had known, in an abstract way, that his brothers had each carried their own versions of the same wound. He hadn’t known how much it affected Azul.
Azul leaned back against the throne, like he was a king addressing his subject. "I’m glad he’s dead. The only thing that could have made it better was if I had been the one to kill him myself. But we can’t always have what we want."
The air in the room grew very tense and charged
"No," Jayran said. "Because mother killed him instead."
The words came out almost like an accusation.
Azul’s mouth curved into a slow, faint smirk. He didn’t deny it. "And she should be proud of it," he said simply.
He placed both hands on the armrests of the throne and looked out across the length of the room, the way their father might have once looked out across a hall full of people.
"For the longest time, I never understood people’s obsession with the throne," Azul said, his voice thoughtful now, almost conversational. "People have killed for it. People have died for it. I never saw myself becoming king, so I never truly understood what the appeal was, especially when power can be acquired in other ways. But sitting here now, I think I understand it better. There is something about looking down at a room full of people who owe you their loyalty. Knowing that your word is law and that no one is in a position to question it. It feeds something primal and egotistical in a person. It makes me regret not wanting this sooner. A shame, truly. I would have made a fine king."
