Free Web NovelChapter 32: Chapter 32: The Crown and the Cradle
Riegthar POV
After a full year of Ari living within our walls, the silent tether between us had tightened to a burning point. I could tell she felt my gaze whenever she crossed a room. She knew I was watching the subtle grace of her movements, that I was constantly seeking a way to be close to her, to breathe the same air. fгeewёbnoѵel.cσm
The breaking point arrived on a breathless, moonlit midnight. Unable to sleep, my mind entirely consumed by her face, I succumbed to the madness. Knowing Ryophlira was deeply asleep under the influence of her soothing tea, I quietly sneaked into her room where Ari kept watch.
The moment I stepped past the curtains, a cold flash of steel cut through the darkness. Before I could even draw breath, my throat met with a razor-sharp blade pressed firmly against my neck.
It was Ari. Her eyes flashed with a defensive fire in the shadows, her blood blade hovering a millimeter from my jugular.
Instead of drawing my weapon or fighting, I simply stared down at her, completely fascinated. The sheer proximity of her took the air from my lungs. "I didn’t come to hurt her," I whispered, my voice thick with emotion. "I came to see you."
Slowly, the tension left her shoulders, and the blood blade dissolved into mist. We didn’t wake my sister. Instead, we sat on the cold stone of the window sill and spent the entire night talking. We talked about her life before the alley, my suffocating duties as the crown prince, and the beautiful, terrifying nature of her blood magic.
That single night created a dangerous, beautiful routine. For months, I would sneak into the Ry room at night, or we would meet in the secluded corners of the royal gardens beneath the weeping trees, talking for hours and simply enjoying each other’s forbidden company.
After a year of secret whispers, I finally gathered the courage to ask her to be mine. Beneath the canopy of the midnight roses, I leaned down and kissed her. At first, she gaspingly pulled away, her blue eyes wide with panic. "We can’t, my lord," she whispered, her hands trembling against my chest. "I am scared. I am not ready."
But before we could navigate her fears, the hand of fate intervened. Father abruptly sent me off to the front lines of the war.
For two brutal, agonizing years, I fought in the mud and blood of the trenches, my only survival mechanism being the memory of her face. When the war finally came to a hold still and I returned to the capital, covered in battle exhaustion, I marched into the palace courtyard.
Ari was standing by the fountains. The moment her blue eyes locked onto mine, the protocol of a servant entirely vanished. She sprinted across and ran directly into my arms, throwing her hands around my neck as if there were just the two of us left in a broken world.
I pulled her against my massive frame and kissed her with a desperate, consuming passion. This time, she didn’t pull away. She kissed me back with an equal starvation accepting all of me, my bloodstained hands, my crown, and my fractured soul.
Our relationship became our most sacred, dangerous secret. We spent every possible night wrapped in each other’s arms. With me buried deep inside her, holding her fragile body against mine. I was indisputably the happiest man alive. In her arms, I wasn’t the giant crown prince. I was just a man entirely loved.
But our paradise turned to bitter ash the moment Father summoned me to the grand throne room. With a cold, detached finality, Father announced that the War was over, and to solidify the peace, I would be married off to one of the daughter of the East.
The words felt like a physical blow. I dropped to one knee, desperately trying to explain that I was deeply in love with someone else, that I wanted to marry Ari and elevate her to my side. But Father’s eyes turned into blocks of ice. "If you refuse to accept this arrangement," he bellowed, his voice echoing off the pillars, "you are actively refusing the crown. You will be stripped of your birthright and cast out of this palace."
When I broke the news to Ari in the dark of my room, her expression shattered. I saw the profound, aching hurt in her blue eyes, but she was a creature of the palace, she knew the brutal reality of my position. "You have a duty, my love," she whispered, a lone tear tracking down her cheek. "The kingdom comes before a maid."
"I promise you," I swore, cupping her face and staring into her soul. "The moment I officially become King, I will change the laws. I will dismantle the arrangements. Just wait for me."
We agreed to hold onto each other, continuing our secret nights until the day of the political wedding arrived. But the guilt and the shifting tides of made it increasingly difficult to keep up. One night together started to turn into two nights apart, then not at all, to occasional, hurried midnights.
The longing was driving me mad, I couldn’t hide the desperate hunger I had for her when we passed in the corridors. To protect her from Mother’s suspicious eyes, I forced myself to stay away, burying myself in border politics.
Then, she whispered the words that brought the stars back into my sky. I am pregnant.
The joy that exploded in my chest was unlike anything I had ever experienced. With art recently arranged to marry the North, the heavy burden of the family alliance had shifted, offering me a glimmer of hope that for once in my wretched life, my personal happiness might actually matter. I was going to be a father. We were going to have our family. frёewebnoѵēl.com
But a small, catastrophic exchange of words on the diplomatic stage changed everything.
The sudden, brutal execution of the East’s youngest son and the horrifying discovery of the missing tongue of the South’s wife shattered the delicate agreement. The fragile peace agreements desperately needed to be resumed to prevent total annihilation.
Panicked, I flew from the capital, spending weeks traveling between the borders, desperately trying to form a new peace to secure a world for my unborn child. I left her behind. I left her entirely alone in mothers nest, forcing her to face the horrors of the palace and fight Mother’s creeping suspicions completely on her own.
And while I was away playing diplomat, Mother struck. I regret it. I regret every single second I spent away from this palace. I wish with everything inside my soul that I could rewrite the past, that I could change the choices that brought us to this hallway. Because of my absence, I lost the only woman I have ever truly loved, and the beautiful, unborn child we had created together.
The memory shattered like glass, pulling me back into the cold reality of the stone corridor. My chest was heaving, my eyes burning with a mix of resurrected grief and raw fury as I blinked back the past. Ari stood pinned against the wall, her blue eyes wide and glistening with the shared trauma of our history.
And right between us stood Ryophlira,
"I am entirely finished asking nicely,"her gaze darting between my broken expression and Ari’s trembling hands. With all her strength she took hold of my shoulders and threw me back off Ari. She stepped infront of Ari. "If you want to walk away without a single mark better start talking."
