Free Web NovelChapter 52: Chapter 52: The Rot in the Foundation
Riegthar POV
The shouting was nothing but a low, distorted hum, like heavy water pressing against my eardrums. I was standing dead center in my father’s private study, but the back-and-forth between my parents didn’t even register. To be completely honest, I didn’t even know how my feet had carried me here, or what specific madness they were currently screaming about.
All I could see, burned into the back of my eyelids, was that severed head sitting in the bag. None of it made a single shred of sense. My sister had somehow managed to bring the entire East Kingdom to her side. The East. The peaceful, brilliant, calculating powerhouse.
How in the hell had she managed that?
A blur of fabric drifted into my line of sight. My mother was walking toward me, her elegant movements appearing in slow motion until her fingers clamped onto my shoulders. She shook me hard snapping me out of the trance.
"What are you doing just standing there like a statue?" she demanded, her sharp voice finally piercing the fog in my brain. "I told you to get ready to ride out to your sister. You need to reach her gates by tomorrow morning."
I blinked, my voice completely flat. "None of this makes sense. Are you guys seriously not seeing that?"
"Right now, we have to think about protecting every single soul within these palace walls," my mother snapped, her jaw tight as she dismissed my words with a wave of her hand. "We can figure out what makes sense later."
A bitter, humorless laugh bubbled up in my throat. "See, that is the exact issue, Mother. You all never stop to actually think things through. And Dad just blindly goes along with whatever you say. You have him wrapped around your damn finger."
My mother’s eyes flared with a sudden, dangerous glow as she looked at me, her royal posture stiffening. "You do not speak to me like that."
I forcefully wrenched my shoulders out of her grip, stepping back. "Or what? What are you guys going to do to me? Kill me? Cut my tongue out? Or wait, maybe you’ll just sell me off to another kingdom somewhere to get me out of your sight."
"Watch it, son." My father’s voice rumbled like thunder, his own eyes beginning to ignite with that same terrifying light as he took a heavy step forward, his massive frame towering over the desk.
"The East is known to be entirely peaceful," I argued, my voice rising as the absolute absurdity of our situation boiled over. "Their last official message explicitly said *a son for a son*. Do you really think they would willingly pair up with her when she is clearly out for a fucking bloodbath? Not to mention, the South had a direct hand in getting their prince killed in the first place!"
My mother’s eyes narrowed. "What exactly are you trying to say, Riegthar?"
"I am saying this is all Ari’s doing! She has truly gone insane there is absolutely no saving her."
"Do not speak ill of your sister," my mother hissed, her tone dropping into a deadly whisper. "She is still your blood."
"For the love of God, Mother!" I yelled, the frustration ripping out of my chest. "Were you so starved of family love as a child that you are this desperate to make this fucked-up one you created fit into your delusional fantasy?"
The air cracked. Moving with a blinding, speed that I couldn’t even track, my mother appeared directly in front of me. Her hand connected with the side of my face in a deafening slap, the raw force of her hand sending me flying across the room. I crashed into the bookshelf, several heavy grimoires raining down around me as the wood splintered beneath my back.
I lay there for a second, tasting blood in my mouth, and then I started to laugh. It was a loud, breathless, unhinged sound that echoed off the high ceilings.
"I literally live in a world where everyone’s is brain rot and a completely lost cause," I muttered, wiping a streak of blood from my lip as I pushed myself off the floor. I stood up, staring at the two monarchs who ruled our territory.
"Father, we have cars. We have light grids, and we have structural buildings that no other kingdom on this land has even dreamed of. And yet, we can’t advance our fucking paper supplies or forge proper weapons. Does that make any sense to you? We are a nation so entirely obsessed with breeding strong mages and lethal warriors that we lack basic common sense in every other area."
"I have had quite enough of your insolence, boy." A suffocating pressure filling the room as he began to approach me with a promise of death in his eyes.
"Oh, you haven’t even heard the worst part yet, Father," standing my ground as the emotions spilled over. "Our sick, traditional ways kill the innocent. Isn’t that right, Mother? Like my unborn child... the one you murdered."
My father froze instantly, a mere inch away from wrapping his massive hand around my throat. The suffocating pressure in the room vanished, replaced by a sudden stillness. Slowly, his head turned, his gaze locking onto my mother.
"Dear..." my father murmured, his voice dangerously low. "What is he talking about?"
"Oh, you don’t know?" I mocked, a vicious smirk cutting across my face as I leaned against the broken shelf. "Let me let you in on Mother’s little secret, Father. Every single maid and manservant in this palace are actually blood mages. Mother kills them off the second she deems them weak or unpleasing to her eye. She uses their harvested blood to try and summon the rest of her ancestral dragon families back to this realm. And a part of that exact batch... was your first grandchild."
My father’s face went entirely pale, the shock visibly rattling his rugged features. "Tell me this isn’t true, Yarovirah."
Hearing him call my mother by her actual birth name was shocking, he hadn’t used it in decades.
My mother’s expression didn’t crack. Instead, she let out a soft, delicate sigh, placing a manicured hand over her face. A single, perfect tear fell down her cheek, even as a small, terrifying smile played on her lips. "I can explain everything, my love. But let us not do this right now in front of our child." freewebnσvel.cѳm
"Answer the fucking question!" my father yelled.
The sheer force of his voice vibrated through the floorboards. My mother calmly wiped the stray tear from her cheek, her fake vulnerability completely vanishing as her spine straightened.
"I said," she replied, her voice dropping into a chilly, unyielding tone, "we will not discuss this in front of him."
"No. No, no. You will answer me right now."
"Or what, honey?" my mother challenged, her head tilting in a dangerous show of defiance.
I stared at her, a dark thought crossing my mind.
Well, we all definitely got our defiance from our mother.
"Or what? Are you seriously asking me that right now?" My father’s hands were shaking with a terrifying, destructive rage. "You are fucking sacrificing people in our own home! You killed our grandchild!"
My mother sneered, finally turning her gaze back to me. "Did your precious son forget to mention that it was the lowly maid we explicitly told him to stop screwing that he had gotten pregnant?"
My father’s head snapped back toward me, his eyes wide with a new wave of fury. "You got Ari pregnant? For fuck’s sake, Riegthar!"
"I love her!" I screamed back, the grief and rage tearing through my throat. "I wanted a life with her! It was so much more than just lust to me!"
My father clutched his head, letting out a raw, agonizing scream of pure, overwhelmed frustration. The force of his sound waves struck the room violently the glass cabinets rattled, and the heavy stained-glass windows began to groan.
He suddenly cut his power off, turning a cold, dead gaze back to my mother before looking at me. "Riegthar, get out. Your mother and I have some talking to do."
"And what if I wanted to stay?" I countered, my hands clenching into fists.Both of my parents turned their heads simultaneously, locking their glowing, eyes onto me with an intensity it felt as though they would tear me apart limb from limb if I breathed wrong.
"I wish I was never born into this sick, twisted family," I muttered.
I grabbed the brass handle of the heavy study door, intending to storm out. But the sheer, unbridled fury coursing through my veins caused my supernatural strength to spike completely out of control. With a loud, splintering,
CRACK!
The entire door was ripped completely off its iron hinges, the heavy wood hovering in my grip. Completely unfazed by my own destructive display, I carelessly dropped the massive door face-down onto the floor rugs with a loud thud. I walked out into the corridor, my chest feeling hot, stinging burn of unshed tears gathered in the back of my eyes.
