Free Web NovelChapter 58: Chapter 58: Blood
Ryophlira POV
My legs felt like lead, the tremors writhing through my body as I forced myself to stand from the couch. The room spun in nauseating tilts, but Ari was there instantly, her slender hands wrapping around my forearms to steady my weight.
I swallowed the bitter taste of betrayal in my throat and looked at her. "Go get the calling crystal. Now."
"Yes," Ari murmured, turning toward the heavy door.
"Stop!" Riegthar’s voice cut through the air, sharp and desperate. "Ari, do not go!"
I snapped my head toward my brother. But before I could speak, Riegthar looked directly into my eyes, a naked vulnerability breaking through his facade.
"Ry... please," he pleaded, his voice cracking. "If you ever loved me, if you truly ever saw me as your big brother... you will not make that call."
A cold, mocking laugh tore from my chest, though it felt more like a sob. "My big brother? My big brother disappeared the exact day I got married, remember? You turned your back on me. You walked away and looked at me as if I was nothing more than a random stranger passing you by."
"Ry, you have to understand!" Riegthar stepped forward, his hands extended, begging for a fraction of my grace.
"Watching you grow up, taking care of you from the moment you were a sickly child... and then watching that strong, wise, fiercely over-emotional girl fall so easily into the trap of a wolf? I couldn’t handle it. I was deeply disappointed. I was embarrassed. I was ashamed."
"I needed my big brother more than anything in this world!" I screamed back, the tears finally bursting past my eyelids, hot and furious.
"And you turned me away when I was drowning!" frёewebηovel.cѳm
"I regret it! Every single day, I regret it, and I am so deeply sorry," he yelled, his own eyes glossy with unshed tears.
"But if they finds out that I told you the truth, Ry... I am not sure what will happen to me when I go back."
The terror radiating from his posture made the anger in my chest falter. I gently let go of Ari’s hand, stepping past her to close the distance between myself and my brother. I looked into his eyes, searching for the boy who used to shield me from the world.
"Are you scared, Riegthar?" I whispered.
"I am, Ry. I truly am," he confessed, his shoulders slumping in absolute defeat. "With this looming war and Ail completely losing her mind... it seems like no one is thinking straight anymore. We all know... we both know exactly what Mother’s punishments are like."
A shudder went down my spine. I knew. The memories flashed vividly—the suffocating darkness of the palace dungeons, the horrific beatings, the quiet, tortures our mother inflicted on anyone who defied her. She wasn’t a mother, she was a executioner.
I closed my eyes, taking a ragged breath. "Fine. I will give you grace this time, Riegthar. But don’t you dare ever try to use my love for you to manipulate me again."
The adrenaline was suddenly roaring through my veins, suffocating the sorrow. I couldn’t sit in this room anymore. I needed to breathe. I needed to make sense of the fact that my entire life was a carefully constructed lie. I needed a plan. I needed to be more than just a piece on a chessboard.
I walked straight past him, my gown rustling against the stone as I headed for the exit. Ari immediately moved to follow my footsteps, but as she passed Riegthar, he reached out, his hand gently but firmly catching her wrist.
I paused at the doorway, glancing back over my shoulder. I saw the desperate, broken look in my brother’s eyes as he held onto her. I knew he needed her in this moment—needed her warmth, her anchor—far more than I did. I turned away, stepping out into the long corridor, leaving them alone with the ghosts of their own past.
Ari POV
His hand was a familiar, branding heat against my wrist, holding me in place as the wooden door clicked shut. I watched Ry walk out, never once looking back.
The moment we were alone, Riegthar used his grip on my wrist to gently spin me around. Before I could protest, he pulled me straight into his chest, wrapping his powerful arms around me in a crushing, desperate embrace. freewebnσvel.cѳm
God, I missed it. I hated myself for it, but I missed his warmth so much. I missed the safety of his love, the scent of the apple pines that clung to his skin. It was a comfort I had been starved of for lifetimes.
"I am so sorry, Ari... I miss you so damn much," he whispered, his hot breath brushing against the skin of my neck as he buried his face in my hair.
My heart swelled, a instinctual reaction causing my arms to slowly rise, wanting nothing more than to wrap them around his waist and hold him back. But halfway there, the pain struck me like a physical blade.
I remembered.
I remembered the cold, table. I remembered the heavy leather straps binding my wrists and ankles so tightly they broke the skin. I remembered the high-level blood mages and doctors, sent by the Queen, standing over me with glowing, silver daggers. I remembered our baby—our innocent, unborn child—being violently ripped from my womb while I screamed his name until my throat bled. And he never came. No matter how hard I begged, no matter how loudly I cried for the man I love, the door remained shut.
My raised arms went entirely limp, dropping heavily back to my sides like lead weights.
"Please... let me go," I whispered, my voice completely hollow.
Riegthar pulled back immediately, as if he had been burned. I looked up and saw the tears finally spilling down his cheeks, his eyes filled with a desperate, agonizing sorrow.
"I would be lying if I said I didn’t miss you too, Riegthar. You know that I still want you," I said, a tragic, broken smile touching my lips.
"But we can’t be together. Fate has already decided that we walk entirely different paths."
"Please don’t say that," he choked out, his large, trembling hands coming up to cup my face, his thumbs gently wiping the tears that were now blinding me.
"Please, Ari. I made a stupid, catastrophic mistake. I listened to your words and left... I didn’t see that you were only telling me to leave because you thought it was what I wanted. I should have fought for you."
"It wasn’t just one mistake, Riegthar," I cried, the grief tearing its way out of my chest as the tears poured freely over his fingers.
"It was a horrific series of mistakes that cost us everything. It cost me our child." Riegthar flinched as if I had struck him.
"I called for you over and over again," I sobbed, my body starting to shake from the memory.
"I laid on that table, thinking you were going to walk through that door at any second and save us... but you never came."
"Ari... I... I didn’t know—"
"I still feel the physical pain of him being ripped from my inside!" I screamed, pulling back from his touch, forcing his hands off my face.
"I still see the sheer volume of blood on the stone floor! I still feel my body shaking from the shock! My heart hurts so much every single time I look at your face, Riegthar! Do you have any idea that I still cry myself to sleep every single night?!"
He stood frozen, his chest heaving as he let out a broken, strangled weep.
"I dream of him," I whispered, clutching my own stomach as the ache throbbed.
"I dream of holding him in my arms. I feel his tiny fingers wrapped around my thumb. I hear his laughter echoing in my sleep. I hear his little heartbeat... I dreamed of our child. A beautiful child that was simply never meant to be."
"Ari, I am so incredibly sorry," Riegthar wept, dropping his head into his hands, his knees trembling. "I did this to you. If only I had stayed... if only I had protected you from her..."
"It’s too late," I said, wiping my face with a trembling breath.
"I still love you. That will never, ever change. But we have to end it all right here, and we can never look back. For my own sanity, Riegthar... so I can finally try to move on. The pain feels a little less sharp as the days go by, but moments like this... it still hurts as though my very life is being drained out of me."
Thump.
A loud, heavy sound echoed from the doorway, shattering the tragic quiet of the room.
We both snapped our heads toward the door. Stand there, her face completely pale and her eyes wide with absolute horror, was Ry. She had heard everything. She had heard the dark tragedy of the forced abortion, and the monster her mother truly was.
"Shit," Riegthar and I breathed in unison.
The moment our eyes met hers, Ry slammed the heavy door shut. A second later, the frantic, rapid thudding of her boots echoed through the hallway. She was running.
"Ry!" Riegthar called out.
We both dashed to the door, flinging it open with such force it slammed against the stone wall. We sprinted down the corridor and burst through the main courtyard doors into the freezing air and the sight before us made my breath catch in my throat.
The entire courtyard was a raging flames. Ry was standing directly in the center of the courtyard, completely surrounded by a towering wall of blinding fire. In her right hand, she held her glowing magic weapon, humming with a terrifying, destructive power. Soldiers, royal guards, and panicked maids were screaming, scattering in every direction, desperately begging her to calm down as the heat began to melt the winter snow into rushing torrents of water.
In her left hand, Ry raised a teleporting crystal.
"She has a teleporting crystal!" I panicked, my voice turning into a shriek. "You need to stop her! Riegthar, she is going back to the palace! She’s going to confront them!"
"Ry, stop!" Riegthar called out, sprinting toward the edge of the flames.
Hearing his voice, Ry slowly turned her head to look at us through the wall of fire. My stomach dropped into a bottomless abyss of pure dread.
Her eyes were bleeding. Dark, red tears of pure magical strain and unbridled grief were streaming down her cheeks, evaporating into steam the moment they hit her skin. Her mind had completely snapped. This wasn’t a queen this was a force of pure destruction.
We tried to step closer to the perimeter, but the moment we did, the flames roared higher, burning with a sweltering, hot intensity that forced us back.
Suddenly, the thundering sound of hooves echoed across the drawbridge. Yue-Senn came tearing into the courtyard on his black horse. Seeing the chaos, he didn’t even wait for the horse to fully stop he threw himself off the saddle, landing gracefully on the slushy ground, and dashed toward Riegthar and me.
"Ry!" Yue-Senn called, his eyes glowing green as he saw Ry in the center of the blaze.
But it was too late. Ry brought her fist down, completely crushing the teleportation crystal in her palm. A blinding, swirling vortex of portal magic tore open directly behind her, its pull dragging her backward into the void.
She stepped into the portal.
Without a single moment of hesitation, without asking a single question or showing a single ounce of fear, Yue-Senn sprinted directly into the hot fire. The flames immediately caught onto the fabric of his black suit, his clothes catching fire as he leaped blindly through the roaring heat, throwing his body into the closing rift after his Ry.
The portal collapsed into a single, silent snap, leaving nothing behind but swirling ashes and the scorched, blackened earth.
The fire died instantly, leaving the courtyard in a deafening, terrifying silence.
I turned my head slowly, looking at Riegthar, my body shaking from the sheer magnitude of what had just occurred. "We... we need to go after them. We need to go stop her, Riegthar."
Riegthar stood there, staring blankly at the empty space where his sister had just vanished. The tears were still drying on his face, but his expression had gone entirely numb.
"There is no stopping Ry now, Ari," he whispered, his voice dead. "She is going to kill our mother... or die trying."
