THE REJECTED OMEGA QUEEN

Chapter 18: A Father's Grief

"Corvin, please." Aria's voice shook, but she forced herself to stay steady, to think past the panic clawing up her throat. "Whatever Reyes promised you — it isn't real. The dead don't come back. Not for blood, not for magic, not for anything."

"You don't know that." Corvin's silhouette finally cleared the top of the stairs, and in the fading light, Aria saw a man utterly unrecognizable from the cold, precise steward who'd once given her ten hours to vacate her entire life. His eyes were red-rimmed, his hands trembling around a small ceremonial dagger that looked ancient enough to predate the tower itself. "You didn't watch your child die in a war fought over borders that don't even exist anymore. You don't know what a parent is willing to believe, Nightshade, when someone finally offers a way to undo it."

"I know grief," Aria said quietly, taking a slow step forward despite Lyra's warning hiss beside her. "I lost my mother when I was six. I understand wanting someone back so badly you'd believe anything to have them again. But Reyes isn't offering you Elara back. He's offering you a lie wrapped around my blood, because that's the only way he can make you complicit in what he's actually planning."

Something in Corvin's expression cracked, grief and doubt warring visibly across his weathered face. "You don't know that," he repeated, though his voice had lost some of its earlier certainty.

"I know he lied to Lyra about a throne," Aria pressed gently. "I know he's used a sacred binding meant to protect this entire kingdom as a bargaining chip for whatever desperate person he could find. Ask yourself, Corvin — in three hundred years of history, has anyone ever actually returned from death through blood or ritual? Or is that simply the exact lie a man like Reyes would tell someone broken enough to do anything for one more chance to say goodbye?"

The dagger trembled in Corvin's grip. For a long moment, no one moved, the only sound the wind curling through the tower's crumbling stone.

"I loved her," he whispered, and the words broke something raw and old inside his voice. "I have served this castle for forty years, buried every ounce of grief beneath duty and routine, and none of it ever stopped hurting. Not for a single day." His eyes lifted, glistening, fixed on Aria with something between accusation and desperate hope. "Tell me you're certain. Tell me you know, beyond any doubt, that I've thrown away everything for nothing."

"I can't promise you certainty," Aria said honestly. "But I can promise you this — hurting me won't bring her back either way. It will only mean you lost her and became someone she wouldn't recognize, trying to undo a grief that was never going to undo itself through violence."

A long, shuddering breath left him. The dagger lowered, inch by inch, and for one fragile moment, Aria believed the worst had passed.

Then Reyes's voice cut through the tower's stairwell from somewhere below, cold and merciless. "Corvin. Finish it, or I'll finish you both myself."

Corvin flinched violently, indecision warring across his face — and in that single unguarded moment, Kael exploded up the final steps behind him, tearing the dagger from his grip with brutal efficiency before slamming him against the tower wall.

"Kael!" Aria's relief crashed into fresh horror as she registered Reyes's voice still echoing from below, closer now, climbing fast. "He's coming."

Kael's eyes met hers, grim and resolute even as blood still stained the bandage beneath his shirt. "Then we don't wait for him to arrive." He turned to Corvin, still pinned against the stone, grief and shame warring openly across the older man's face. "You have one chance to prove there's anything left in you worth saving. Tell me everything you know about Reyes's next move, right now, or I hand you over to whatever punishment the packs decide is fitting."

Corvin's throat worked, torn between decades of complicity and the raw wound Aria had just reopened in him. "The binding ritual," he finally rasped. "Reyes doesn't intend to fight the Sleeper into submission again. He intends to complete what your ancestor started three hundred years ago — but twisted, so the Sleeper's power passes to him instead of dissipating back into the bloodline. He needs Aria's blood freely spilled during a binding ceremony, not simply taken. That's the only way the old magic will accept the transfer."

"Freely spilled," Lyra repeated, horror dawning across her face. "He needs her to willingly sacrifice herself."

"Or believe she is," Corvin said quietly. "He's already planning how to convince you the ritual is the only way to save everyone you love, Nightshade. He is very, very good at making cruelty sound like the only remaining kindness."

Heavy footsteps finally reached the top of the stairwell, and Reyes emerged into the tower's fading light, cloak billowing, expression calm despite the chaos surrounding him — the same unsettling patience Aria remembered from the valley below.

"How disappointing," he said mildly, gaze sweeping over Corvin's slumped defeat before settling, unhurried and certain, on Aria herself. "It seems I'll simply have to convince you myself, little queen. Fortunately, I've had three hundred years to perfect exactly that kind of patience."

He raised one hand, and the tower's ancient stones began, impossibly, to glow with a dark, pulsing light beneath his palm.