16: NEVER AGAIN
683 Words
PHEEONA.
I was pacing like a mad dog.
The wedding event had finally died down enough that the eyes of the realm shied away from us, and the second we were alone in the backroom of the cathedral, I let loose with everything I'd been holding in since Vizellan's speech.
"What the hell," I snapped, whirling on all three of them.
"Calm down," Vizellan said, infuriatingly even.
"Don't tell me to calm down." I rounded on him, finger raised, pointed straight at his chest, my whole body shaking with the force of it. "You went back on your promise."
"We didn't," Crowen said evenly, arms crossed, watching me like my anger was something to be observed rather than addressed.
"You didn't?" My voice climbed higher than I meant for it to. "You stood up there in front of the entire realm and told them Lunaris is being absorbed into Ashenbane. That's not a misunderstanding, that's a betrayal."
"You were aware of the full terms," Vizellan said.
"Don't patronize me!”
"I'm not patronizing you. There were conditions—"
"I don't care about conditions!" I was nearly shouting now, chest heaving, the bouquet long discarded somewhere on the floor where I'd thrown it the second the doors closed behind us, petals scattered across the marble like casualties. "You told my father Lunaris would remain standing. You told me that. In front of witnesses, in your own home, with documents I signed."
"And it remains standing," Nashyn said, arms crossed, leaning against the wall with an expression I couldn't fully read. "As part of Ashenbane."
"That's not the same thing!"
"It's exactly the same thing," Crowen said, voice never once rising to meet mine. "Lunaris keeps its name. Its people. Its governance under your father, for now. The terms haven't changed since the day you accepted them."
"You lied to me."
"We didn't lie," Vizellan said, voice sharpening for the first time since we'd walked into this room. "You heard what you wanted to hear. There's a difference."
"That's not fair."
"Fair has very little to do with any of this," he replied, and something about how easily he said it made my blood boil even hotter.
I was about to fire something back—something sharp, something I hoped would actually land somewhere it hurt—when the door swung open without warning.
A guard stepped through, eyes flicking nervously between the four of us before landing on Crowen, clearly trying to read the temperature of the room before he spoke.
"Her father is requesting an audience with the queen," he said carefully.
Relief and dread hit me at the exact same time, twin forces colliding somewhere in my chest.
I moved toward the door immediately, my whole body already turning, but Nashyn's hand closed around my arm before I made it two steps, fingers firm but not painful.
"Bring him here," he said to the guard, not even sparing me a glance.
"No," I said, voice sharp enough to cut.
Nashyn's gaze finally landed on mine then, hard and unmoving, something locked behind his eyes that I didn't have the patience to decode right now. "Whatever they want to say to you, they can say in front of us."
"I want to speak to him alone."
"You're not going anywhere."
I ripped my arm out of his grip, hard enough that it actually stung afterward, and glared at him with everything I had left in me. "I want to speak to him alone."
Nashyn didn't even flinch or blink. He didn't so much as shift his weight.
He looked back at the guard instead, his jaw tight, voice flat and absolutely final, the kind of tone that ended conversations before they started. "Bring him here,” he said. "As well as his son."
The guard nodded once and disappeared, and the door clicked shut behind him, leaving the four of us standing there in a silence so thick I could practically taste it.
The weight of everything both said and unsaid still pressing down on all of us at once
- Writer
