CHAPTER 116: BROKEN AND ALONE

Blood spattered across Cedric’s sleeves, dripping down onto the wooden floor in bright, shocking drops.

Sylvia, who had seen worse in her lifetime, wasn’t shaken by the gore itself, but by the sheer precision of the strike. None of them had even seen the dagger leave his hand, and yet in a single motion the deed was done.

Emma staggered back, choking on the scream she couldn’t let out. Elias’s hand pressed lightly to the small of her back, steadying her. His eyes flicked to Aldric, who wasn’t smirking in surprise, nor in cruelty. No. The look that curved his mouth was something else entirely: pride, satisfaction... and a knowing Elias couldn’t yet grasp.

The severed pieces landed with a soft, obscene thud against the boards—Zara’s index and middle finger, the very ones that had once drawn her bowstring, her skill, her pride.

Emma’s breath trembled out of her lungs at the sight. Cedric nearly buckled beneath the weight of the screaming woman in his arms, his mind reeling with the pain she must be drowning in.

Sylvia pressed her hand over her lips to stifle the curve of a smile. The prince was not only as ruthless as his wife, he was more so. For someone like Zara, death would have been mercy. This was ruin.

Leroy stood before them all, blade still lifted, his posture unhurried, his mask casting half his face into shadow. The aura around him was unmistakably cold, inescapable judgment. He had not struck to kill. He had not struck wildly. He had chosen. With surgical precision, he had taken the two fingers that defined her, the two that made her an archer.

Cedric’s arms trembled as he held Zara, crimson soaking his sleeves, her wails ripping through the chamber. Yet even in Cedric’s grasp, even in the illusion of safety, she had not been spared. Leroy’s blade had cut through more than flesh—it had cut through the idea that anyone could shield her from his sentence.

He was no longer merely a prince.

He was the judge and executioner.

And every soul in the room understood: his verdict had not been for himself. It was for his wife.

Cedric dropped to his knees, tending her wounds with frantic hands. Poison was a curse enough, but for Leroy to strike her too? His chest clenched with rage and grief.

"Prepare my bath," Leroy ordered, flicking the dagger free of Zara’s blood. "I’ll wash this filth from me."

"Filth?" Cedric’s voice broke as he pressed down on the wound. "After years of loyalty on the battlefield, is this how you repay us?"

Leroy’s gaze cut to him, ice-cold. "Loyalty? What does it matter when you degrade my wife beneath her own roof? For old times’ sake, I grant you one mercy—time enough for my bath. When I rise, the hunt begins. If I ever set eyes on you again, I’ll kill you where you stand. Now be gone, filth."

He turned without another glance. Aldric was already preparing the bath when the others scattered. Cedric knew the prince was good for his word. He lifted Zara into his arms, ignoring her screams and pleas to speak with Leroy one last time, and fled.

For a moment, Leroy’s eyes lingered on the door to Lorraine’s chambers. He wanted, desperately, to go in, to pull her against him and feel her warmth. But the memory of her flinching at his touch stopped him cold. His fists clenched. He forced himself away.

Let her sulk. Let her calm. He would have all the time in the world to coax her back.

And yet... something tugged at him, an ache that urged him toward her door. He crushed it down and strode into his room instead.

-----

Sylvia rattled the handle, but the door was latched from the inside. She pressed her ear against the wood, impatient. Emma crept closer, uncertain, only to be met with Sylvia’s cutting glare. In Sylvia’s eyes, this was Emma’s fault—all of it.

Emma wrung her hands together, helpless, rooted to the spot as both maids lingered outside, waiting. Their lady would be pleased once she learned what had happened: the prince had stood for her, had punished Zara in her name.

But inside, Lorraine was crumbling.

Her sobs tore through the chamber, ragged, uncontainable. She couldn’t banish the image of her husband’s face—the way his eyes had burned with disgust, with condemnation. That rage... was it real? Or was her mind twisting shadows into something more? She couldn’t tell anymore.

Yet one sentence thundered over everything, as if branded into her very bones.

Why won’t you disappear?

She wept harder, each cry hollowing her from the inside. Slowly, against her will, she began to believe it. If she vanished, no one would miss her. No one ever had.

Who wanted her? No one.

What was she doing here? Nothing.

She had given everything to her husband, bent herself until she broke, and still... what did she receive? The same look her father had once given her: disdain, dismissal, and that single word: useless. No matter what she did, it would never be enough. No one would love her. No one would care.

And perhaps that was fate.

Her hands trembled as she dragged herself to the desk. She wiped at her wet face and scrawled a few lines. She didn’t even know who the letter was for. Would anyone even read it? Would anyone even mind if she left?

Would her husband think of her once she was gone? She doubted it. Men were all the same. Her father had murdered his wife of eleven years just to raise up the woman he had first loved. And Leroy... Leroy would never forget Elyse. That first love would always outshine her.

It should have been her. She was the one who had stood with him that night, and yet... fate had never allowed her that place.

She rose unsteadily and opened her jewelry cabinet. Her eyes swept over glittering pieces, but nothing stirred her. She wanted nothing. She belonged to nothing.

Her steps carried her to the bath chamber. She pressed against the paneling, found the hidden latch, and opened the secret passage to the tunnels. The air that spilled out was cold, damp, unwelcoming. She stepped into the darkness without hesitation.

Would anyone care?

That question clung to her, heavier than her sobs, heavier than her breath. It followed her into the shadows.

She didn’t linger long in the tunnel. The garden greeted her, alive with birdsong, but the sound felt mocking and hollow. A few staff members milled about. None of them spared her more than a glance.

Perhaps this was her fate: a life that left no impression. A woman destined to be invisible until she was despised.

Tears streaked her cheeks. She passed through the gates unnoticed. For a heartbeat, she thought she imagined all of them suddenly turning, staring, eyes like silent jurors. Were they truly watching, or was it her mind unraveling? She couldn’t tell.

No one asked where she was going. No one tried to stop her.

She turned once, looking back at the mansion... the home she had built piece by piece. And now she left it with empty hands. With nothing. With no one.

Her feet dragged over the dirt road, slow, hesitant. Some childish part of her clung to hope—that someone might come for her, that someone might call her name.

Someone? Heh! She wanted him to find her.

But who was she fooling? Leroy hated her. His face, twisted with disgust, seared into her memory. His words echoing still: Why won’t you disappear?

Did he say that? Or was that someone else? She didn’t know. She didn’t care. Her chest ached. She stayed on the road, leaving herself plain to see, as if begging fate for someone to find her.

Sniffling, she heard it... the sharp rhythm of hooves. Her heart seized.

A carriage.

Her first thought was wild, desperate: Is it him?

But the wheels rolled from the opposite direction. Her small flicker of joy died before it could bloom. Who would come to their house now?

The carriage slowed, then stopped beside her.

The window creaked open.

"Look what I found..." The man smiled.

Lorraine’s heart shriveled. That smile—she knew it too well. The gentle curve of his mouth was a mask, a cruel prelude. She had seen it before the belt hissed from its loop, before the lock clicked on a darkened door. That smile meant her cries would not matter, that the world would not come to save her.

Her body remembered before her mind did: her stomach dropped, her throat tightened, her hands trembled. The years between then and now dissolved in an instant. She was small again, barefoot on cold stone, forced to walk into the shadows where pain waited.

"Get in," Hadrian ordered.

Her fingers clawed at her skirt as if she could anchor herself, as if cloth could shield her.

"Get in!" His voice cracked like a whip, ripping through her resistance.

Her head bowed. Her body moved with the old, trained obedience. Step by step, she entered the carriage, as she had once entered the dark.

Her heart pounded, her vision blurred red with tears.

What can I do now?