Page 196 of Severed Heir

Her stance didn’t waver. “Your father won his title, but having a child with heat in their blood risked everything. Our name, our standing. I gave him the freedom to choose differently,” she said. “I was tired. Tired of pretending. Of surviving.”

“No,” I breathed, the word scraping my throat raw. “I don’t believe you.”

“It is the truth.”

My mind whirred in a million directions. I didn’t understand how this lie had gone on for so long. Charles and Cully weren’t related to me.

“I was loved deeply by Hadrian,” she went on, “and by your father. When one becomes a Serpent, they can feel and hear their truemate. I was never meant to be your father’s. And I never will.”

Rok clapped once, slicing through the silence. “Enough family drama. It’s time to end the reign of the Forgotten. Yourmother will be punished for her crimes against Verdonia for the rest of her miserable life.”

My mother’s voice softened. “My child… If you must hunt me, I will forgive you. We are fighting the same force that killed your brother. I know you’ll choose wisely.”

I held the arrowhead to her throat, my hands trembling. “I should kill you for all of the lies.” I raised my flame, the heat pulsing below her chin.

“Kill me,” she whispered. “I deserve it.” Her eyes closed, lashes trembling. She had accepted the same fate she once gave her own mother. The symmetry of it made my stomach twist. “I deserve it,” she repeated, softer this time, like a confession too late to matter.

But I didn’t strike her.

Instead, I drove my flame into the ground. Fire cracked through the dirt, and a spiral of ash erupted around us, spinning higher and faster, until it folded into itself and tore open a portal. Heat shimmered at its edges, unstable and wild.

“Find flame,” I whispered. “Find home.”

I caught her hand for a fleeting heartbeat. She opened her eyes, confused, lips parting to speak, but I didn’t let her. I shoved her through the portal with all the strength I had left, not knowing where it would take her. Maybe it was Veravine’s memory guiding her. Maybe it was nothing but instinct and grief.

I didn’t care where I sent her. Maybe to a memory. Maybe to a myth. Maybe to the very place she once called home. She was gone. And somehow, I knew she was safe.

“You let her escape,” Rok snarled. “This is treason.”

“I don’t care,” I said, my voice even now. “She’s my mother.”

Ash drifted from the sky like mourning snow. Around us, the battlefield echoed with the final cries of heirs collapsing beneath their own legacies. How many had lost their lives?

Rok advanced, rage pouring off him in waves. “Tell me where you sent her.”

I stood my ground. Something inside me shifted. The fear that had clung to my ribs for months dissolved, burned out by fire and grief. I wasn’t afraid of him anymore.

Then a voice cut clean through the smoke.

“We didn’t ask for bloodshed.”

Reina emerged from the shadows. “Too many have died under the Serpent Academy’s rule,” she said. “We came to end the cycle. The reason so many lands fall into ruin isn’t because of war, it’s because of the innocents slaughtered behind closed doors. The corruption is inside your walls. Not ours.”

“And what was the reason for your latest attack on Wrathi?” Rok snapped.

Reina’s brows drew together, her voice laced with steel. “We believed the realms had stopped selling and trading barrens. Wrathi needed a reminder.”

Beside me, Archer went still. “That’s my mother,” he whispered. “She’s alive.”

Rok scoffed, his expression twisting. “Your logic is broken. You tear families apart in the name of justice.”

Reina stepped forward, unflinching. “No,” she said. “We reveal the rot buried inside their kingdoms. We don’t burn cities to the ground—we hold up a mirror and let their people see the truth. Most realms collapse into civil war, but the Serpent Press doesn’t print that, do they?”

Then the air shifted.

A dozen portals erupted across the battlefield, shearing through smoke and ash like blades of blinding light. One by one, the Serpents of Verdonia arrived. And at their center, cloaked in light and gold, the king himself appeared.

Reina smiled, slow and sharp. “Just in time for our bargain.”

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