Page 104 of Unravelled
Mira’s breath caught, her heart hammering in her chest. She had expected a betrayal, had braced for it, but not this. Not him, standing tall beneath the carved sigils of their ancestors.Her brother. Torvyn.
Her pulse surged, nausea twisting in her gut. How had she not seen it? How had she spent her life believing they had been fighting together, believing he was beside her, not quietly laying the stones of this path beneath her feet? She had told herself he was being manipulated, controlled, caught in Brahn’s web. But this wasn’t coercion.Torvyn hadn’t been pulled into someone else’s plan. He had crafted it. Led it.
With every quiet meeting, every veiled word, every sidelong glance, he had chosen this. And the worst part was the way he stood there now, face calm, eyes bright with conviction. Not shame. Not hesitation. As if this had always been the only future he could see.
Mira stood frozen in the shadowed corridor, the cheers still echoing like thunder.
“You all know the story of the Navigators,” Torvyn began, his voice smooth and resonant, rolling through the vaulted hall like smoke. “Their rebellion. Their sacrifices.”
Mira stayed hidden. Something in his tone set her on edge. It had shifted, softened. Almost reverent.
“But let me tell you another story.” Her pulse stumbled. “The Throne’s Wrath.” The words cracked like thunder across the marble.
Torvyn paced the edge of the dais, his hands open as if in offering, but his words were sharpened glass wrapped in velvet. There was no warmth in his voice. Only a careful performance of it.
“A family torn apart,” he said, letting just enough grief bleed into his words to draw the crowd close. “A father exiled, not for treason, not for crime, but because a queen willed it so.”
Mira’s blood froze. A cold dread coiled low in her belly.
“The Queen sought to punish not just him,” Torvyn continued, “but all of us. Because of her insatiable hunger for control, an entire family was scandalized. Not because of betrayal. But because one of them chose to love.”
Mira’s heart slammed against her ribs. This wasn’t just any fable. She gripped the edge of the arch beside her, knuckles pale, the stone cool against her clammy skin. Her thoughts spun, bile rising in her throat. He was telling her story, twisted, reframed, and held up for judgment like a bloodied relic.
But he wasn’t finished. “Here in Bharalyn, we lose fathers. We lose brothers,” Torvyn said, his voice growing louder, more forceful. “We watch as a crown, distant and indifferent, dictates our lives. Our grief.”
The crowd murmured, stirred like wind moving through dry grass.
“And while this queen ruled,” he went on, “while she sat high in her throne, she did more than exile.”
Mira braced herself.
“She erased. She rewrote history to fit her whims. To protect her power.”
The room shifted. The air became heavy. Mira could feel the change like a stormfront rolling in, tension swelling to the point of rupture.
“And when someone challenged her,” Torvyn said, his voice dropping low, dangerous, “when a young girl dared to love beyond the boundaries she dictated…”
His eyes flicked toward the edge of the hall. Mira ducked further into the shadows, but her breath seized in her throat. He meant her. Mira’s heart cracked open.
Rage and grief warred in her chest. Every memory, every piece of herself she had reclaimed from her lost memories, was now being paraded as propaganda.
“She made this young girl and her love forget,” Torvyn said, voice heavy with accusation.
Mira’s vision blurred. Her stolen memories, the nights she woke gasping with something just beyond her reach, twisted into a spectacle for the masses.
She glanced back to Torvyn. The curve of his shoulders. The stiffness of his jaw. His hands, fisted tightly at his sides now, no longer open and easy. This was his wound too. His father, exiled. His name, tarnished. His family, shattered. He had carried that burden in silence, just as she had. She had been too busy surviving her own fracture to see how deeply it had cut him too.
His words rose, sharp and searing. “Tell me, does that sound like a ruling class fit to lead?”
The crowd roared, a wildfire of fury.
“And that,” he finished, stepping to the edge of the dais, his voice a dagger now, “is why we poisoned Queen Sarelle.”
Mira gasped. The crowd exploded. Cheering, chanting, feet pounding. And still, Torvyn stood tall, letting the echo of his words settle like dust over a battlefield. His gaze swept the crowd, jaw set, shoulders squared beneath the weight of his confession. A declaration. He believed every twisted word of it. Mira pressed back into the stone, her whole body trembling.
Torvyn’s voice carried through the vaulted chamber, clear and resolute. "But tonight, we give Bharalyn a leader with purpose, a ruler who will care for this kingdom, who will work with the King of Kharador, but as an equal."
He lifted his chin, his eyes sweeping the hall, daring anyone to meet them. “A ruler born not only of the blood of the people.”
