CHAPTER 78

JARRETT'S POV

The second she walked out, the air in the cavern shifted.

The weight of the Crown lifted, the gold fading from her eyes until nothing remained except the echo of her boots heading down the tunnel. Away from me.

I stayed on my knees in the dirt and dried blood.

Lucian was still laughing, bound and choking on the silver collar Helena had forged out of pure willpower. The rogues he’d enslaved dragged him up, their eyes clear and full of rage now that his hold was broken. Not one of them looked at me. Good. I didn’t deserve to be seen.

“They raised you specifically to give it.”

Her face when Lucian said those words burned in my mind. That was the exact moment I lost her. Not when I lied. Not when I followed orders. It was when she realized I never had a choice to begin with.

“Get up,” one of the older rogues barked, kicking my boot. “You heard the Crown-Bearer. We’ve got a trial to prepare.”

I forced myself up. My legs felt hollow. My ribs throbbed where I’d taken Lucian’s blade, and my wolf was silent inside me, heavy with shame.

I followed them out without a word.

************

The tunnels smelled of damp stone and old rust. No one spoke to me, not the guards, not the healers, not even Kael, who’d grown up beside me. They moved around me like I was broken glass.

They weren’t wrong.

We reached the holding cells beneath the east wing, cold and dripping with moisture. The guards threw Lucian into the reinforced cell at the far end. Even with blood smeared across his jaw, he grinned through the bars.

“You look like hell, nephew,” he rasped as I walked past.

I kept moving.

“Nothing to say? Or did she finally realize what you are? A weapon on a lead.”

I slammed my fist against the iron bars, the metal bending under the impact. “Shut up.”

Lucian’s grin only widened. “She’ll never trust you now. Every touch, every promise—she’s always going to wonder if your father pulled the strings.”

The words landed because they were true.

I slid down the cold wall across from his cell and buried my face in my hands.

Twenty-six years ago. My grandfather is sitting in the High Council chamber, dipping his quill into black ink to copy the ancient text of the Blood Crown.

*“If the heir survives, the line holds. But it requires two.”*

*“Then we raise one,”* my father had replied. *“We place him beside her. We make sure he loves her enough to give it up freely.”*

Love written down like a tactic.

I remembered being six years old, seeing Helena for the first time.

A skinny, furious child with scraped knees, hiding in the temple archives because she hated the weight of her own name. My task was simple: watch her and report back. Instead, I showed her how to scale the highest book stacks. I took the fall when she shattered the stained glass. I fell in love with her.

Was that part of their design too? Or had I ruined their plan by making it real?

The heavy iron door at the end of the corridor creaked open.

Helena stepped in.

She wasn't wearing the Crown now. It had receded into her skin, leaving only a faint, ember-like glow beneath her jaw. She looked exhausted.

The guards stepped up behind her, but she held up a hand. “Leave us.”

They pulled back without argument, leaving just the two of us—and Lucian, listening three cells down.

Helena stopped a few feet away. She didn't sit. She stood there searching my face, looking for the deception.

“You knew,” she said.

“Yes.”

“How long?”

“Since I was twelve. My father told me it was my duty.”

Her jaw set hard. “And the rest of it? The bond? Holding me through the night when the visions started? Was that duty?”

I looked up at her. Even exhausted and marked by war, she held the entire room.

“No,” I said, my voice cutting off. “That was me. It was always me, Helena. The duty was to keep you alive until the Crown called. Falling in love with you wasn't in the script. Wanting to burn everything down when Lucian touched you wasn't part of the plan.”

She stayed quiet.

“Do you think I’m a monster?”

“I think you were raised to be a sacrifice,” she said softly. “And I think you chose something else when you took that blade for me.”

Air filled my lungs again, sharp and sudden.

“But,” she added, her eyes narrowing as the gold flickered beneath her skin, “I need everything. No more omissions. No more protecting me from the truth. If you keep one more thing from me, I don't care what the prophecy demands. I will walk away.”

I gave a single nod. “I'll tell you all of it. The Council, the text, why they chose my line.” I swallowed against the tightness in my throat. “Just not here. Not with him listening.”

Helena glanced toward Lucian’s cell. He had turned his head, ears angled toward us.

“Tomorrow at dawn,” she said. “The shrine on the ridge. Just the two of us.”

She turned back toward the stairs.

“Helena.”

She stopped, though she didn't turn around.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “For keeping it from you. For being part of it before you were even born.”

Silence stretched between us before she answered.

“Don't apologize yet. Just give me the truth tomorrow.”

The iron door heavy-shut behind her, locking me in the dark with Lucian’s soft laughter and twenty-six years of secrets weighing on my chest.

The Crown didn't need my blood anymore. But Helena needed the truth. And I wasn't sure which one was going to strip away what was left of me.