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Chapter 16: Carried Through the Dark
publish date:
2026-10-26 23:49:01
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Reborn To Ruin The Sovereign Who Hates Me Chapter 46: The Hour He Was Late
"Tell me you can hear me, Selene. Squeeze my hand if you can."My sister's fingers curl around mine on the infirmary cot, weak but real, and I let out a breath I've been holding since the south gate. Iris has been working on her for twenty minutes: salve on the rope burns, a stitch through her lip, a cold cloth pressed to the eye that has swollen shut. Selene drifts in and out. Every time she surfaces she says the same thing, a half sentence, and then the fever drags her back under."She won't have been alone in that carriage," Iris murmurs. "Look at the bruising on her arms. Two sets of hands. Someone held her down." She wrings the cloth into the basin and the water turns pink. "I'll sit with her. You need to eat something, and the two of you need to be somewhere that isn't this room."I don't want to leave. But my knees have started to buckle, and Caius, standing behind me, has said nothing for a quarter of an hour. His silence has a weight I can feel against my back. When I turn he
Reborn To Ruin The Sovereign Who Hates Me Chapter 45: A Hearth Full of Ash
"Open this door, or I will have it taken off its hinges."Caius says it to a slab of carved oak, and the two guards flanking his mother's chamber look at each other with the expression of men who would rather be anywhere else in the Dominion. I'm leaning on Theo's shoulder at the end of the corridor, because Iris forbade me to leave the cot and I have never in either life been good at obeying a person who is right."My lord." The older guard clears his throat. "The Dowager left before dawn. Her carriage went out by the north gate. She said you would understand.""Did she.""She took two trunks and her maid, my lord. No escort."Caius doesn't answer. He pushes the door open and walks in, and I follow because nobody has the nerve to stop me.The room smells of lavender water and cold ash. The bed is made so tightly that a coin would bounce on it. Drawers stand open on an empty wardrobe, and an iron stand by the window holds nothing but a faint circle in the dust where a jewelry case sat
Reborn To Ruin The Sovereign Who Hates Me Chapter 44: Forty Rows of Proof
"Count the rows before you read a single word."Dominic doesn't ask why. He takes the packet from my hands and slides a thumbnail under the red wax, and the seal parts with the soft crack of something no one has ever touched. Iris drags the lamp closer. Theo is dripping onto the floorboards by the door, shivering inside his sodden cloak, and nobody has had the heart to send him to the fire yet.The page unfolds. A grid of tiny type fills it edge to edge, each line a marker name and two columns of figures. Dominic's lips move as he counts."Thirty eight. Thirty nine." He stops. "Forty two.""Forty two," I say, and something behind my breastbone loosens that I hadn't known was clenched. "The other page had eleven.""Rowan." Iris has gone pale around the mouth. "Do you want to be the one who reads the end?"I do not. My hands have started shaking again, the stitches pulling hot along my side. I've spent two lives bracing for what comes at the bottom of a page, and the one time I would gi
Reborn To Ruin The Sovereign Who Hates Me Chapter 43: The Coin and the Closed Door
"Your family's coin, found sewn into a dead man's coat. Explain it to me, Rowan."Caius says it from across the infirmary, and the distance he's chosen to stand at is the first thing I notice. Not at the cot. Not at the chair he slept in. He's by the far window with his arms folded, and the light behind him turns his face into something I can't read.Two hours ago he held my hand like it was the last solid thing in the world."I can't explain it," I say. "I can tell you what I see.""What you see." A short breath through the nose. "Your sister confessed to taking Reyne's money for six years. She sat in her drawing room, wept, and told us she'd been paying that debt with you. Now her family's silver turns up on the body of the man who carried a falsified result to my door. You'll forgive me if I'm tired of coincidences wearing the face of a coincidence.""Selene wanted this child's conception date. Reyne asked her for it. She told us so herself." I push the blanket off my legs, ignorin
Reborn To Ruin The Sovereign Who Hates Me Chapter 42: The Seal Pressed Back Together
"Don't read it aloud. Hand it to me first."I say it before Caius can break the wax, and he stops with his thumbnail already under the red. Iris looks at me, and so does he, because there's no good reason for a man lying flat on a cot with stitches in his side to be giving orders about paper."Humor me," I say.Caius slides the packet across the blanket. The wax has been warmed and pressed back so neatly that the crack is a hair, nothing more, and I only found it because for eleven years I made my living holding other people's envelopes up to the light. I tilt it toward the window. Under the gray morning I can see the faint oval where a heated blade slipped beneath the flap and lifted it clean."Iris, is there a lamp lit anywhere nearby?"She brings the one from the table. I hold the flap just over the flame, not close enough to scorch, and the old adhesive shines wet and tacky along one edge. The seal on the other three sides stays dull. Somebody opened this once, read it, and glued
Reborn To Ruin The Sovereign Who Hates Me Chapter 41: Until the Lamp Burns Out
"Say it plainly, Iris. If you soften it, I'll sit up and count the heartbeats myself."My voice comes out thinner than I want. The infirmary ceiling swims above me, candlelight smeared into long gold streaks, and somewhere under my ribs a needle is pulling thread through skin that doesn't feel like mine. Iris doesn't answer. She has the little wooden horn pressed against my stomach and her eyes are closed, her whole face gone slack with listening.Caius stands at the foot of the cot. He hasn't let go of my hand since the dock. His grip has gone past comfort into something that hurts, and I let it, because the hurt gives me somewhere to put the fear.The room is so quiet I can hear the wick of the nearest candle hiss.Then Iris's mouth moves. A small, startled exhale, nearly a laugh. She lifts her head and opens her eyes, and they're wet."Strong," she says. "Fast, faster than I like, but strong. Like a little fist knocking on a door." She sets the horn aside and lets her hand rest on
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