Lahat ng Kabanata ng Tempting the Wrong Prince: Kabanata 221 - Kabanata 230

Cassandra’s POVThe cell smelled like cold stone and disinfectant.It wasn’t the dramatic kind of dungeon people imagined when they thought about royal detention, no chains hanging from walls, no rats skittering over your feet, no flickering torches. The palace didn’t do medieval cruelty anymore. It did modern cruelty. Clean cruelty. Sterile cruelty.A metal bench bolted to the wall. A small table. A tiny camera in the corner you couldn’t stop noticing once you’d seen it. A door with a heavy lock and a small slot for food and water like you were an animal that might bite.The fluorescent light above never dimmed properly. It hummed faintly, making everything feel more unreal, like time didn’t belong here.My mother had fallen asleep on my shoulder at some point, exhaustion knocking her out in spite of fear. Her breathing was shallow, uneven, like even sleep couldn’t comfort her. My father sat opposite us, spine straight, face hard, eyes scanning the walls as if he could find an escape

Arden’s POVA court session was called before the day even felt like a day.That was how I knew the palace was scared.Not the usual kind of scared, political scared, where they argued for hours about trade and blamed each other for delayed aid. This was deeper. This was the kind of fear that made them summon ministers early and speak in clipped sentences and pretend the building wasn’t trembling under the weight of rumours.A poisoned king in ICU did that.A riot with bombs did that.A revolutionary message sprayed on palace walls did that.And the worst part was, the palace couldn’t even pretend it was in full control anymore. Not when staff had been lined up, tea containers went missing, surveillance was being pulled, and innocent people were dragged into cells because it was easier to arrest a scapegoat than admit the palace had been infiltrated.By the time the summons came, Richard was already awake.He hadn’t truly slept anyway. None of us had. Not since Father collapsed in tha

Arden’s POVThe room didn’t settle after Richard gave Cassy his blessing.It didn’t soften.It didn’t move on like court sessions usually did when someone said something shocking and the ministers pretended it wasn’t. If anything, it sharpened. The kind of sharp where you could feel people recalibrating in real time, alliances, loyalties, calculations.Aldrich stood there like he’d been slapped in public and couldn’t decide whether to retaliate or retreat.Some ministers looked scandalised, not because they cared about morality, but because public permission from the Crown Prince meant the whole story they’d been feeding the people, Cassandra is a disruptor, Cassandra is poison, Cassandra is the reason we’re starving, had just been undermined.Others looked amused in that quiet, nasty way men did when they thought a royal family’s mess was entertainment.Ivana, who had been waiting for Richard to rage and “act like a husband” so she could spin it into a narrative that served her, look

Richard’s POVHome didn’t feel like home. Not anymore.Not after watching Father drop like his body had finally reached its limit. Not after standing outside ICU glass and seeing him reduced to lines and machines and quiet beeping that didn’t care he was king. Not after Silvia looked me in the eye and said the word poison like it was a normal medical term and not a declaration of war inside our own walls.And definitely not after hearing how quickly a palace could turn on the Montclaires again, simply because my mother needed a scapegoat and Aldrich enjoyed a hunt.Still, we returned to my house because there were only so many hours you could spend in court before you began to lose the ability to think. You couldn’t plan properly in a hall full of eyes and whispers. You couldn’t strategise under the weight of ministers who cared more about titles than truth. And you couldn’t breathe in that place without feeling like the walls were listening.So Arden and I walked back through the cor

Arden’s POVThe first truck rolled through the palace’s outer gate like a promise.It didn’t matter that it was just metal and tyres and paperwork and men in uniforms. In Eldenwald, at this point, a truck of grain was not logistics, it was a symbol. It was relief made physical. It was a brief pause in hunger’s grip. It was the kind of thing that could calm a crowd faster than any speech.And the moment the first convoy arrived, I saw it in the way the palace staff reacted. They moved faster. They smiled more easily. They spoke in lighter tones, as if the air itself had become easier to breathe.It made me angry. Not at them. Not at relief. At the fact that something so basic, food, had been turned into a weapon against a nation. At the fact that we had needed leaks and leverage and international humiliation to do what should have been simple: buy grain at a normal price.Still, we couldn’t afford to sit in anger.We needed the people’s attention to shift. We needed the revolutionary n