Todos los capítulos de His Rejected Plus-Sized Secret Heir : Capítulo 71 - Capítulo 80

ElmaThe dizziness came without warning, three days after the healer finally allowed me back on my feet, arriving in the middle of counting bandages in the infirmary storeroom, the shelves tilting gently sideways before righting themselves again.I gripped the edge of the shelf until the room settled, breathing carefully through the nausea rolling low in my stomach."Lady Elma?"One of the younger healers had appeared in the doorway, concern already written plainly across her face."I'm fine," I said. "Only tired.""You've looked pale all morning.""I haven't been sleeping well."That much, at least, was true. Between the lingering ache in my ribs and the memory of hooded figures pressing close in the dark, sleep had become something I fought for rather than something that simply arrived.I finished counting the bandages, though my hands trembled slightly through the task, and made my way toward the small kitchen the infirmary staff used for their own meals, hoping food might settle w

ElmaI carried the secret for three days before it began to feel less like something I owned and more like something that owned me, pressing outward from beneath my ribs every time Xander looked at me a moment too long, every time he asked why I'd left my food untouched or noticed the particular pallor that came and went across my face without warning."You're hiding something," he said on the third evening, setting down his cup with the deliberate care of a man choosing not to raise his voice. "I've watched you hide things before, Elma. I know what it looks like now.""I'm not hiding anything.""You flinched when the kitchen brought up the stew tonight. You've flinched at that same dish three times this week.""I don't care for the spices they've been using lately.""Elma."I set down my own cup, unable to hold the lie steady any longer under the particular weight of his patience, the way he simply waited, unwilling to press further but equally unwilling to let the subject drop entir

CamilaThe rumor reached me through my own maid before it reached the wider court, whispered nervously as she helped arrange my hair, her hands trembling slightly against the pins."My Lady, I don't know if it's true, but the kitchen staff are saying Lady Elma has been asking for different meals lately. Simpler things. Things that don't turn her stomach."I kept my expression perfectly still in the mirror. "Turn her stomach how?""They say she's been ill in the mornings. Only briefly, and she recovers quickly, but it's happened more than once."Something cold slid down through my chest, settling low and heavy where fear always seemed to gather first before my mind had fully caught up to name it."That will be all," I said, and she left quickly, sensing the shift in my mood before I had even fully allowed myself to feel it.I sat alone at my dressing table for a long while afterward, staring at my own reflection, turning the pieces over with the same careful precision I applied to ever

CamilaThe council's reaction reached me within the hour, carried by a maid too eager to share gossip to notice how carefully I schooled my expression while she spoke."They say Elder Renwick nearly shouted at the King, my Lady. Something about the bloodline never being diluted this way before.""And the King's response?""He silenced the entire room, my Lady. Told them he'd remember who supported him and who didn't."I dismissed her and sat alone with the news, feeling something crack open inside me that I had spent months carefully sealing shut.An heir. Elma would give him an heir, and the council, however outraged it pretended to be, would eventually fold beneath the weight of a King's determination the way councils always did, because power respected only itself in the end, and Xander had more of it than any of them combined.I summoned Derrick immediately, unwilling to wait through the passage's usual careful timing."You've heard," I said the moment he arrived."I've heard.""T

ElmaThe letter arrived three days later, slipped beneath the door of my private study sometime in the early hours, and I found it only after the guards had already changed shifts, meaning whoever delivered it had somehow moved past two full rotations of watchmen without being seen once.I stared at it a long moment before touching it, remembering every warning Greta had once given me about doors and darkness and trusting nothing that arrived without a name attached.I broke the seal anyway. I had grown tired of living afraid of paper.The King has already sent word north. A pureblood bride awaits his summons the moment your child draws breath. You are a vessel, nothing more, and vessels are discarded once they've served their purpose.My hands shook, though I forced myself to read it a second time, then a third, searching for anything that might betray who had written it, some particular turn of phrase, some detail only a handful of people could possibly know.I found nothing. Only t