All Chapters of MATERD TO THE SON OF THE DEMON KING: Chapter 91 - Chapter 100

Mercy's POVThe council convened separately from the trial's formal proceedings to discuss the former king's warning, consulting historians and archivists through the recess in a scramble that lasted nearly a full week before the trial resumed.I spent most of that week split between sitting in on those consultations and trying to keep some semblance of normal life going for Timothee and Corin, both of them stretched thin between the ongoing uncertainty of the trial and the mounting logistics of a coronation that the council had insisted on continuing to plan regardless of the outcome. It felt strange, watching seamstresses fit ceremonial robes while historians argued in the next room over whether a three-hundred-year-old text supported or contradicted a warning that could reshape both brothers' futures.I sat in on some of those consultations, watching scholars pour over texts older than the kingdom's current dynasty, searching for any confirmation or denial of the pattern my father

Timothee's POVIt took three weeks of shared rule before Corin and I had our first real fight, and it wasn't about the crown, or our father, or anything either of us had spent the last two months bracing for. It was about grain tariffs.I'd expected our first real conflict to arrive dressed in something dramatic, some echo of the throne room or the trial, some crisis large enough to match everything that had brought us to this point. Instead it arrived on a perfectly ordinary Tuesday morning, over a policy document neither of us had strong feelings about a week earlier, and that mismatch between the size of the disagreement and the weight it suddenly carried told me something important about how fragile this new arrangement actually was."You're proposing we cut them entirely," I said, staring at the proposal he'd brought to our morning session, still not fully used to the strangeness of having a second throne beside mine in a room that used to only ever hold one. "That's going to gut

Timothee's POVThe messenger arrived at dusk, three days after my conversation with Corin about the tariffs, carrying a seal I didn't immediately recognize, dark green wax pressed with an insignia that took Kaelen a moment of careful study to place.I'd been half expecting something like this since the coronation, some external test of a throne still finding its footing, though I'd hoped we'd have more time to settle into the arrangement before anyone outside our borders decided to probe for weakness. Apparently hope wasn't going to buy us that particular luxury."Vaelith," he said finally. "The northern kingdom. We haven't had direct contact with their court in almost a decade, not since the last trade dispute soured relations badly enough that both sides just stopped trying."Corin read the letter twice before passing it to me, his expression unreadable. "They've heard about the succession crisis," he said. "About the joint throne, the trial, all of it. They're calling it instabilit

Timothee's POVMercy brought us the translated document two days later, Enid's authentication confirming its age placed it solidly within the historical period it claimed to describe, old enough to predate any convenient political motive for fabricating a more comfortable version of the prophecy.I'd spent those two days trying not to hope too hard for exactly this outcome, aware that hope built on an unverified fragment could collapse just as easily as it had risen. But watching Mercy walk into our morning session with the document carefully protected in her hands, something in her expression already told me before she said a word that whatever she'd found had held up under scrutiny.Corin read it twice, the same careful, thorough way he approached everything that mattered to him, before setting it down on the table between us."If this is accurate," he said slowly, "then what our father did wasn't just cruel. It was exactly backward. He created the danger he thought he was preventin

Timothee's POVVaelith's response to our declined trade proposal arrived not as another letter, but as an envoy, a formal delegation announced three weeks after we'd sent our joint refusal, requesting an audience to discuss what their message called "matters of mutual interest that correspondence alone cannot adequately address."The announcement itself caused more stir in the palace than I'd expected, staff and council members alike buzzing with speculation about what exactly Vaelith intended, given the decade of strained silence between our two kingdoms. I found myself almost grateful for the distraction, something new to focus the palace's collective attention that wasn't rehashing the trial or the coronation yet again."That's either a genuine attempt at diplomacy," Kaelen said, reviewing the formal request with the same careful attention he brought to everything these days, "or a much more sophisticated version of the same pressure they applied with the original letter.""We won'