All Chapters of MATERD TO THE SON OF THE DEMON KING: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

Timothee's POVWe left before the sun fully cleared the horizon, five people crammed into two trucks that had only been built to comfortably carry four, and nobody complained about the arrangement because nobody wanted to be the one who slowed us down by asking for more room.Kaelen and Azrael took the lead truck, deep in a low conversation about guard schedules that I only caught pieces of over the engine noise. Behind us, the Hollow Fields shrank into the horizon, and I found myself wondering if Corin was watching it go the way I might have watched the last of something familiar disappear, or if twenty years out there had made leaving easier than I assumed.Corin rode with Mercy and me, which felt strange in a way I hadn't expected. Not hostile. Just strange, the particular discomfort of sitting beside a stranger who shared half your blood and none of your memories, both of you aware of exactly how much you didn't know about each other and neither of you sure where to start closing

Mercy's POVThe old kitchen door was exactly where Kaelen said it would be, half-buried under ivy that had spent years quietly reclaiming a part of the palace nobody thought worth maintaining anymore. The lock had rusted through just like he remembered, and it took Azrael less than a minute to work it loose with nothing but a flat piece of metal and the kind of patience that came from having done this before, somewhere, sometime, in a life none of us had asked him about yet."After you," he said, pushing the door open onto a corridor thick with dust and the smell of a kitchen that hadn't cooked a meal in longer than any of us had been alive.We moved in single file, Kaelen leading, Corin close behind him with a stillness that made me understand, for the first time, how a person survived twenty years in hiding. He didn't just walk quietly. He walked like the space around him had already been mapped in his head down to the inch, like he'd spent years imagining this exact corridor from d

Mercy's POVThe footsteps grew louder, unhurried, the steady rhythm of someone who wasn't searching for anything, just walking a route they knew by heart. For a moment I let myself hope it was a servant, someone with no reason to look twice at a vault door that should have been locked.I looked around the room at the others, gauging what we had to work with if this went wrong. Two ledgers, a letter, a knife at Corin's belt, and a locked door that wouldn't hold against anyone determined enough to force it. Not much. Enough, maybe, if it came to talking instead of fighting, and nothing at all if it didn't.Then the footsteps stopped, right outside, and the silence that followed felt worse than any sound could have."Kaelen," a voice said, and I recognized it immediately, low and controlled in a way that made my skin go cold. The king. "I wondered how long it would take you to remember that passage existed."Nobody moved. Corin's hand had gone to the knife at his belt, slow and deliberat

Mercy's POVThe council chamber filled faster than I expected, word of an emergency session spreading through the palace with the particular speed reserved for news everyone senses is bigger than what they've been told.I stood near the front with Timothee, Corin, and Kaelen, the recovered ledgers stacked on the table before us, Kaelen's mother's letter resting on top where it would be impossible to miss. Azrael had positioned himself near the door, watching the room with the same careful attention he'd carried since the moment we met him, though something in his posture had eased since the vault, like part of him had been waiting twenty years for this exact evening without ever quite admitting it to himself.I watched the council members find their seats, some of them glancing our way with open curiosity, others deliberately avoiding looking at the stranger standing beside their crown prince, a man none of them had a name for yet but whose face was already drawing whispers up and dow

Mercy's POVThe council chamber filled again before the sun had fully cleared the horizon, faster this time, word having spread through every corner of the palace overnight until there wasn't a single person left who hadn't heard some version of the story, accurate or otherwise.I'd barely slept, and it showed in the ache behind my eyes, the same ache I imagined was written across every face in that chamber, all of us running on adrenaline and too little rest, none of us quite ready for whatever this day was about to demand. Somewhere in the crowd I spotted the guard captain from the courtyard, standing at attention near the back, his expression unreadable but his eyes tracking Corin with something that looked almost like cautious respect.The crown's mark on my palm had gone quiet sometime before dawn, steady and warm instead of urgent, like it understood we'd crossed into a different kind of moment now, one that couldn't be solved by anything sudden or dramatic.The chair called the