Kaelen’s POV

The words landed like a blade between my ribs.

I know everything, Kaelen.

She stood in the moonlight. Still as carved marble. Her ice-blue eyes held no warmth, no flicker of the woman who had curled against me in sleep just days ago. They were the eyes of a stranger passing judgment.

My mouth went dry. "Ela, whatever you think you—"

"The Sapphire Inn." Each syllable precise. Surgical. "The royal suite. A few nights ago."

The floor tilted beneath me. My pulse roared so loud I was certain she could hear it. "How did you—"

"Does it matter how?" She stepped closer. The moonlight carved her face into sharp planes of silver and shadow. "You carried her through the door yourself. They have magical projections, Kaelen. I saw it."

My chest caved. "Listen to me. Please. You have to listen—"

"I’ve been listening. For days." Her voice held steady. Terrifyingly steady. "Listening to silence. To your absence. To the lies your servants delivered in your name."

"Ela—"

"You sent word that you were in council meetings. Emergency sessions that couldn’t be interrupted. Countless hours. All those hours you were simply... gone." Her jaw tightened. "And when I wrote to you—multiple letters, Kaelen—your steward returned them with notes about imperial business. Urgent matters of state."

I opened my mouth. Closed it. Because the truth—the truth I should have told her immediately—was that I couldn’t remember. Those missing hours existed as a black void in my mind. A gap filled with fragments. The taste of something bitter in my wine at the council chamber. A swimming sensation behind my eyes. Then nothing. Nothing until I woke alone in an unfamiliar bed with the stench of perfume on the sheets.

"I was drugged." The words came out raw. Desperate. "In the council chamber. Someone put something in my wine. I don’t remember that night. I don’t remember any of it."

Silence.

Then she laughed. A short, brittle sound that cracked like thin ice.

"Drugged." She tasted the word. Spat it back. "How perfectly convenient."

"It’s the truth—"

"The truth?" Her composure fractured, and beneath it I glimpsed something that made my blood freeze. Not rage. Grief. "You want to talk about truth? Then explain Seraphine."

My stomach dropped. "What about her?"

"She’s been going to the training grounds every morning lately. Bringing pastries to your officers. Smiling. Laughing. Walking through the corridors as if she already owns them." Elara’s voice trembled now. Just barely. "The servants bow to her, Kaelen. They bow to her the way they bow to me."

"I didn’t authorize—" 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

"She acts like a queen. Like the future queen. And you—" Her finger jabbed toward my chest. "You said nothing. Did nothing. Let her parade through my palace while I sat upstairs writing letters you never read."

"I didn’t know she was—"

"You didn’t know?" The trembling was in her hands now. She clenched them into fists at her sides. "You didn’t know that the woman you took to a private suite was strutting through your court like she’d already replaced me?"

Each accusation struck bone. I had no defense. Not because I was guilty—God and the Moon Goddess as my witnesses, I would never—but because my memory was a gaping wound. Hours of absolute darkness. And the evidence she described—the projections, Seraphine’s behavior, my own idiotic decision to hide those missing hours rather than confess them immediately—all of it formed a wall I couldn’t breach.

"Ela." I stepped toward her. Reached for her hand. "Please—"

She recoiled. As if my touch burned. "Don’t."

The word hit harder than any blow I’d ever taken in battle.

"I never touched her. Not willingly. Not knowingly. I swear on my life—"

"Your life." Another bitter laugh. "Swear on something that matters, Kaelen."

"On Valerius’s life. On Lyra’s. On everything sacred between us." My voice broke. I heard it crack and couldn’t stop it. "I love you. Only you. Whatever happened in that room, it wasn’t me. It wasn’t my choice."

Her chin dipped. For one desperate heartbeat, I thought she was softening. That the bond between us—the mate bond that lived beneath skin and bone—was reaching her the way it was screaming inside me.

Then she raised her head. And her eyes blazed with agony.

"I saw the bite mark on her neck!" she screamed, the sound tearing through the room.

The world stopped.

"Her collar slipped when she bent to set down the pastry tray in the officers’ hall. I saw it clearly." A tear escaped. Slid down her cheek. She didn’t wipe it away. "Your mark, Kaelen. Your teeth. On another woman’s throat."

I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t form a single coherent thought. Because if there was a bite mark—if my teeth had marked Seraphine’s skin—then whatever drug had been poured into my wine had stripped away more than memory. It had puppet-strung my body into performing acts that my conscious mind would have died before committing.

"I don’t—" My voice was a wreck. "I can’t explain that. I don’t know how—"

"You can’t explain it because there is no explanation." She was crying openly now. Tears streaming in silent rivers. But her spine remained iron-straight. "Except the obvious one."

"No—"

"I was brought back to this palace just to be betrayed!" A sob choked through. She pressed her hand against her mouth, held it there, forced the next words past her trembling fingers. "I came back because you asked me to. Because you swore things would be different. Because I believed—" Her voice shattered. She doubled forward, arms wrapping around herself. "I believed you."

I stood there, paralyzed by the weight of her words. "Ela, please. Don’t do this. I’ll prove it. I’ll find out who drugged me. I’ll tear apart every stone in that inn until—"

"I wanted to run." She straightened slowly. Drew a shaking breath. "When I saw that projection, my first instinct was to take the children and disappear into the human world. Somewhere you’d never find us."

Terror seized my throat. "You can’t—"

"I can’t." Another tear fell. "Because Valerius would never forgive me for taking him from his father. And Lyra..." She pressed her palm flat against her chest as if holding her heart in place. "Lyra asks about you every night before bed. Every single night."

The silence between us was a living wound.

"So I won’t run." She wiped her face with the back of her hand. Quick. Rough. Done with tears. "But I will not stay in this room. I will not sleep in that bed. I will not pretend that we are whole when we are broken."

"Ela—"

"I’ll find a residence nearby. Close enough for the children to move between us. We’ll arrange schedules. Custody. Whatever needs to be formalized." Her voice was steady again. That terrifying, glass-edged calm. "But you and I are finished sharing a life under one roof."

She turned. Walked toward the staircase. Each footstep deliberate and final.

"Please don’t go." I stayed rooted to the spot. The words scraped out of me like gravel. "Please. I’m begging you."

She paused on the third step. Didn’t turn around.

"I loved you so much it nearly killed me once." Her hand gripped the banister. Knuckles white. "I won’t let it kill me twice."

She climbed the stairs. The bedroom door closed. The lock turned with a sound like a bone snapping. Leaving me in a deafening silence.

I stood in the sitting room. Alone. My legs finally gave way.

My hands were shaking. My whole body was shaking.