"What did you do?"
Tenebrarum's voice was low, a blade of black ice. He walked with a predator's stillness, stopping directly before Camilla.
He could expect betrayal from his brothers. He was prepared for it, welcomed it even, as a reason to break them. But from her?
The Crown Princess.
The public symbol of his claim. It was an insult that cut deeper than any knife.
Camilla's eyes were wide, blue pools shattered by panic. Tears streamed down her cheeks, not delicate tracks but a silent, relentless flood, as if her body was weeping for the life she knew was over. The guards held her pinned, her cheek pressed against the cold stone floor.
"Let her go!"
His power flared before the words had fully left his lips—a wave of invisible, crushing force that slammed into the guards. They grunted, stumbling backward as if struck by a wall of air, their grips breaking. Camilla gasped, a shudder running through her freed body, but she didn't rise. She stayed on the floor, a broken, weeping doll.
Tenebrarum leaned down, his masked face hovering inches from hers. "You laid with him."
It wasn't a question. It was a verdict.
His hand shot out—not with the calculated cruelty of a torturer, but with the raw, unthinking fury of betrayal.
Tass!
The crack of the slap was a whip-crack of finality in the silent hall. Camilla's head snapped violently to the side, a bright red mark already blooming across her pale cheek. Her body followed the brutal momentum, sprawling back onto the cold stone with a choked, guttural cry that was more shock than pain.
"It wasn't her!"
Tiberius's roar tore through the tension. He wrenched himself free from the stunned guards' loosened grip, the raw strength of his desperation breaking their hold.
He stumbled forward, placing himself squarely between Tenebrarum and Camilla's crumpled form.
Tenebrarum's masked head turned toward him, the movement slow and deadly, like a serpent shifting its focus to new prey.
"She was drunk," Tiberius lied, the words tumbling out in a frantic, protective rush. His chest heaved. "She'd never had wine before. She didn't know what she was doing."
"And how does that concern me?" Tenebrarum's voice was a whisper of pure menace.
"She thought I was you!" Tiberius shouted, the lie growing bolder, more desperate. He met the void of the mask, his own eyes blazing with a concocted story. "She called me Tenebrarum. I… I took advantage of that. It was my sin, not hers."
Camilla's breath hitched. A fresh wave of tears, hot and silent, spilled over her lashes and down her bruised cheek, cutting tracks through the dust of the floor.
Why would he lie? Their time had been secret, yes, but it had been real—a moment of chosen passion, not a stolen mistake. She hadn't touched a drop of wine.
Yet her lips remained tightly sealed, pressed into a thin, trembling line. The tears flowed faster, a silent river of confusion, shame, and a dawning, terrifying gratitude for the shield he was trying to become.
The truth screamed inside her, but to speak it now would make his sacrifice—his dangerous, public lie to a brother who showed no mercy—worthless. So she wept into the stone, the silent, willing bearer of a lie meant to save her.
"You fool."
Tenebrarum's fist drove into Tiberius's jaw with a sickening crunch of bone and cartilage.
Criek!
Tiberius didn't cry out. His head snapped back, his body arcing in a lifeless curve before he crumpled to the floor.
A single, white tooth skittered across the polished stone like a piece of fallen ivory, coming to rest near Camilla's trembling hand.
He lay there, unmoving, a broken piece in a pool of gathering silence.
All Camilla could do was sob, the sound a raw, helpless scrape in her throat.
Her tears fell on the stone, mixing with the dust and the distant, shocking speck of blood from Tiberius's mouth. Her world had narrowed to his still form and the gleaming white tooth—a tiny, horrifying monument to a shattered defense.
"Take him to the dungeon," Tenebrarum commanded, his voice restored to its glacial calm. He didn't look at his brother's body. "After Magnus's wedding, he will be beheaded."
The sentence fell like an executioner's axe, final and absolute.
He then turned his masked gaze to Camilla. The void where his face should be was more terrifying than any expression of rage.
"And you, Camilla," he said, each word dripping with a contempt so profound it felt like acid. "You are dismissed from the court. You are nothing here. Get out of my sight."
He didn't order her to the dungeon.
He stripped her of every title, every position, and any last shred of belonging.
In that moment, exile was a more profound punishment than any cell. She was now a ghost in the palace she was born to rule.
She couldn't stop crying. The guilt was a physical weight, a stone lodged behind her ribs, heavier than the vanadium collar had been. Every ragged breath scraped against it.
This is my fault.
The thought was a drumbeat in the silence of her exile.
I stepped into get lost. I went to him. I kissed him back. I let him touch me.
I caused this.
Then immediately a voice tore out.
"Tenebrarum."
The king's voice was a frayed, wet thread, finally cutting through the aftermath.
He had been calling for a while,but perhaps it was lost in the noise of judgment and violence.
He coughed—a deep, convulsive spasm that shook his entire frame—and fresh, dark blood bloomed across the already stained silk at his chest.
"Call the healers!" Tenebrarum's command was not the cold decree of a prince, but the raw, sharp cry of a son. All thoughts of betrayal, punishment, and wedding decrees vanished.
He was at his father's side in an instant, his earlier stillness shattered.
He reached for his father, his hands—so capable of delivering brutal force—now fumbling with a sudden, shocking gentleness. He slid an arm beneath the king's shoulders, trying to lift him.
His father's body was a dead weight, limp and impossibly heavy. It felt like trying to lift stone, cold and unyielding. A low, pained sound escaped the king, and Tenebrarum froze, a tremor of helplessness running through him.
The mask hid his face, but it was there in the arrested motion, in the slight shake of his hands.
Gritting his teeth, Tenebrarum adjusted his grip. With a surge of effort that strained the muscles in his back, he hauled his father into his arms, cradling the king's broken form against the dark fabric of his own cloak. He rose, turning his back on the court, on the prisoner, on the exiled princess, on everything.
Without another word, Tenebrarum carried his father from the throne room, leaving behind a scene of ruin and a chilling, absolute silence in his wake.
The only sound was the fading, ragged echo of the king's breath and the swift, receding tread of the prince's boots.
Don't go father...
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To be continued...