CHAPTER 240: A WOMAN SCORNED

"Will you promise me something?"

The question came suddenly, softly, cutting through the night air like a tremor.

She stared at him, at the man who had held her heart captive for decades. His skin was pale, waxen; his breath came shallow and ragged, like a dying ember refusing to be snuffed out. The firelight cast flickering shadows across his face, highlighting the hollow curve of his cheeks, the sweat beading his brow.

Before she could think about it, before she could rationalize whether that promise would harm her or help her, she found herself reaching for his trembling hand. Her own fingers shook as they closed around his, tears stinging her eyes.

No matter how many mistresses he had taken... No matter how many bastards he had sired... No matter how cruelly he had wounded her by never returning her love.

Even now... when she knew his heart belonged to someone else entirely, she could not refuse him.

Because in that moment, when he looked at her not as a queen, not as a political ally but as a man reaching for someone familiar at the edge of death, all her carefully built defenses crumbled.

Age, experience, bitterness... all of it melted away. Her heart fluttered like it did when she was sixteen, when she’d seen him ride through the palace gates, sunlight catching in his hair, his smile as he met her eyes, a careless dagger to her heart.

"Yes," she whispered, her voice trembling. "I promise."

He closed his eyes briefly, gathering what little strength remained. "My son... the one with the mark... is still alive," he rasped. "Anoint him as my successor. Leave him the throne. You and your sons can have everything else."

Her hands began to shake. Her smile faltered. His words fell like stones into the still pond of her heart, sending ripples of shock, betrayal, and something more complicated.

She could see it in his face: he was dying. She felt it in her bones, a cold certainty that this was the last night she would ever see the man she had loved all her life. And yet, even as his final words echoed total insecurity for her sons’ future, there was a strange calm blooming inside her chest, as if this moment had always been written.

"Your son?" she whispered, almost not daring to breathe.

"Aralyn," he said.

Her heart cracked cleanly in two.

Even now. Even here. On his deathbed, with her sitting beside him, not Aralyn, no, Aralyn was dead already, and it was her sitting by his side. And yet, it was her name he spoke.

All the years she had waited for him to turn his gaze fully upon her; all the years she had smiled through court gossip, through humiliation, through the endless ache of loving a man who loved another... And here he was, dying, and his final thoughts were not of her.

Aralyn.

But her mind scrambled. Hadn’t their child died? Was there another?

The one with the mark.

The thought struck her like a spark. The mark. She had borne him son after son, but none had carried the ancient Dravenholt mark. It had haunted her, that silent failure. And now to hear that Aralyn—Aralyn—had borne him a son with the mark, a son who lived...

Bitterness and fury surged through her veins like hot oil. Her heart clenched with a pain sharper than grief. Unknowingly, she tried to pull away, retreating from him, from his betrayal even in death.

But his grip tightened. Weak, faltering, but insistent. Just enough to anchor her.

"I’m sorry, Isabella," he whispered, his voice trembling as though each word cost him what little life he had left. His eyes closed slowly, lashes trembling. "My heart... maybe in our next lives..."

Tears burst free then, hot and unstoppable.

Was this apology supposed to be enough? Was this the consolation prize for a lifetime of yearning?

She hadn’t wanted his apology. She had wanted him. His love. His choice. His heart.

His fingers slackened in hers, slipping away like water she couldn’t hold onto no matter how tightly she tried.

And then, with his final breath, she heard him whisper, soft but unmistakable:

"Aralyn... here I come..."

She broke.

She crumpled beside his bed, tears soaking the stone floor. Was she crying for him? For herself? She didn’t know. She hated him—oh, she hated him. She despised him for loving someone else so completely.

But she mourned, too. Not for the man himself, but for the love she had carried for him like a holy relic, for the young girl who had believed she could win his heart. For the woman who had stood by him even when he never truly saw her.

That night, something hardened in her.

That night, Isabella, the Dowager, made her decision as she wore her mourning clothes.

If he would give the throne to another woman’s son, then she would raise her own son high enough that even the gods would have to bow.

Hell, indeed, had no fury like a woman scorned.

With Hadrian’s help, she guided her eldest boy, molding him into a ruler to be feared and revered. She would not allow any other to take what was rightfully his. Not Aralyn’s son. Not any boy with a cursed mark.

She shaped her son’s rise with ruthless precision, every step of his ascent sharpened by her will and Hadrian’s counsel. She cared nothing for the blood she spilled, the loyalties she severed, or the souls she crushed along the way. Even her other sons were not spared her cold resolve—no one would ever usurp the place of her firstborn.

She carved a path of iron and fire, waging silent wars in his name, until the world learned to bow before him. His glory became her weapon, his fearsome legend her legacy.

And for years, she searched for that child, the boy with the mark that she herself had failed to give her sons. She turned over every stone in Vaeloria, scoured the records, interrogated spies, and bribed priests.

But she found nothing.

No whispers, no trail, not even a grave.

In the end, she told herself that her husband had been wrong. That the child had died at birth. That Aralyn’s precious marked boy was nothing more than a dying man’s delusion.

She allowed herself to believe it.

Until that day.

The day she stood in the Imperial Court, awaiting an audience with the Emperor.

In the hallway, there he was.

The boy who couldn’t meet anyone’s gaze. The Crown Prince of Kaltharion. Tall but unsure, his posture awkward under the weight of foreign eyes.

The moment she saw him, her heart stopped.

That crimson that bloomed on his pale skin... That mark...

She knew.

Her husband’s dying words rose from the grave of her memory like a ghost whispering in her ear.

The one with the mark... is still alive.

The room seemed to tilt, the air sucked from her lungs.

Before her stood the boy destined to sit on the throne her son now occupied. The boy whose existence could unravel everything she had built.

Leroy Regis.