CHAPTER 241: RETURN THE FAVOR IN KIND

She looked at the boy...truly looked at him.

For the first few moments, she searched his face for traces of the man she had once loved, but there were none. His features bore no echo of her husband’s sharp jawline or commanding gaze, save for that mark in the exact same place as her husband’s. Instead, he had wide, beautiful eyes that almost seemed too soft for court, and when he smiled, hesitant, fleeting, that was when she saw it.

The resemblance.

Not to him.

To her.

To Aralyn.

The realization struck her like a slap. Those eyes, that gentle smile... it was as if Aralyn herself stood before her in the boy’s skin. She forced herself to speak to him, to test the measure of the child fate had thrown into her path. And she was stunned to discover that Aralyn’s son, the child her dying husband had spoken of with trembling urgency, had ended up in the royal family of Kaltharion, living not as an heir to Vaeloria, but as their Crown Prince.

But the boy... was nothing.

He lacked presence, confidence, even the barest shred of royal bearing. His hands shook as he spoke; his voice wavered like a candle in the wind. He could not meet her eyes, nor anyone else’s. It was painfully obvious that he would not keep his title for long. Sooner or later, someone would push him aside.

For the briefest moment, she considered ending it there. Right then and there. She imagined herself stepping forward, fingers wrapping around that fragile throat, squeezing until his breath faltered and his struggles ceased. Who would stop her? Who would help him? No one. He stood utterly alone in this glittering court, a lamb among wolves.

And strangely, that thought made her heart pound; not with fear, but with a dark, bitter thrill.

What her husband’s dying apology could not accomplish, she wondered if this meek, trembling boy might.

She instructed him to cover his face, to hide that inconvenient resemblance that made her blood boil. It hadn’t even taken much persuasion. A few softly spoken promises that she would protect him if he obeyed her were enough. He nodded, eager to be led, and pulled down the veil at her command.

But in his eyes, she saw something that startled even her: a hollow, quiet plea. Not for mercy, but for release. It was as if the boy was already dead inside, his soul emptied long before she ever found him.

And that... was exactly where she wanted him.

How perfect it would be, she thought, for the child destined to inherit Vaeloria to kneel at the feet of her son—the son his father had cast aside. She could almost imagine her husband watching from the heavens, forced to witness Aralyn’s son groveling before the boy he had dismissed. How deliciously it would wound his pride.

Every time Leroy knelt, every time he was mocked or humiliated, every time the court whispered about his incompetence, she found joy in it. Sharp, petty, intoxicating joy. As if her husband and Aralyn—both long dead—were being punished through their son.

Didn’t they want their son to inherit the throne? Then let them look down and see the sorry state of their precious heir. Let them choke on their choices.

That was what she believed.

For a time, it even satisfied her.

But only for a short time.

She saw him again one summer afternoon at the Warrior Games. Leroy. Aralyn’s son. The boy she had once dismissed as meek and hollow.

He was not that boy anymore.

On the training grounds, beneath the roar of the crowd, she watched him move. Those once-lifeless eyes now burned with a quiet, startling flame of determination. His hands, those trembling, uncertain hands she remembered, gripped his sword with practiced ease, steady as if they were meant to wield it. The frail lamb had become something else entirely. Not quite a wolf, not yet a lion, but dangerous in a way that made her pause.

She learned later what had sparked the change. It was love.

He told her himself, almost trustingly, as if confiding in a mother figure he never had. He spoke of Hadrian’s eldest daughter, of how he wished to marry her. His voice, though soft, carried a conviction she had never heard from him before.

And at that moment, her bitterness bloomed into something crueler. She conspired another plot.

Hadrian had two daughters. The eldest was elegant, accomplished, and admired, and was the perfect noblewoman, the pride of her house. The youngest... was nothing like her sister. Mute, deaf, a "useless mongrel," as the court whispered behind closed doors.

Who better for Aralyn’s son than her?

Convincing Hadrian was laughably easy. The moment he learned of Leroy’s parentage, that the boy was Aralyn’s son, he recoiled from the idea of giving his precious eldest daughter to him. He feared, quite rightly, that she would not survive such a marriage. "She would kill him," he had said grimly. "Or she would drag him to ruin. And I will not have my daughter wear widow’s weeds before she turns twenty."

How ironic that would turn out to be.

She arranged the marriage herself. She oversaw every detail, ensuring that it was Leroy who was bound to Lorraine—the mute, deaf youngest daughter of House Hadrian. She wanted to see that spark in his eyes, that dangerous light that made her uneasy, flicker and die.

But oddly... it didn’t.

Instead of extinguishing him, the marriage seemed to root him. Strengthen him. She noticed how his eyes sought Lorraine in crowded halls, how his hands steadied when she was near. It baffled her, then irritated her, and finally, when she could no longer ignore it, fascinated her.

So she changed tactics.

She sent him to war.

Who better to bleed for her son’s empire than the son of Aralyn? He was useful, after all. Skilled. Brave. Disposable. He obeyed every command she gave, marched wherever she directed, fought in every battle she assigned him to. She used him like a finely honed blade, cutting through Vaeloria’s enemies without mercy.

And then, she learned something else. Leroy had fallen in love with his mute wife.

The revelation tickled her bones like a cruel joke. She laughed; not aloud, but deep inside, where all her bitterness lived.

His father had denied her love all her life. And now, Aralyn’s son had found love where she had plotted only humiliation.

How poetic would it be, she thought, to take that love from him. To wait, to let him fall so deeply that there was no climbing back, and then to kill her. Kill the woman he cherished before his eyes and watch him break.

It would be perfect.

Poetic.

Fitting.

If his father had stolen her heart and shattered it without mercy, then she would return the favor in kind, not to him, but to his son.

It was then that she was in for another shock.