CHAPTER 259: TO BE FREE

"Listen!"

It was the Dowager’s cold, commanding, and eerily steady voice. The voice of a woman who had once ruled empires through whispers and glances alone.

And the hall obeyed.

"Aralyn tells the truth!" she declared. Her words thundered across the chamber, silencing every breath. "Leroy is the rightful heir to the throne."

For a moment, no one moved. The Emperor’s heart lurched painfully in his chest. His mother’s words struck him like a blade. He had expected her outrage, her schemes, perhaps another attempt to manipulate him, but not this.

Not truth.

When she had said she wanted to do "the right thing," he had dismissed it as the moral whimsy of an aging woman. He thought once Leroy was dealt with, she would return to her senses... to him. But now...

She was condemning him. Before the entire court.

"Someone grab that woman!" the Emperor shouted, his voice trembling between rage and disbelief. "She’s forcing my mother to say this madness! Look at her... she has a knife to my mother’s throat, for heaven’s sake!"

Gasps rippled through the court. Ministers recoiled. The guards surged forward, swords clattering as they moved to subdue Aralyn...

But the Dowager raised her voice again, rising above the chaos.

"My husband’s last wish," she declared, her tone trembling yet resolute, "was to place upon this throne the one who bears the Dravenholt mark! And that one..." she turned toward her son, eyes blazing with a conviction that silenced the hall "...is Leroy!"

She knew what he was trying to do. She watched him grow. She knew what his frantic gestures and his commands to the guards meant. He wanted her to stop. To be quiet. To protect what he had built upon lies.

But no.

She would not stop this time.

For years, she had carried the weight of deceit, of betrayal, of hollow victories. Now, at the twilight of her life, she no longer wanted thrones or crowns or trembling courtiers. She longed for the simplicity she had once known... the girl she had been before power poisoned her.

She wanted to return to that place of innocence, where mornings smelled of jasmine and rain, where she could laugh without calculation, love without fear. She wanted a quiet life;

a small cottage hidden beneath the shade of willows, a garden that bloomed in every season, the hum of bees, the bark of dogs in the distance. She wanted to grow old watching flowers turn toward the sun, butterflies drift lazily in the air, and snow falling softly beyond her window.

That was all she wanted now. To be her uncle’s beloved niece once more.

If fate were kind, she wished her son could come with her. She had ruined enough lives in the name of protecting him, and perhaps there was still time, just enough, to save his.

From the moment he could walk, she had whispered poison into his ears under the guise of love. She told him that she was all he had, that his father despised him, that no one could be trusted but her. She convinced herself it was protection. In truth, it was possession.

When he killed his father’s favorite horse, she blamed the stable boy. When he cut the hair of a lady who refused to dance with him, she called the girl mad and exiled her family. When he broke the river pact, she stood by him. And when he killed his own blood, she silenced the kingdom with her power and called it loyalty.

Every cruelty, every sin... she wrapped them in the soft silk of a mother’s defense, mistaking indulgence for love. She coddled him, told herself he was owed gentleness because the world had been unkind. But she hadn’t been loving him; she had been trying to keep him. Trying to preserve what was never meant to be hers.

Her husband was never meant to be hers.

Her title, her crown, her power... all borrowed, all stolen from a fate she refused to accept.

And the worst part was... she had always known.

That knowledge had haunted her every night, festering in the silence between prayers. It was why she clung to power with bloodied hands, because to lose it meant facing the truth: that she had never deserved it.

But perhaps it wasn’t too late. Perhaps she could love her son the way she was meant to; not with control, but with truth.

Her uncle had once told her that love was doing what was right, even when it broke you.

Truth, he said, is the purest form of love.

And as she stood there, with her son’s rage echoing through the hall, Isabella finally understood.

She wanted to set him free. Just as she, at last, was free.

Her words shattered what little composure remained in the room.

Guards seized Aralyn, wrenching the dagger from her grasp. She struggled, breath ragged, eyes wide in disbelief as shouts filled the hall. The echo of chaos drowned beneath the pounding of her heart. The Emperor rushed to his mother, seizing her by the arm, dragging her toward the corridor as courtiers stumbled to bow or flee.

"Leave!" the emperor commanded.

Only Aralyn, the dowager and the Emperor were left in the corridor.

"Mother, what have you done?" the emperor hissed under his breath, his voice trembling with fury he barely contained.

Even Aralyn, caught and breathless, could only stare after the Dowager. She had expected denial, perhaps silence, but not this. Not confession. Not truth. She didn’t even realize her hands were empty, the dagger gone.

The old woman was panting now, her lips pale, her pulse weak beneath the thin skin of her throat. And yet her gaze was steady, her back straight, her expression eerily calm. For the first time in decades, Isabella looked... free.

"Son..." Her voice was soft, trembling yet full of release. "Don’t you feel it too? Don’t you feel free?"

The emperor froze. He looked at her—really looked—and what he saw was not the woman who raised him. Not the steel-willed Dowager who had shielded and shaped him into a ruler. This woman looked like a stranger wearing his mother’s face.

"Why," he whispered, voice cracking with pain, "why would you make me lose the one thing I have left, Mother?"

"Son..." Isabella reached for his cheek, her eyes shimmering with a kind of sorrow only mothers knew. For a brief, fragile heartbeat, she thought she saw her little boy again, the child she once swaddled in soft silks, before she had taught him cruelty.

But the moment was shattered.

His face twisted, grief curdling into rage, and before she could even touch him, he moved.

The dagger he’d taken from the guard plunged into her chest, then deeper, until her breath hitched and her hand froze midair.

A sharp gasp escaped her lips. The warmth of her blood seeped through his fingers, staining the silk of his sleeves, running down to the marble floor with a dark, glistening whisper.

For a heartbeat, the hall went silent.