CHAPTER 51: HUMILIATED

Lorraine curtsied, and Leroy bowed.

The King didn’t move. He didn’t even give a glance, as though they weren’t worth the dust on his boots.

The Queen, at least, offered a faint smile and a nod. It was hollow, but more than nothing.

Lorraine’s gaze shifted to Lucia, Leroy’s sister. She possessed a gentle beauty similar to her mother, yet the glint in her eyes was strikingly similar to that of her father, the king.

Lorraine expected... some strong reaction from her, by the way Leroy had thought of her. Surprise. Overflowing love. Relief. But there was none. Lucia’s expression was unreadable—flat, as if staring through them rather than at them. Whatever warmth may have once existed between siblings had long since cooled into ash. Or maybe, they weren’t a family that wore their heart on their sleeves.

When Lucia met Lorraine’s eyes, she held her gaze with eerie calm. Lorraine quickly dipped her head again and stepped back, half-shielding herself behind Leroy. She knew how they saw her.

Mute. Deaf. Doll-like.

Useless.

Let them believe it. She decided to play the part.

Then, she couldn’t shake the feeling... Leroy’s cousin was watching her, his gaze intense and lingering.

Gaston.

His eyes were fixed on her, his smirk tilted just enough to make her skin crawl. Mockery, amusement, and something else, something just shy of indecent, twisted in his expression. She stiffened under it.

Still... she tried to think kindly. Perhaps his heavy gaze was a trick of the low lamplight.

Maybe she was imagining things. Maybe his eyes were just... shaped that way.

Maybe he just thought she was pretty. Pretty enough, even if she had no voice.

Lorraine’s gaze swept around the table and then stopped at the Queen. The woman couldn’t seem to take her eyes off her.

There was surprise there.

And she understood why.

She was sixteen when she married Leroy. Or rather, everyone had been told she was seventeen. Her father had lied, just to keep his precious Elyse from marrying the hostage prince. Lorraine, sickly and underfed, still looked fourteen on her wedding day. Her father never believed she’d started bleeding. He never asked. He didn’t care. He signed her away, fragile and stunted, and wiped his hands clean.

But ten years had passed since.

In her new home, she was fed well. She was given medicine, sunlight, and care, at least in the physical sense. Her body caught up with itself. The child bride her in-laws remembered was gone.

At twenty-six, she had bloomed. She would never be the fairest flower in the garden, but she was no longer the wilted shadow she once was.

Yes. Their surprise made sense.

And with that unspoken assessment lingering in the air, the dinner began. The food was bad, the company... worse.

Lorraine watched them eat in silence. Gaston’s eyes kept drifting to Leroy’s long braid, showing signs of jealousy. He only had three knots in his braid, a symbol of his royal status, while Leroy’s long braid represented his valor.

Each member of the royal family sat straight-backed, moving with practiced grace, their cutlery delicate in hand, their posture immaculate. They looked like they were dining at court, not in a crumbling tavern lit by uneven candlelight and reeking of mold and cheap ale.

That contrast struck her most. Their surroundings were wretched, but their manners? Impeccable.

Leroy, too, fell into rhythm. Spine rigid, hands precise, slicing bread with his knife instead of tearing it like a man. She hadn’t seen him eat like this. Then again, they rarely ate together. Seeing him now, prim and composed in a place like this... unsettled her.

It was a reminder. He was the crown prince.

Lorraine picked at her food. She had grown to enjoy fine meals in the mansion over the years, but etiquette? That she never quite learned, or bothered to. And tonight, any appetite she had was thoroughly extinguished by the stifling air in the room.

She forced herself to pretend. To chew. To smile faintly. To observe.

And observe, she did.

That’s when she noticed the ring on Gaston’s finger. Not on his index finger, where men of pride flaunted theirs, but tucked onto his middle finger, almost hidden. Subtle, but not quite. Her eyes narrowed.

It wasn’t just any ring. The design was old, but unmistakable: a crowned bear, carved in relief, just visible under the flickering tavern light.

Her stomach sank. That wasn’t just any noble’s signet. That was the signet: symbol of the heir-apparent of Kaltharion. A ring that should have been on Leroy’s hand. Not his cousin’s.

Not the boy his parents had adopted.

That ring shouldn’t have been there.

She knew the story. Everyone did, at least, the version whispered in corridors and silenced in official records.

When the Vaelorian Emperor assigned Leroy a personal emblem as the heir to Kaltharion, there should have been a grand ceremony. A public declaration. A moment to mark the continuation of their bloodline and his loyalty to the Empire.

But the King of Kaltharion delayed his attendance. Deliberately. Pettily. And by the time the ceremony came, the Emperor gave Leroy a dragon.

The Dragon.

The old tyrant’s sigil. A symbol of the dynasty Vaeloria had overthrown; a relic of shame, a deliberate stain.

Leroy had already served four years in the Vaelorian army by then. Six brutal campaigns. Medals, scars, and silence. And instead of the crowned bear of his homeland... they handed him a symbol of conquest.

Mockery dressed as honor.

Now, Gaston wore the crowned bear instead. Boldly. Casually.

Lorraine’s throat tightened. Her stomach twisted.

She glanced at Leroy. He wasn’t looking. Even if he noticed, he wasn’t reacting. He sat perfectly still, shoulders straight, jaw relaxed, and chewing with quiet precision. There was no flicker of awareness, no anger, no shame.

Just silence. Just stillness.

That made her ache more than if he had screamed. This was the man she loved, humiliated by his own family. She couldn’t bear it. She lost the little appetite she had.

Lucia smiled then. Wide. Too wide. It didn’t reach her eyes as she looked at her brother. At least, that was what Lorraine felt.

Lorraine tried to check herself. Was she just biased? Jealous, even?

In the early years, she remembered how often Leroy spoke of Lucia. How he wrote her letters. Lorraine rarely got those. She just received cold reports and instructions about the estate. Never warm. Never her name, written for affection’s sake.

And now... She watched. Lucia and Leroy weren’t speaking. But somehow, they were communicating. Glances. Micro-expressions. A shared understanding that ran deeper than words.

That intimacy stung. She told herself to let it go.

Then... Once again...

Gaston.

He hadn’t stopped watching her. His eyes were still fixed on her face with that damned smirk, somewhere between condescension and something darker. She forced a pleasant smile. He responded with a smirk.

And that same unease returned. That sticky, crawling sense beneath her skin.

Suddenly...

Crack.

The King swept his dishes off the table with a single violent motion, the sound of clay breaking against wood, slicing through the silence.