CHAPTER 145: MOTHER AND DAUGHTER

Aelin

I couldn’t look away.

"Don’t act like you care about me now," Alishay’s voice was weak

"What are you even saying!!? Why did you do this to yourself?" Darcelle asked, voice cracking. "Why would you choose to become—this?"

Alishay laughed, or tried to. It came out more like a rattle in her lungs. "Because I thought... maybe then, you’d love me."

I felt my chest twist.

Darcelle blinked, stunned silent. "That’s not true. I— I do love you—"

"No, you don’t," Alishay said, staring at her with empty eyes. "You never did." Her words shocked her mother beyond belief.

The ex-Queen tried to protest, but Alishay kept speaking, her voice thin and sharp. "I was never good enough. Not like the others. Not like Draken, or Draegon Or even Drakkar." She coughed hard, more black spilling down her chin. "You never expected anything from me because I was born weak."

"I never thought you were weak—"

"Liar," Alishay whispered, staring into her mother’s face. "You couldn’t even name me right."

Darcelle’s face twisted. "What?"

"Ali-shay." Her voice broke. "Not one part of my name reflects the blood of dragons. Nothing like Draken or Draegon or Drakkar. Not even close."

I felt the truth of that slice through the air. I had wondered about it once too, when I first heard her name.

"I gave you that name," Darcelle said, quieter now, "because I found it pretty. I thought it was soft. Something... gentle."

Alishay scoffed. It was bitter, hollow. "You? Into gentle things?" Her eyes rolled. "You were always about power, Mother. Always."

"No..." Darcelle tried to deny it, shaking her head. "No, I—"

But it was too late.

I saw it—Alishay’s chest glowed faintly for a single, heartbreaking second. The cracks in her core, deep and jagged like shattered glass, finally split apart with a low, echoing crack.

Her body gave a violent jolt. Then she stilled.

The light left her eyes.

"No—NO!" Darcelle cried, pulling her daughter’s limp form into her lap, clutching her with desperate arms. Her voice broke as she rocked the body gently, black-stained fingers shaking. "Come back—Alishay, please—I didn’t mean—"

But it was done.

The hatred, the silence that had stretched between mother and daughter for a lifetime... all of it came crashing down in that one moment. And nothing—nothing—could undo it.

Darcelle’s sobs echoed through the tower like an old lullaby gone wrong.

I stood in the doorway, unmoving, heart cold and aching. Draegon was silent at my side, and Ariston’s head was bowed low.

Darcelle held Alishay’s lifeless body like a shattered doll, her once regal face contorted with grief and disbelief. Her shoulders shook as she cradled her daughter tighter, black blood smearing across her robes, her fingers stained from what she’d refused to see for so long.

But it didn’t last.

Grief twisted swiftly into rage.

Her eyes snapped up to me, fury blooming like wildfire. "You," she snarled.

Before I could react, she lunged.

"YOU DID THIS!"

I barely had time to inhale before I threw my palm up, instinctually calling on my magic.

A thin veil of gold-white light shimmered into existence—a shield.

Darcelle collided with it hard. Her body bounced off with a grunt, staggering back in surprise.

She stared at the barrier, eyes wide with disbelief. Her blood-slicked hands slammed against it.

"You witch!" she spat, her voice breaking, not with sorrow now—but with madness. "This is all your fault! You—you ruined everything!

"

Her fists pounded the shield violently. The magic shimmered with every blow, but it held.

Behind me, I felt Draegon step closer. Calm. Composed. His voice, low and cold, rang clearly across the room. "None of this is Aelin’s fault."

"She should have let me die!" Darcelle screamed. "She brought me back just to mock me! To tear this family apart!"

"No," Draegon said. "You did that on your own."

Her screams only grew louder, more unhinged. "You side with her?! She’s nothing but a cursed human girl! She took my daughter away from me!!"

Darcelle lifted a bloodied fist again to slam the shield, but Draegon’s voice rose sharply, cutting through the air like steel. "Enough."

She froze—if only for a heartbeat.

"You want to scream about what’s fair? You want to blame someone?" His voice was like thunder rolling through the stone tower. "Look at Alishay. Look at what you let her become. She wanted your love so badly, she gave herself to monsters just to get it."

Darcelle’s hands trembled against the shield, her mouth open—but no words came out.

"You failed her," Draegon said, quieter now. But the weight of his words crushed the silence. "You weren’t a good mother."

"Don’t you dare talk to me about what a good mother is!" She spat her words out, "I know I wasn’t a bad mother."

"And yet you had no idea what your children were doing." Draegon answered, "You never checked on them, except every now and then, You wanted to see Draken."

"No," She denied it

"If you had, you wouldn’t have seen Alishay doing something wrong. You didn’t even know Draken and Drakkar were in the battlefield with me, till suddenly one day you would remember Draken."

"I—I did everything for my children!" she screamed. "Everything I could—!"

"And still it wasn’t enough."

A new voice entered the room.

We all turned.

At the threshold, tall and composed stood Draken

.

His eyes were unreadable, his mouth set in a grim line. He stepped inside with slow, even strides, his gaze never leaving the woman kneeling on the floor.

"You weren’t the worst mother in the world," he said evenly. "But you weren’t the best either."

!!!

Darcelle’s breath caught. She was beyond shocked.

"You gave us power," Draken said. "You raised us to rule. But you never taught us how to care. How to connect. You didn’t teach us how to be brothers. Or how to be a family."

"You..." Darcelle’s voice cracked, suddenly small.

"No one’s saying you were a bad mother," Drakkar said quietly as he entered the room behind his brother,. "But... there was clear discrimination between all of us."

Darcelle’s brows drew in. "Discrimination?"

Drakkar folded his arms. "You always had your eyes on Draken. All your focus—your expectations—they were on him. Because he was the one you wanted to succeed you."

Her lips parted, as if to deny it.

But Drakkar didn’t let her speak.

"I knew it from the time I was a kid," he said. "I was never going to be the one to sit on that throne. And when I rebelled—when I did reckless, stupid things—you didn’t even stop me. Not once." He scoffed, "Forget that, you didn’t pay attention to it at all. You just let me be." His voice grew softer, but not weaker. "Maybe you thought I wasn’t worth the trouble. And if I felt that way... then Alishay—" He looked down at her. "She must’ve felt even more devastated." His eyes flickered to the dead body for a second before he looked away

My heart ached for him. No matter what, she was still his sister. It must have pained them all to see her turn out like that and then die so miserably.

Darcelle looked stunned. Her mouth opened, but no words came out. Only the creaking silence of something breaking inside her—something old and iron-clad.

"She just wanted you to be proud of her," Drakkar added, almost a whisper now. "But I don’t think she ever really believed you were."

Darcelle’s hands clutched her daughter’s ruined robes.

"The fact was, you wanted to make sure that the son of the mistress would never amount to something..." Draken said, "And in your obsession to make sure Draegon was at the lowest you ended up hurting Alishay the most."

"I-" She started, then looked at Draegon, who had become the very thing she feared the most.

The king

Perhaps this was her karma. For all the emotional abuse she gave him and how she treated Seraphine.

Draken stood nearby, silent but firm. Ariston didn’t say a word either. He just glanced at me for a moment—his expression unreadable—and then looked away.

And Draegon... he hadn’t moved.

His jaw was clenched. I stood between them all, but didn’t speak. I couldn’t. Because what could I say in a moment like this?

This wasn’t just grief. This was everything rising to the surface—decades of silence, cracks in the walls no one wanted to see until the whole house collapsed around them.

Darcelle didn’t deny it.

She just stayed there, hunched over her daughter’s body, too still.

Too late.