"Your Holiness."
The Emperor's voice was as cold as stone.
"Emperor," Aerisse replied calmly. "Let's be direct. Why have you been lying about the prince's birthright? He deserves to know who his mother was."
"I don't know what Your Holiness is talking about."
Myrhael was on the ground, kneeling.
He just wanted the truth—yet his father wouldn't even look at him.
That coldness… it was truly heartbreaking.
"Have you not done enough?" The Emperor's piercing tone was suddenly directed at Aerisse.
What?
She couldn't have been more confused by the turn of events.
"Did you not tell the Empress you would come to take her firstborn son—"
"Wait, I didn't mean—"
Now she was the villain.
The big one.
And the taste was bitter.
"Didn't you want to listen?"
The Emperor's voice cracked like thunder. He rose from his throne so suddenly that Aerisse stiffened in alarm. The air trembled around him—rage given form.
"I'll tell you, then!" he roared. "My Empress—because of you—lost herself to dark magic! She sought to change the child in her womb, to exchange him for another woman's! That is why she died giving birth to another's blood! My son was raised in the filthiest corners of the kingdom because of you!"
He pointed at her like a curse. "And you still dare to ask me?"
Aerisse blinked, her throat dry.
Now that was a plot twist even she hadn't foreseen.
"So…" Myrhael's voice trembled as it broke the suffocating silence. "I'm the true imperial heir… and my sister—the adopted one?"
That was… one way to put it.
"That's right," the Emperor said at last, lowering his gaze. "Her being a woman is the least of it. That child carries no imperial blood. She has no claim to the throne. Letting her live as a princess was already payment enough—for the woman who raised my son."
The words hit like stones.
"Please, Father," Myrhael said quietly, almost whispering. "Don't let my sister know. I'll go with Her Holiness. I'll train, protect the kingdom, serve faithfully. Just… please, let her live believing she's a princess forever. Can you do that?"
The Emperor hesitated. "Well…"
"I'm afraid it's far too late for that, Myrhael."
The voice cut through the hall like a blade of ice.
There she was—the princess.
And her fury was nothing short of divine.
"So that's why, Father—no, Emperor." Her tone dripped venom, her eyes wet and blazing. "Now everything makes sense. Why you never cared. Why you never spoke of Mother—because she wasn't mine at all. That's why, even though I was the firstborn, everything belonged to him."
Her lips twisted into something between a smile and a sob.
"Because nothing was ever mine to begin with."
She laughed—bitter, hollow, broken. "How stupid I was. To think that if I just worked harder, you'd finally see me. But who can fight against blood? I lost before I even began."
"Sister—"
"I'M NOT YOUR SISTER!" she screamed. The sound tore through the chamber like a curse. "Don't you see? It was all a lie from the start! Every word—nothing but a filthy, ridiculous lie!"
The silence that followed was unbearable.
Even Aerisse, a celestial being, could feel the weight of that hatred clawing at the air.
Hatred dripped from every word.
Zaryssa is going to be furious when I get back, Aerisse thought grimly. The souls in her purgatory will be suffering triple by the time she's done.
Yeah, not letting that happen.
"Well," Aerisse said, brushing invisible dust off her sleeve, "if this Emperor doesn't want you, child—come with me. I want you."
The girl blinked, startled.
"Just in time," Aerisse continued smoothly. "I've been looking for a leader to unite all the human realms under me. Together, we'll form the Great Order alongside the other races of this world."
The princess looked like she was still processing what had just happened.
But time waited for no one. And the tension in the air had lingered long enough.
"So," Aerisse smiled faintly, "what do you say, Princess of Valthera? Instead of ruling one small kingdom… how about becoming the ruler of rulers—the Great Sovereign of Humankind?"