Brute 267

Chapter 267 

ATASHA’S POV 

My hand’s shook. 

63 

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“Or preparation for collapse, if war is too honest a word for what they intend. Someone is moving behind the Demon Fangs, someone who understands how to use beasts as weapons rather than threats. Someone is trying to break Arecor by turning our own land into the mouth that devours us.” 

Until now, Lady Kenneth’s words still echoed inside my ears. 

My pulse hammered, and I hated the way my thoughts returned to the moment the ground folded, the moment the beasts surged, the moment even the rain had not been able to wash away the sense that something deeper was waking. 

I rubbed my palms together. Lady Kenneth already left the seating area for a few minutes now, yet I still could not forget the last fragments of our conversation. 

“You think this is meant to destroy the kingdom,” I had said, my voice tight. 

Lady Kenneth nodded. “I believe that is the end of it,” she answered. “Because if Nightfall can be turned into a passage, then any territory can be turned into one, and if enough of them open, then there will be no border left to defend.” 

She paused, watching me carefully as if she expected anger, disbelief, denial, or all three. 

“What we do not know,” she added. “Is whether they intend to flood Arecor until it collapses under the beasts, or whether the beasts are meant to distract us while something else crosses through behind them.” 

Someone wanted to destroy Arecor by using beasts. 

The thought repeated in my head until it stopped sounding like a theory and started sounding like a sentence carved into 

stone. 

I could not decide which part of it made my stomach twist more, the idea that the Demon Fangs had grown bold enough to attempt it, or the idea that they were not the ones holding the knife. 

My hands were shaking, and I hated that my body was reacting before my mind could settle into control. I rubbed my palms together, trying to force the tremor out of my fingers, and it only reminded me of the rain and blood from that night, of the way my skin had felt slick with both as I healed Cassian again and again. 

Witches. 

Shadows. 

Demon Fangs. 

I did not know which of them stood at the center of this, but I could feel the shape of something watching from beyond the pieces we had named. Lady Kenneth had spoken as if the beasts were tools, as if the real danger was what might cross behind them, and that thought made my throat tighten. 

I drew in a long breath and pushed myself up from my seat, ignoring the way my muscles protested the movement. Grace straightened immediately behind me, already shifting her stance as if she expected a fight to break out in a garden. 

“We are going back,” I said. 

Grace did not argue 

this time, but her concern did not leave her eyes as she fell into step beside me. The flowers around us swayed under a light breeze that carried their faint scent. 

14:24 Wed, Jan 28 MR 

Chapter 267 

The palace corridors swallowed us as soon as we left the garden behind, stone and torchlight replacing flowers and tea. Every step echoed, not loudly, but enough that it reminded me how exposed I was in this place, how my presence did not belong here even as everyone kept calling me Your Highness. 

The capital did not feel like the North or Nightfall, and it did not feel like the wilderness either. It felt organized, controlled, and protected by power that did not need to show its teeth because everyone already feared it. 

Grace stayed close, keeping her hand near my elbow as if she could catch me again if my legs failed, and I hated how much I wanted to rip away from the help just to prove I was still strong. I forced myself to accept it, because pride had no place in a palace where people smiled while hiding daggers behind their backs. 

When we reached the restricted wing again, the two guards were still there, spears in hand, bodies positioned in a way that said they had not moved an inch since last time. 

This time, they did not block me. 

Their spears did not cross, and their eyes did not harden into refusal. Instead, one of them shifted aside with a tension that was careful, as if he had been told to allow me through but did not like it. 

I walked past them without slowing, and I felt Grace’s hesitation behind me before she followed anyway. 

Ahead, the corridor ended at doors so large they looked like part of the wall itself. The wood was dark, polished to a sheen, reinforced with iron bands that carried carvings I did not recognize. The crest of Arecor was etched into the center in metal that caught the torchlight, and the sight of it made something cold settle into my chest because it felt like stepping toward a place where words could become weapons. 

I raised my hand toward the handle. 

Yet, the doors opened before I could touch them. 

They moved silently, swung inward by unseen attendants or hidden mechanisms, and the space beyond breathed out like a chamber meant to hold authority and break anyone who forgot their place. 

Inside, the room was vast, built high and wide, its floor a polished stone that reflected torchlight in faint gold streaks. Pillars lined the walls like sentries, and banners hung between them, heavy cloth bearing Arecor’s marks and history. The air smelled faintly of smoke and old wood, but beneath it was something else, something sharp and bitter that reminded me of tension held too tightly for too long. 

I saw Cassian immediately. 

He stood near the center of the hall, sword no longer in his hand but the readiness still in his posture, the same way it always was when he expected violence even in a place that called itself safe. His coat was clean now, but his body still carried the quiet signs of battle, the way his shoulders sat like he could still feel the weight of claws, the way his gaze tracked movement without turning his head. 

Then I saw the man on the throne. 

He resembled Cassian in ways that made my breath hitch, not because they looked identical, but because the blood was obvious. The same structure in the face, the same bone–deep intensity, the same presence that made the room feel smaller than it actually was. He looked older, not just in years, but in the way his eyes held the kind of fatigue that did not come from sleepless nights alone. His hair was darker than mine but threaded with faint silver, and his expression held no softness 

at all. 

Cassian was sharp and deadly, the kind of danger that struck fast and clean. 

This man’s aura was heavier than that. 

It sat in the air like pressure, like the world had been told to bow and had done it without argument. It felt suffocating, not because he moved toward me, but because he did not need to. The space around him already belonged to him. The throne 

14:25 Wed, Jan 28 MAR 

Chapter 267 

did not make him powerful, because he looked like he would still crush people without it. 

For a heartbeat, the weight of him tried to slow my steps. 

I did not allow it. 

135 vatichars 

I walked forward anyway. The silence in the hall made my footsteps sound louder than they should have, the click of my shoes against stone cutting through the air like a warning that an outsider had entered a room that had been sealed in tension. Cassian’s gaze shifted to me. 

When I stopped at a respectful distance, I lowered into a shallow bow, enough to acknowledge rank without breaking myself in half. 

“Your Majesty,” I said, keeping my voice steady even as my pulse hammered against my ribs. 

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