Reject me twice (Kira and Theron) novel Chapter 32

[Damon’s POV]

My sister was glowing.

She didn’t know it—or maybe she did and simply couldn’t contain it—but there was a warmth about her this morning that had nothing to do with the sunlight slanting through the council chamber’s tall windows.

It lived in the softness around her eyes, in the way her mouth kept threatening to curve into a smile she’d bite back just a second too late.

And her eyes kept drifting. Not obviously—Kira was learning the art of court composure faster than anyone expected—but I caught every stolen glance toward the door where Malik stood at his post, face arranged into a mask of professional vigilance.

To anyone else, the Commander was simply doing his job. But I saw the way his dark eyes tracked her with a gravity that had nothing to do with duty.

Through the twin bond, I felt it all. Her happiness poured through the connection like sunlight flooding a room that had been shuttered for twenty-three years—bright, warm, almost overwhelming.

This was new. This fierce, trembling joy that hummed beneath her composure like a second heartbeat.

I was glad for her. Genuinely, deeply glad. My sister had survived horrors I couldn’t fully comprehend, and she deserved every ounce of the happiness radiating through our bond.

I held onto that gladness deliberately, examined it to make sure it was real and not performance, and was relieved to find it solid.

But her light made my own shadows darker by comparison.

The council session ground forward with the relentless tedium of governance. Lords presented reports on rebuilding efforts.

Diplomatic envoys from three allied territories had sent formal requests for renewed agreements.

The transition of power required a thousand small decisions that no prophecy or blood trial had prepared us for.

King Maelric sat at the far end of the table. Not presiding. Not commanding. Simply watching. His age was undeniable now—silver had conquered every strand of his hair, and deep lines carved into his face mapped decades of grief and war.

But his eyes missed nothing. They moved between Kira and me with a quiet pride he never voiced, and I felt the weight of his approval like a hand on my shoulder.

When Lord Ashworth—old blood, older prejudices—suggested that perhaps shared authority diluted royal magic, I opened my mouth to respond.

But Maelric’s gaze landed on the lord like a blade finding its mark, and the silence that followed was more devastating than any reprimand. Ashworth shrank back into his seat. Maelric said nothing. He didn’t need to.

When the session ended, Kira left with Malik a respectful three paces behind her, though through the bond I caught the flutter of warmth when his hand brushed her elbow at the doorway. Maelric rose slowly, nodded to me once, and followed his attendants out.

I stayed.

The throne room was different when it was empty. Larger. Colder. The twin thrones sat side by side on the raised dais—two seats of equal height, carved from the same pale stone, unprecedented in a kingdom that had only ever known singular rule.

“She held me when I had nightmares and sang me back to sleep, and I loved her with everything a child has to give. And every single moment—was calculated. Engineered. A performance designed to turn me into a weapon she could aim at the throne.”

The words came harder now.

“So when someone smiles at me and says something kind, when someone offers warmth or tenderness or anything that looks like love, all I can think is—what do they want? What’s the angle? What am I being shaped into this time? I can’t stop analyzing, can’t stop looking for the trap, and I know it’s broken, I know it’s not how people are supposed to—”

“Not everyone is Seraphine,” Kira said firmly, and I could feel her conviction through the bond, fierce and bright.

“What she did to you was monstrous, but it doesn’t mean every hand extended toward you is holding a knife.”

I looked at her then, my twin, my other half, the only person in this world I trusted without reservation. “How am I supposed to know the difference?”

The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was full—full of her love, her sorrow, her desperate wish to give me an answer that would fix something that couldn’t be fixed with words.

She had nothing. And neither did I.

We sat there together in the hollow throne room, two crowns and no answers, while the afternoon light shifted across the stone floor and the weight of everything we’d survived pressed down on us like a hand that would never quite lift.