Reject me twice (Kira and Theron) novel Chapter 76

[Kira’s POV]

The silence is what I remember most.

When I stood at the foot of Maelric’s deathbed with the twins bundled against my chest, and watched the healers pull the linen sheet over his face.

The fabric settled over his features like snow covering a landscape — smoothing, erasing, turning something familiar into something gone.

Damon stood on the other side. Rigid. His jaw locked so tight a muscle jumped beneath his skin. Through the twin bond I felt him fracturing — not for the king he’d known, but for the father he never got the chance to truly have.

My father’s last words echo in my skull like shrapnel.

“Kira.” Malik’s voice reaches me from the doorway, low and steady. “The court steward needs your seal on the mourning decree before sundown. He’s asking about banner protocol, funeral processions, the closing of borders.”

“How long has he been waiting?”

“Since the healers left. I’ve held him off, but the man’s persistent enough to wear down a mountain.” His hand finds the small of my back as he crosses the room — warm, grounding. “I can handle all of it if you need more time.”

I meet his eyes, and the concern in them makes my chest ache. “The realm needs to see its queen standing. If I disappear into grief, the court will smell blood before his body is cold.”

“You just lost someone you loved, Kira. The court can survive an hour of patience.”

“They don’t know what patience means, they know opportunity.” I hand him Lyra, and she stirs against his chest, one small fist curling into the leather of his weapons harness. “Tell me about security. What have you done since this morning?”

His expression shifts — the tenderness folding behind the commander’s discipline. “Double patrols on every corridor between here and the nursery. Rowan’s team sweeping the east wing on rotation. No one enters or exits without my personal clearance.”

“You think someone would move this quickly?”

“The Order may be shattered, but it still have edges sharp enough to cut.” He adjusts Lyra against his shoulder, his free hand checking the blade at his hip. “I won’t give anyone the chance to get close.”

The palace shifts into mourning within hours. Black banners unfurl from every tower like rivers of ink. Damon handles the formal declarations — seven days of mourning, suspension of petitions, borders sealed until after the funeral.

I feel the cost of every steady word he speaks:

You don’t have to hold it all in, I press through the connection.

I’m not holding it in. I’m holding it together. A pause, raw at the edges. There’s a difference. I’ll fall apart when the realm can afford it.

Damon—

Don’t. Let me be the king they need today, and I’ll be your brother tonight. I can’t do both at the same time, Kira.

I let him go. Some grief needs solitude before it can bear witness.

That night, I tell Malik to sleep. He stands in the nursery doorway, arms crossed, the stubborn set of his shoulders speaking every argument his mouth won’t voice.

“You haven’t rested since before Maelric passed,” I say. “That’s nearly two days, Malik.”

“I’ve gone longer.”

“I know you have, but that doesn’t make it wise.” I cross to him and press my palm flat against his chest, feeling the steady drum of his heart beneath scarred skin.

“I need you sharp tomorrow, not running on fury and willpower. Give me one hour alone with our children, and then you can go back to being invincible.”

He exhales through his nose — his version of conceding — and presses his lips to my forehead before he goes.

I lift Castiel from his crib and settle into the chair by the window. He sleeps deeply, dark lashes fanned against round cheeks, and I study his face the way I’ve done every night since he was born.

Beneath the nursery window, carved into the stone floor where moonlight falls in a pale rectangle — a symbol, fresh.

The cuts are clean, stone dust still powdering the edges, lines deliberate and unmistakable. A crown split in two.

“Malik.” My voice comes out flat, stripped of everything except the cold flooding my veins. “Come here, look at this.”

He’s beside me in two strides. I watch his face as recognition lands — the way his expression doesn’t change, which tells me everything about how dangerous he finds this. When Malik shows nothing, the threat is at its worst.

“The Broken Crown,” he says quietly. “Someone carved their mark inside the nursery!”

“They were waiting.” My palm presses flat against the carved stone, and the grooves bite into my skin.

“Whoever did this knew the twins’ power would surface. They watched from inside these walls, patient and invisible, and chose this exact moment to announce themselves.”

His hand closes over mine, lifting it gently from the symbol, turning my palm to check for cuts. Even now — even with the ground shifting beneath us — he checks my hands first.

“The Order was supposed to be dismantled,” I say. “We hunted every last supporter. Burned the safe houses to ash.”

“Someone survived. Or someone new picked up the banner and started recruiting.”

His dark eyes meet mine, and what I find there is the thing I love most and fear most about this man — absolute, immovable certainty. “Either way, they just told us they know exactly where our children sleep.”

I look back at the crib where Castiel and Lyra breathe softly in the dark, their small bodies impossibly fragile against what’s circling them.

Maelric’s voice rises one final time from the grave I haven’t yet dug. It always comes.