The Rejected True Heiress (Liora and Callum) novel Chapter 509

Liora’s POV

Mrs. Oakes was dead.

Callum told me about what he had seen while we drove along the winding mountain pass, avoiding the main roads to the city. Zane was sleeping in the back seat, snoring quietly.

He mentioned it when I suggested contacting her for help in rescuing Marcus. Said that someone slit her throat under the bleachers after I was taken to prison. The words washed over me, one after the other, like a knife piercing my chest.

“A man in sunglasses,” he said, his knuckles turning white around the steering wheel as he tightened his grip. “Had the stink of my parents all over him.” He shot me a sidelong glance. “Figuratively speaking, I mean.”

“You think they’re working with Bianca again?” I asked. My voice was hoarse. I wanted to cry at another life lost, but my eyes were too dried up.

“Are you kidding me?” The sound Callum made might have been a laugh, but it was wry and had no humor in it, a hollow, angry sound. “I would bet everything I have on the fact that they went crawling back to her the moment she was named heir.”

My jaw tightened. I looked out the window, but the landscape was too dark to see, so I only caught a brief glimpse of my own reflection—battered, tired, bloody—before I quickly looked away, unable to bear looking at myself right now.

“They must have found out she was working against them,” I mused. I pressed my hand to my chest, wishing I had more grief to spare for the woman I had only briefly known. Right now, there was nothing left. Maybe someday, but at the moment, Mia was taking up all the space in my chest.

Callum nodded. “Which means the school might also be compromised,” he said. “If they put Alder back in power, I don’t want to consider what might happen to the wolfless, or anyone else who might have supported you.”

But, if we were going to accomplish anything we had set out to do, then I needed to follow Zane’s lead and get some sleep.

…

The royal city was exactly as it always was in the sunlight. Gleaming, bright and cheerful, clusters of buildings carved with white stone that shone in the morning light.

Even with my eyelids drooping from a mere two hours of sleep last night, I couldn’t help but appreciate the familiar, comforting beauty of the city that I had always loved.

At this hour, the markets were bustling with people. Women carrying baskets of produce. Children darting between stalls, their fingers and cheeks sticky from the sweet buns that I used to beg Marcus to buy me whenever we went on an excursion to the city. Men exchanging coins for tools and rare animal pelts.