The Rejected True Heiress (Liora and Callum) novel Chapter 524

The guards pulled me up off my knees, and I let them.

The room they put me in was on the east side of the palace. A bed, a wash basin, a window with bars over it. The window faced the city rather than the courtyard. The door locked behind them with a final sound.

I sat on the edge of the bed and exhaled.

The wedding was tomorrow evening. Marcus was already moving. The plan hadn’t changed. All I had to do was get through the night.

I was still sitting there when the lock turned again.

The door opened, and Belinda came in.

She was alone. She looked around the room once and sneered at me.

I stayed on the bed. I didn’t stand.

“I know Marcus escaped,” she said.

I kept my face still.

“He wasn’t as careful as he thought he was.” She said it with a faint tilt of her head, neither pleased nor annoyed. Like it was of no consequence to her. “It doesn’t matter much now. He was never my only piece on the board.”

“And your other pieces?” I asked.

“Your mother,” she said with a sigh, “as you well know, has been unwell for quite some time.” She moved to the foot of the bed and stopped there, looking down at me. “She remains alive because I’ve allowed it. A woman in her state…” She clicked her tongue. “No one would think to question it if she took a turn for the worse.”

I was staring at a point just past her shoulder. It was the only thing keeping my face neutral. The only thing keeping me from wrapping my fingers around her throat.

“Truthfully,” she went on, “I wanted you brought back here with your head in a separate box. But you decided to play the game, show up of your own accord, pretend that you will obey—to what end, I wonder?”

I let out a slow breath once she was gone, once I’d heard the lock click for the last time that night. Belinda had left with a smug smile and a warning. Be good, she had said.

The thing was, I’d stopped caring about being “good” the moment I saw my friend’s body go limp with arrows jutting out from her back.

I was taking that bitch down tomorrow for what she’d done. Even if it happened in a fiery blaze. Even if it shattered what little we had left.

Either way, Belinda and her minion sitting in my father’s throne would pay for everything they had taken from me.

And in the end, it would be them who found themselves standing at the edge of a long fall.

Not me.

And certainly not any of my friends.