The Rejected True Heiress (Liora and Callum) novel Chapter 535

Callum’s POV

We planned to make it to the royal city by mid-afternoon, which should have given us just enough time to prepare.

That was, if the plan worked.

But there were two hundred of us, give or take. Many had come on foot in wolf form. Cars carried the rest. We had to take back roads and travel in small clusters rather than one big group in order to avoid being seen. Some students refused to come at all, choosing to go home and be with their families instead of getting involved.

I couldn’t blame them. But it made everything move much slower than we anticipated.

By the time we arrived in the city, every bell in the damn place was already going off. I could already see the stream of wedding guests moving toward the palace, more a river than a line, as if everyone in the city had been invited to witness the spectacle of their beloved princess being married off to a monster—and dead by morning.

That was good. The numbers would help us slip in without being seen. Hopefully.

I grabbed Zane’s arm before he could keep walking.

“You know what to do,” I said, voice low. “Disperse those with weapons throughout the groups. Have them wait at the points we talked about before. We’ll strike once the royal guard steps in.”

Zane nodded. “And what if the royal guard doesn’t step in?”

“Then the cause is probably lost and we’re all gonna die,” I said simply.

“Great pep talk.” Zane didn’t laugh, but he didn’t not laugh either, which from him these days was close enough.

He clapped my shoulder once, and then he was gone, swallowed up by two hundred bodies falling into step behind him. I went the other way, alone, because the plan only worked if nobody saw me coming.

I didn’t have much more of a plan than that, if I was being honest with myself.

All I knew was that I had to find a place above the dais. There, I would wait for the right moment. I would know it when I saw it. I always did. Liora always did. Some way, somehow, we would find a way to each other, and put an end to this. Together.

It wasn’t much, but it was what I had, and right now, I had to rely on that for as long as I could.

Getting onto the palace grounds wasn’t the hard part. Half the city had turned out to watch, vendors and gawkers packed three deep along every street leading to the gates, and I walked through all of it with my hood up like I belonged there.

The hard part was the scaffold the wedding crew had left standing against the kitchen wall, three stories of bare wood between the ground and the gallery that ran along the top of the throne room. By the time I hauled myself over the railing and flattened against a support beam, my arms were shaking and sweat was making my hoodie stick to my back.

I crawled over to the edge and peered down. The room below me was already half full. Red and black banners, the colors of Falcon’s Reach, were hanging from every column. Guests in their finest attire packed the rows of chairs, fanning themselves, murmuring to each other, none of them looking up.

No sign of Liora yet. No sign of Bianca either, or the witch.

That could be a good thing or a bad thing.

“I thought I might find you up here.”

I turned with a start. He was standing a few feet down the gallery, dressed for the wedding in a new suit that I knew he couldn’t afford—or at least, he couldn’t afford it before he made this blood pact with Bianca and the witch.

I shook my head. “That’s where you’re wrong. If you had backed Liora instead—”

“Liora is a child who couldn’t tell her own ass from a hole in the ground a month ago,” my father cut me off. “And she will die tonight. Because she’s just one person. One little girl. She can’t stand up against the forces that have gathered here. The entire royal military is against her. Her own father is against her. You can’t change that.”

I stared at him. So he didn’t know. He didn’t know that I hadn’t come alone. He thought this was some kind of chivalrous suicide mission.

My father had always underestimated me. My entire life, he’d treated me like a fool trying to fill in his shoes. He’d tried to beat me into the mold he’d created for me and he’d been so angry when I made my own in a shape that he saw as unfit.

Well, for once, I supposed that could be used to my advantage.

“Fine,” I said, straightening. “I’ll go with you tonight. I’ll let Bianca have me. I’ll drop my mission and let you sell me off to pay off your debts. On one condition.”

“And what is that?” he asked.

I pulled my knife from my boot and threw it onto the floor between us.

“Fight me,” I said, raising my fists. “Man to man. No weapons. No wolves. Just you and me, as it was always meant to be. Beat the shit out of me. Just like I know you love to do.”

My father’s eyes glimmered with barely concealed excitement, like he’d been waiting my entire life for this.

“If you win,” I said, “then I’ll concede.”