The Rejected True Heiress (Liora and Callum) novel Chapter 539

I lifted my head and looked past the officiant, straight at Bianca.

“No,” I said.

For a very long moment, the word just hung there in the silence. The officiant blinked and leaned in, as if he’d misheard. “I—my lady, the correct response—”

“I heard you just fine.” I let the rose fall to the floor. “I’m not marrying him.”

Gasps first. Then a wave of murmurs rolling back through the rows, and above all of it, the sound of Bianca’s pleasant mask cracking straight down the middle.

“Guards,” she said. When the murmuring didn’t stop, she screeched it, every ounce of practiced grace gone in a single breath. “GUARDS! Seize her! NOW!”

Half the men along the walls didn’t move.

They just stood there, hands loose at their sides, eyes forward, faces blank. I watched Bianca’s gaze sweep the room, watched the exact moment she realized how many of them weren’t hers anymore, watched the panic flash behind her eyes.

“What are you doing?” she shrieked. “I gave you an order!”

Belinda stepped out from behind the pillar, face red, lips parted. My father stood slowly, the chair creaking as his weight lifted. A handful of men in Falcon’s Reach colors shoved up out of their seats near the front, hands going to their swords.

My fingers found the throwing star.

I’d rehearsed the motion a hundred times in my head. Draw, turn, release. My mother had probably done it faster, and I wouldn’t be nearly as good as her, but it didn’t need to be perfect. It just needed to draw blood.

The throwing star flashed once in the candlelight.

Bianca jerked back, and for a heartbeat I thought I’d missed. But then the star buried itself in the banner behind her, and a thin line opened across her cheek, and a single drop of blood welled up bright against her powdered skin.

Six hundred people stopped breathing at once.

Bianca stood frozen. Slowly, she raised her hand and touched her fingertips to her cheek. She looked at the red on them. Then she looked at me and simply stared, and for the first time since this nightmare began, I saw fear on her face.

The drop rolled down her jaw and fell.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify