Chapter 122

FELIX

Messages were pouring in from the southern border about the growing crisis in Barlow. The royal advisors were in a frenzy trying to salvage the situation without letting the truth about dragons spread, but it felt like the rumors had spread too wide to put a lid on them now.

I was still waiting to hear from Joseph and Isla about their visit with Isla’s family, but I was too antsy to sit still. I knew deep down that Fresonia needed me, needed their King, but I had put the kingdom before my wife for far too long.

It was time I started prioritizing Mila again. Or maybe, prioritizing her for the first time.

Which meant doing something that I really, really did not want to do.

The dungeons were even darker than I remembered.

The stone floors felt cool, even through my shoes. These dungeons had seen more activity in the last few months than in the last century, thanks to the coup. As I ventured deeper into the pit, prisoners rushed to their bars and called out for me. Some were begging for freedom. Some were cursing my name.

I ignored them. There was only one man down here that I had any interest in talking to.

Charles was sulking in the corner of his cell, hunched over with his back to me. I knew that he could hear my approaching footsteps, but he did not turn around.

“Charles,” I called out.

My brother slowly turned to face me, his face drawn and shadowed.

He did not look angry or vengeful or violent. Instead, he merely looked… sad. Lost. Broken.

Just like how I felt inside.

“Can we talk?” I asked, my words disappearing into the dark.

Charles merely continued to stare at me, unblinking. It was almost like a scene out of a horror movie, seeing my brother like this. I could not tell if he was not responding out of spite or out of a lack of awareness.

One would be much preferable to the other.

“Charles?” I asked again.

Charles broke our gaze to look away from me, his eyes focusing on the hallway behind me. Still silent.

I leaned a little further into the cell. “Please, Charles, talk to me.”

Nothing.

If he was truly angry with me, then there was only one path forward.

Charles may have surprised us all with his attempt at seizing the throne, but truthfully, it was not entirely out of character for him. All he had ever wanted, even when we were growing up, was to feel useful.

“Charles,” I pleaded, “I need your help.”

That finally sparked something in him. Charles released the tiniest breath.

“You look well,” my brother finally said.

“Esmeralda finally found a way to break my curse,” I said grimly.

Charles’s eyes lit up with curiosity. “So that means Mila…”

The words tasted acidic on my tongue, but I said them anyway. “Mlila is dead.”

Charles nodded to himself, funneling the information away. “Interesting.”

“That’s it?” I leaned against the bars of his cell. “No sorrow for my loss? No apologies for not giving me a fair warning?”

Charles leaned his head against the stone walls. “You banished Lady Isabella.”

Now that was a fascinating reaction. “For her crimes? Yes. Not because of you.”

“So then why are you here?” Charles asked. “It’s not like I have any interest in speaking with you. I assume you must want something from me.”

“Must I want something to speak with my little brother?” My tone came out a bit more mocking than I had intended, but Charles deserved it.

“Yes,” Charles said simply. “I’ve been down here for weeks now and have not received a single visitor. Including our precious mother and father.”

He said our parents’ names with venom. In my illness, I had not realized that my parents had never visited my brother.

For the first time in our lives, the true disparity between me and Charles became clear. My parents refused to visit their son in the dungeons, yet were committing gross, desperate crimes to save their eldest. Leaving him behind to rot.

Even though it was not my personal experience growing up, I was starting to be able to wrap my head around the inferiority he must have felt in our younger years. I had always been in the spotlight, had always been the focus of our education and parental attention, because I was the future King.

No wonder Charles had grown up so bitter.

If things had been different, if I hadn’t been so caught up in my own life, maybe I could have saved him. Maybe I could have saved all of them.

“I did not realize the situation was so dire with Mila,” Charles said softly. “Perhaps I would have done things differently.”

It was the first time that he had acknowledged any wrongdoing in the coup.

It was also the first time in years that I’d gotten any sort of glimpse into the little brother I had loved so dearly growing up.

“There is something deeply wrong with Fresonia,” I admitted finally. “Something I don’t quite know how to fix.”

Charles looked at me for a long moment. “There is something wrong with the magic.”

My jaw dropped.

“I can feel it,” Charles continued. “Can’t you?”

“I…” Truth be told, I had not tried to use my own magical senses to suss out any feelings of wrongness.

“I’m sure that it feels stronger here, underground,” Charles said. “But there is something deeply broken with the land. I thought what I was feeling was just a remnant of war. But it’s not, is it? It’s something much deeper. Something much worse.”

“I think it has something to do with Mila,” I said.

That seemed to strike a chord with my brother. He flinched, as if he’d been hit. He had never had a good poker face–I knew that he had some idea what I was talking about.

“What do you know?” I pressed him harder.

Charles looked at the stones for a long time before speaking.

“I am only saying this because of the love and loyalty I have for Fresonia,” he began. “Not the love and loyalty I have for you or your wife. I want to make that clear before I tell you my theories.”

I nodded in understanding, even though his words stung.

“Now, I don’t know anything for certain, but I am nearly positive that Mila is the center of all of this,” he continued. “She is the key to our survival.”

I shook my head. “I’m not sacrificing her again.”

Charles finally stood and walked over to the bars of his cell, leaning his head closer to mine. “That’s not what I mean.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Then what?”

Charles spoke slowly, deliberately. “The book I read in the library mentioned Mila’s death as an option for breaking the curse. It also stated that the prince’s Destined Bride possesses a great unknown power.”

My breath caught in my throat. “Power that could break the curse?”

For the first time in our entire conversation, Charles smirked. I saw him again–that cheeky, clever intelligence peeking through his current misery.

His words, though, changed my life.

“Power that could save Fresonia.”