Chapter 116: Do You Take This Healer as Your Curse? (2)

The chaos needed no invitation. It settled in on its own, with the naturalness of something that had been waiting the whole time for the right moment to explode, and when it did, it did so in every direction at once.

The Melian guards closed ranks around Kanary with shields raised and weapons ready. The royal guards responded from the other end of the hall, advancing as a unit with the determination of people who had a clear order and had no intention of ignoring it regardless of the circumstances.

The hooded figures, three on one side and three on the other, moved in directions that didn’t match each other, which made it clear their purposes didn’t match either. The result was a disorder of five simultaneous groups that couldn’t agree on who to attack first.

The few guests still pressed against the walls looked for exits with the quiet urgency of people who know when a situation no longer involves them. Some had personal guards pushing them toward side doors with the efficiency of people who also wanted out of there as fast as possible.

Ebony stayed three seconds at the main threshold taking in the full picture. Then she decided that standing still was worse than any other option and started moving toward the center of the hall, weaving around bodies with the focus of someone crossing a busy street during rush hour.

Kanary’s mother hadn’t moved a foot since her daughter walked in. She was still standing in the same spot, the bouquet still in her hands, weeks’ worth of composure coming apart in real time across her face. It wasn’t surprise. It was something colder, uglier — the expression of someone watching something they considered theirs get destroyed while they still can’t do anything about it.

"She should be dead." The words came out through her teeth, barely audible, before something in her gave way entirely and she started screaming.

She went at Kanary with the pent-up fury of someone who had held it together for too long and no longer had any reason to.

"Do you have any idea how long I’ve been planning this?" Her voice came out low at first, controlled, as if she were still deciding whether the girl was worth the energy. "Years. Years fixing what your father left broken, cleaning up the name he dragged through the mud, building something you never could have held up on your own."

Kanary said nothing.

"And you’re still alive." Her mother took a step toward her. Not like someone advancing — like someone who can’t believe what she’s looking at. "Still alive after everything I did to make this end once and for all. So I could move forward without carrying a mistake that wasn’t even mine to begin with."

"Mother—"

"Don’t call me that." Her voice hardened instantly, without rising in volume, which was worse. "You’re not my daughter. You’re a reminder of everything that went wrong. You’re the face of a man who ruined my life and had the decency to die before seeing the wreck he left behind." She stopped less than a meter away. "You should have gone with him."

The silence between them lasted as long as a held breath.

"Why didn’t you die?" She said it with the cold composure of someone who had been asking herself that question for a long time and still didn’t understand the answer. "I made it easy for you. I made it so easy that anyone else would have taken it as a sign. But not you. Always so stubborn, just like him — just as useless, just as incapable of doing a single thing right when asked."

Kanary didn’t answer. She stood still with her eyes fixed on her mother and her jaw locked, not stepping back, not changing expression when the first slap landed. Not when the second one came either. Her head turned with each impact but her feet didn’t move, and the look on her face when she turned back to the front was exactly the same: empty of visible pain, full of something that wasn’t resignation but a decision already made. 𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂

Ebony arrived just as the mother raised her hand for the third time.

"Kanary." She called out from one step away, more to mark that she was there than to say anything useful yet.

The hand didn’t go for her face. It went for the skirt.

The dagger appeared with the motion of someone who had practiced drawing it many times and had waited a long time to use it. No hesitation, no warning, straight forward.

Ebony didn’t think. She put her palm in the way.

The metal went through it side to side with a pain that shot up to her shoulder in a white, blinding flash. Ebony closed her fingers around the blade anyway, locking it in place, not letting go.

Kanary’s mother looked at her for the first time as if she were actually seeing her. Ebony held that look for one second, then turned her eyes to Kanary.

The girl was still standing. Eyes fixed on her mother. Shoulders tense. The same silence as before, but heavier now, with something building inside it that couldn’t find a way out.

"Hey." Ebony spoke slowly, her hand still pinned by the dagger. "Stop standing here like you’re a ghost. This is your life too, not just hers."

Kanary didn’t respond right away.

"Nobody has to obey someone who orders them to die." Ebony loosened her fingers just slightly, just enough to speak without the tension in her hand cutting off her voice. "I’ve felt it too. The urge to stop being in the way, the feeling that everything would be easier for everyone if you just stopped taking up space." A short pause. "It’s a lie. It’s always a lie. And whoever tells it to you doesn’t deserve to be believed. Not once."

The mother tried to pull the dagger back. Ebony tightened her fingers and didn’t let her.

"When you’re actually facing death," she continued, "what you remember isn’t the mistakes you made. It’s the things you didn’t finish. Everything you wanted to face and couldn’t because you gave up before you got there."

Kanary blinked. Something in her face shifted, barely, but enough for someone watching closely to catch it.

Ebony let go of the dagger. She turned toward Kanary’s mother and hit her clean across the jaw with everything her right arm had.

She didn’t measure anything.

The woman flew backward, knocked over the flower table on the side with a crash of wood and petals, and landed on the floor without moving, the bouquet still partially in her fingers and an expression that no longer expressed anything at all.

The silence that followed lasted exactly as long as it took everyone left in the hall to process what they had just seen.

Ebony looked at the result. Then she looked at Kanary.

"Sorry," she said with a grimace. "I went a little overboard."

Kanary dropped her eyes to her mother unconscious on the floor, then raised them to Ebony, and something in her expression shifted for the third time — toward something that had no easy name but was definitely not emptiness.

The laughter came from the other end of the hall.

Regulus hadn’t taken part in any of what had just happened. He had stayed by the altar that wasn’t really an altar, arms crossed, with the calm expression of someone watching a show he hadn’t asked for but didn’t entirely mind. When he laughed it was with the genuineness of someone who finds something truly entertaining and sees no reason to hide it.

Then he drew the ceremonial sword.

On the outside it was ornamental — golden engravings along the blade, a hilt carved with the precision of something made to impress. But the energy that began building along the edge had nothing decorative about it. Golden, dense, with the kind of heat that precedes something serious, something the few still standing felt in their chests before stepping back on instinct.

"You’ve ruined my wedding," he said looking at Ebony, no real anger in his voice, with the neutrality of someone taking stock of damages before deciding what to do about them. "That has a price."

"I was the last one through the door," Ebony answered. "Technically I didn’t organize any of this."

"Don’t pretend." Regulus tilted the blade toward her. "I can smell the energy from your uninvited guests. Magic copies smell like their source, and yours smell exactly like you." He swept his gaze across the wreckage of the hall with something close to the satisfaction of someone confirming what they already knew. "None of my men were scheduled to move now. That was for the wedding night. Someone moved the timeline up, and that someone is you."

Ebony didn’t respond right away. The accusation had a logic she couldn’t dismiss in two words without more information than she currently had.

"In any case," Regulus continued, and the energy along the blade intensified until the golden light threw shadows across the walls, "mother or daughter, I don’t care which. One of the two contracts is still executable." He moved his eyes between the unconscious body on the floor and Kanary standing in the center of the room. "This kingdom has an owner. That owner is me." He pointed at Ebony with the tip of the sword. "And you will die for putting yourself where nobody called you."

Ebony looked at the sword. Looked at the hand still bleeding. Looked at Kanary beside her, standing straight, with something in her eyes that hadn’t been there before.

"Well," she said, and settled the small shield onto her left forearm with the metallic click of something locking exactly where it belongs, "at least I made it in time for the interesting part."