I Am The Game's Villain

Chapter 814: Alvara Freydis Teraquin SS [4]

The gentle sound of birds chirping stirred me from sleep.

At first, the sound seemed strangely close, too clear and delicate to belong to some distant garden below. When I opened my eyes, I found the source of it immediately. Two small birds were perched near the window just ahead of me, resting against the carved stone frame as if they had every right to be there. They chirped softly to one another and pecked lightly at each other in that tender, absentminded way creatures did when they belonged together. Perhaps they were a pair. They looked peaceful, untouched by war, untouched by grief, untouched by the heaviness that still lingered in every corridor of the castle.

Slowly, I pushed myself upright and looked around.

My room.

My own quarters.

The recognition drew a quiet sigh of relief from me before I could stop it. A few days had already passed since that wretched war had ended, yet even now I found myself half-afraid I would wake once more in that hateful chamber within the Utopian Tower. I would have despised it if my first sight in the morning had been those walls again, that cold and unsightly place that seemed to carry misery in its very stones.

But it was over.

At least, it was supposed to be.

I rose from bed and summoned my maids, who came at once and prepared my bath. Soon I lowered myself into the perfumed water and let it rise along my skin, warm and silken, until it reached my shoulders. I drew my knees together and closed my eyes, sinking deeper into the scent and heat, trying to let it soothe what still felt restless inside me. The bath was exquisite, as everything prepared for me always was, but even surrounded by comfort I felt no lighter. Home offered no true relief. Not after everything that had happened. Not after what I had seen, what I had endured, and what I had begun to feel.

Still, it was better than that tower.

That place had been ugly in every sense, not merely in appearance. It had possessed a kind of foulness that no architecture could conceal. Even remembering it made my mood sour.

After nearly an hour spent in silence and thought, I finally rose from the bath. I wrapped a towel around myself and stepped across the floor toward my dressing room, where I selected one of my gowns with careful consideration before putting it on. Once again, I summoned my maids.

Each of them had been personally chosen by me. I trusted no one else with my appearance, with my dresses, with my hair. Most of all, with my hair. They knew exactly how I wished every strand to fall, exactly how each layer was to be arranged, exactly how an Elven Princess ought to present herself. Depending on the day, it could take half an hour, or an entire hour when greater care was needed. It was not vanity alone. It was necessity. One did not bear my station carelessly.

I watched myself in the mirror while they worked with utmost care, their hands gentle and deft as they brushed and arranged my hair behind me. My own reflection gazed back with all the composure expected of me. I lifted a hand and let my fingers drift lightly over a lock of hair, coiling it around one finger as I stared at my face.

I had to look perfect.

In truth, I already was. I had been raised to know my worth, my beauty, my bearing. But that was not enough. I had to appear perfect in every possible sense, because that was who I was meant to be. An Elven Princess could not allow flaw, weakness, or disorder to show itself, not even in the smallest detail.

My fingers slid from the strand of hair, and before I realized it, they had moved to my lips.

At once the memory returned, vivid in its clarity.

That day.

The pressure of his lips against mine.

And he had even pushed his tongue…

Heat rushed immediately to my cheeks, and I lowered my hand at once as if I had been caught doing something shameful.

How disgraceful.

“Hurry up,” I said sharply.

The maids flinched at the edge in my voice and obeyed without a word, moving faster. I said nothing else. I kept my eyes on the mirror, though I no longer truly saw my reflection. I saw only that moment replaying itself again and again in my mind, and the more I tried to dismiss it, the more stubbornly it remained.

When I was finally ready, I left my quarters and went first to find Bryelle.

I did not find her in her room, which troubled me more than I would have liked to admit. Perhaps my concern was excessive, but after everything that had happened to her, I could not help it. Even a brief absence was enough to put unease into my chest. My steps quickened before I could stop myself.

Fortunately, there had been no cause for alarm.

She had simply risen earlier than I had and was seated in one of the small living rooms of the castle, one of the quieter places where she and I often spent time together. But this morning she was not alone.

Amael was with her.

The moment I saw him, my heart gave a sudden beat, an unpleasant feeling, and yet not wholly unpleasant either. It bothered me with how swiftly it came, how deeply it reached. There was something humiliating in how vulnerable that sensation made me feel, as if my own body had learned to betray me before I could command it otherwise. I recovered quickly, or at least I forced my expression to suggest that I had.

Bryelle was smiling as she spoke to him, clearly at ease, and when she noticed me in the doorway her whole face brightened.

“Sister!” She called, beaming at me with a warmth that always drew an answering smile from me before I could resist it.

And I did smile.

But then Amael turned toward me and smiled too, and mine stiffened at once.

I felt the mistake immediately and buried it beneath a colder expression, letting my gaze sharpen into something sterner.

“What are you doing here?” I asked stupidly when I was the one who asked my mother to summon him here.

“Just spending some quality time with Bryelle,” he replied casually.

Had any other human dared say such a thing, I might have considered breaking every bones in his body for the insolence of it. The thought came to me as naturally as breathing. Yet with him, it was different. Infuriatingly, incomprehensibly different.

He was human.

Worse, he was a Half High Human and the other part of him was even worse, a simple Human.

By all reason, I should have hated him. I should have felt revulsion at his presence, or at the very least a cold disdain. That would have been natural. That would have been proper. But I felt none of it. None of what I was supposed to feel appeared in me when I looked at him.

Instead, there was only that same disorienting mixture I had begun to know too well: a strange sense of safety, rare enough to perturb me on its own; a thrill that ran through me like the first sharp breath before a fall; a restless excitement I did not wish to name; and beneath it all, something dangerously close to nervousness.

It was unlike me.

Truly unlike me.

And yet I knew why.

It was because of what he had done to me.

What he had done for me during the war.

To be saved by a Human should have been humiliating.

To be saved by a man, like some helpless princess from the old fairy tales, should have disgusted me even more. Those were the kinds of stories I had adored as a child, before I grew old enough to despise them for what they implied, that a woman had to be weak in order to be cherished, that she had to wait for rescue in order to be loved. I had long since cast such foolish fantasies aside. Or at least, I had believed I had.

Yet to stand on the side of the one being saved was something different from mocking it from afar.

Worse still, I had been saved more than once.

And through that, I discovered something about myself I would rather not have known: beneath all my pride, beneath my station, beneath the mask of control I wore so carefully, there was still a childish part of me. Still a girl at heart.

“Elder sister.”

Allen’s voice broke through my thoughts.

I turned and saw him standing there.

“Mother is calling for you,” he said.

For once, I was almost grateful for the interruption. It gave my unruly heart a chance to settle, if only a little. Without another word, I turned and walked away, letting the rhythm of my steps carry me down the corridor.

I made my way through the castle until I reached the throne hall.

Inside, my mother was speaking with one of the nobles. Her expression was regal and composed, but there had been something altered in her ever since the war ended, something quiet and wounded that she concealed from everyone else, though not well enough to hide it from me. When she noticed me, she brought the conversation to a swift close and dismissed the noble at once.

Soon, we were alone.

For a moment, she simply looked at me in silence.

Since the end of the war, and since Kendel’s betrayal, much had changed between all of us. Though my mother would never display weakness openly, I knew she had been deeply hurt by what had happened. More than hurt, perhaps. There was guilt in her now. Guilt that she had not seen the darkness growing in Kendel after Leena’s death. Guilt that she had not understood the pain festering so close to her.

At last, she spoke.

“I am leaving to see Kendel,” she said.

I was silent for a brief moment.

He was imprisoned now.

“I see,” I replied.

“You do not wish to see him?” she asked.

“I do not,” I answered coldly.

I could not forgive him. Not for what he had done to me. Not for what had nearly happened to Bryelle. Some injuries did not fade simply because the danger had passed. Some betrayals remained alive in the blood long after the moment itself was over.

My mother said nothing at first.

Then, perhaps deciding not to press the matter, she shifted the conversation.

“How is he doing?”

At once, I felt my heartbeat betray me again.

It was ridiculous how quickly it happened. Just the mention of him, and already warmth stirred in my chest in a way I could neither command nor conceal.

“Good,” I replied, far too shortly.

“Do you like him, Freydis?”

That made me look at her at once, my eyes widening slightly.

“You went as far as requesting that I bring him here, daughter,” Mother said.

Heat rose to my cheeks before I could prevent it.

“He saved Bryelle and me,” I replied quietly.

“Is that all?” she asked.

I did not answer.

I heard her footsteps approach, soft against the floor, until she stood before me. Then she raised a hand and touched my cheek with a gentleness so unexpected that it loosened something tight within me.

“I am sorry, my daughter,” she said softly. “For the terrible mother I have been. For not being there when you needed me most.”

I held her gaze for a second, then looked away.

“At first… I agreed to Kendel’s plans,” I said, averting my eyes.

“Even so, it is still my fault,” she said. “As a mother, I failed to see your pain. And his.”

I did not answer.

I was still hurt. Some parts of me remained raw and ugly despite everything. I still felt revulsion toward Hybrids. Toward Humans. I despised them. Loathed them. Those feelings had not vanished simply because one man had complicated them.

“All I wish for is your happiness, Freydis,” she said at last.

I bit my lip lightly, then raised my eyes to meet hers again.

“If there is to be a man in my life,” I said quietly, “then I wish it to be him, Mother.”

The words left me feeling exposed in a way few things ever had. To confess such a thing so plainly, and to my own mother of all people, filled me with embarrassment. Yet I could not keep hiding behind silence. I had been dishonest for too long, with others, and with myself.

To my surprise, she did not seem shocked.

Only the faintest curve touched her lips.

“Even though he is Half High Human and Half Human?” She asked.

The worst kind.

The kind I should have found unbearable.

And yet…

“I… see him differently,” I replied, almost bashfully.

Her expression softened in a way that made her look less like a queen and more like the mother I had needed for so long.

“My precious daughter,” she said, drawing me gently into her embrace. “I would grant any wish of yours. But when it comes to your future, I still need to know whether he is truly the right man for you.”

I understood her concern. Even after all I had told her, after all he had done for Bryelle and me, she could not cast aside caution so easily. She, too, had been betrayed by blood. She, too, had been wounded by trust misplaced. Her hesitation was not cruelty. It was fear, born from love.

So I only nodded against her.

But deep within my heart, I already knew the answer.

***

He was the right man for me.

The only man I could ever truly love.

And that was why I could not accept it.

I stood before a beautiful golden tree, its branches bathed in a divine glow, every leaf shimmering as though lit from within. It was the kind of sight meant to inspire peace, divinity, perhaps even hope. Yet none of that light reached me. None of its radiance could fill the hollow ache inside my chest. I felt empty standing there, as though something vital had been torn out of me and all that remained was the shape of grief.

“You do not look well.”

The figure standing before the tree turned to face me.

Freya Ruvelion.

The Utopian Princess.

I said nothing.

I only lifted my gaze to meet hers.

“Shouldn’t you be attending that foolish ceremony for the dead your people are holding?” She asked.

A ceremony.

Under any other circumstance, I would have scoffed. I would have mocked the whole thing without restraint, called it what it truly was, a farce dressed in mourning, staged by hypocrites who wished to wash blood from their hands through ritual and tears. But I did not even have the strength for contempt anymore.

I had already mourned my elder brother.

That was the only mourning I could bear.

I would rather die than stand among those people and grieve beside them as if we shared the same sorrow. We did not. They were the cause of everything. Every one of them. Central Vedelia and all those who upheld its decisions, its sanctimonious customs, its blind faith in its own righteousness, they had chosen Cyril as the Prophetess’s groom. They had placed him there. They had set the stage for everything that followed.

He had caused it.

He had caused those deaths.

He had caused my brother’s death.

I could accept many things. I could force myself to acknowledge betrayal, tragedy, even ruin.

Even my brother’s death.

But I couldn’t accept his death.

I had not even seen his body.

We were supposed to see each other again.

He had promised me before he left.

So why…?

My body trembled faintly. A terrible emptiness began to rise inside me.

I knew that feeling. I had known it before. I had felt it when I lost my father. I had felt it while watching Leena die. That same awful hollowness, as if one more step would send everything around me collapsing into silence.

No.

I refused it.

I would not accept this.

I could not.

Not until I saw his body with my own eyes.

“Is he alive?”

The words left my mouth more quietly than I intended.

Freya regarded me for a moment.

“You came all this way just to ask me that?” She asked calmly.

I had nowhere else to go.

There was no one else who could answer me.

The moment the question had begun consuming me, it was her I thought of. Her, before anyone else.

“You are the Priestess,” I said at last, my voice strained, “and he is the Guardian.”

My golden eyes remained fixed on hers, hollow and unblinking.

I needed to know.

More than anything, I needed to know.

Freya slowly turned to face me fully, fixing me a silence stare.