Chapter 389: Runaway Princess

Aurora laughed. It was a short, harsh sound that silenced the room.

“How convenient,” she said. “She gets a crown, a father, and a royal bloodline, while I get to stand here and watch everyone explain why I was never supposed to have any of it.”

“That is not what I said,” Vance replied.

“You didn’t have to.”

Aurora turned toward the driver. “Tell them what you told us last time. Tell them about the woman with the pendant.”

The driver swallowed. His gaze shifted briefly toward Ramon before returning to Vance.

“The woman who accompanied the men that night wore an oval silver pendant with a dark stone,” he said. “Lord Ramon recognized it. He said it belonged to Lorena.”

Ramon’s face hardened at the name.

“Tell them the rest,” he said.

The driver took a breath. “The woman was with the men who carried the second child toward the BloodMoon border. I could not see the child’s face clearly, but I heard one of the men say the baby had come from the royal carriage.”

Aurora stared at him.

“And you are certain about the pendant?”

“I am certain of what I saw.”

Sonia had gone very still. Destiny noticed her hand resting against the table, her fingers curled so tightly that her knuckles had lost their color.

Ramon turned toward her. “Sonia?”

She did not answer at once. Instead, she looked at Aurora, and something in her expression made Destiny’s stomach tighten. It was not hatred. It was recognition mixed with a grief that seemed to have been waiting years for the right name.

“My late father, Alpha Fenris,” Sonia whispered.

Ramon frowned. “What about him, dear?”

Sonia swallowed. “My father was Alpha Fenris. Before I married you, there were things about his household I never understood. Lorena was there. She had been close to him, closer than anyone admitted publicly.” She explains to Aurora.

Aurora’s face had gone white.

“What are you saying?”

Sonia looked at her, struggling to keep her voice steady. “I cannot tell you everything from a pendant and a driver’s memory. But I remember the it all, it was not a rumor. Lorena had been involved with my father. If she was carrying a child when she disappeared before my brother, Wolg took her, and if the records and the testimony are right, then you may be her daughter.”

Aurora shook her head violently. “No.”

Vance stepped toward her. “Aurora, listen to me.”

“No! You told me I was your daughter.”

“I believed you were.”

“You raised me as your daughter. You gave me that name, that title, that life. Now you want to tell me I belong to someone else?”

“No one is saying you do not belong here.”

“Then why is everyone looking at me as if I am a mistake?”

No one answered.

Destiny wanted to approach her, but she could see the fury building behind Aurora’s eyes. For years, Aurora had believed she was the royal heir. Now the same evidence that gave Destiny her identity seemed to be stripping Aurora of hers.

But Aurora was not a mistake. Whatever had happened that night, she had been a child, just as Destiny had been. Neither of them had chosen the circumstances of their birth.

“Your life with Vance was real,” Destiny said carefully. “He raised you. That doesn’t disappear because we learn something about your parents.”

Aurora looked at her.

“You expect me to be grateful to you?”

“No.”

“You expect me to accept you as my sister?”

Destiny hesitated. “I don’t expect anything from you today.”

Aurora’s expression twisted.

“How generous.”

She turned toward Vance. “You knew I had been taken. You knew there was a chance my entire life was built on a lie, and you said nothing.”

Vance’s silence answered her before he could speak.

Aurora stepped backward. “You let me believe I was your daughter because it suited you. You let me hate her because I thought she was trying to take what was mine.”

“I was afraid of losing you,” Vance said.

“You lost me anyway.”

She spun toward the door.

Elara called her name and hurried after her, but Aurora did not slow down. She crossed the hall and disappeared through the entrance before anyone could stop her.

Destiny made to follow, but pain caught at her side. Dane steadied her before she could take another step.

“Let Elara reach her first,” he murmured. “You can barely stand.”

Destiny watched the open doorway. She had spent so long wondering what it would mean to discover her birth family. She had not considered how the truth might shatter someone else’s sense of belonging.

Vance remained motionless at the head of the hall. For the first time since Destiny had met him, the king looked utterly powerless.

“I should go after her,” he said.

“Not yet,” Sonia replied quietly. “She needs time to be angry.”

Ramon moved closer to his wife. “And we need to establish the truth before we make promises about who she is.”

Destiny looked at the Heart Stone in the priestess’s hands. Its silver lines were still, its light quiet. The stone had revealed something about her blood, but it could not tell her how to repair what the truth had broken.

Vance turned back to Destiny.

“I will not demand that you come to Silvercrest as my heir tomorrow. I will not ask you to choose between the people who raised you and the family you were born into. But when you are ready, I want the chance to know you.”

Destiny studied his face. She saw regret there, but also something that resembled hope.

“I can’t promise what our relationship will become,” she said.

“I understand.”

“But I won’t pretend this conversation changes nothing.”

“It should change something,” Vance replied. “It should have changed everything years ago.”

For a long moment, Destiny could not find an answer. Then she nodded once.

It was not forgiveness. It was not acceptance of a crown or a promise to become the princess Silvercrest expected. It was simply an acknowledgment that the truth had finally been spoken, and that neither of them could return to the lives they had lived before it.

Outside, a door slammed.

Destiny turned toward the sound.

Elara had returned to the corridor, alone. She looked at Vance, then at Destiny, her face troubled.

“Aurora is gone,” she said. “She took a horse and rode out before the guards could reach the stable.”

The hall erupted in movement.

Vance ordered the gates opened and sent riders after her, but Destiny barely heard the commands. She was staring at the doorway, imagining Aurora riding away with nothing but anger, fear, and a truth she had not been given time to understand.

Dane’s hand settled on her shoulder.

“You can’t save everyone by chasing after them,” he said softly.

Destiny leaned against him, exhausted.

“No,” she whispered. “But I don’t want her to believe she has no one left.”

Beyond the palace walls, the riders scattered across the road in search of Aurora. Inside, the royal family stood among the pieces of a history that had finally come to light.

And Destiny, the daughter Silvercrest had lost, understood that finding her family was only the beginning. The harder task would be learning how to hold the truth without letting it destroy the people who had survived it.