To ruin an Omega - Chapter 446: The Apple

Chapter 446: The Apple

LYSANDER

The garden was too quiet.

I walked the stone path between my mother’s rose bushes and felt the silence press against my ears. There were no birdsongs or even wind. All that was in this space was just the muffled sound of my own breathing and the crunch of gravel under my shoes.

The roses were still blooming. Red, coupled with white and even pale pink. My father had made sure of that. He hired gardeners to tend them. He paid for the best soil and the best fertilizer, and the best tools. He made certain that this space remained exactly as my mother had left it.

A shrine to a woman he had killed.

I stopped near the center of the garden where the largest rose bush grew. My mother had planted this one herself. I remembered watching her dig the hole. I remembered the way she had smiled when the first bloom appeared.

That felt like a lifetime ago now.

I sank onto the bench beside it and dropped my head into my hands.

Everything was falling apart.

My father had been planning this for only hours. But it was starting to feel like the seed had been born even longer. He had his ears around, and they started to chirp. People already fed him information about Skollrend. About Cian Donlon. About the internal politics and the power struggles and the weak points he could exploit.

He got nothing useful. Only that A Gabriel Donlon was arrested.

Gabriel’s arrest should have been the end of it.

I had felt something close to relief when I heard the news. The man my father had been waiting to meet with was finished, captured, and locked away somewhere in Skollrend, where he could not do any more damage.

The hope had, however, quickly crumbled before it even started to fly.

I thought it was over.

I thought maybe we could move on… Then Luna Pauline killed herself.

The news came through one of my father’s contacts. They claimed it was suicide. The clean cut one that left no room for interpretation. Not that my father remotely cared.

And just like that, the fire that had dimmed roared back to life ten times hotter.

My father wanted his healer.

He was not going to let anything stop him. Not Gabriel’s arrest. Not the political fallout. Not the risk of a potential war with Skollrend.

He would use every mechanism at his disposal… Every tool… Every person.

Including Hazel.

Including me.

I pulled the tie from my pocket and let it hang loose between my hands.

The silk was smooth and cool against my palms.

I still thought about wrapping it around my father’s neck. About pulling it tight until he stopped breathing. Until that calculating smile disappeared from his face forever.

Could I do it?

Really?

I thought I could. I had thought about it before. After my mother died. When the grief was still raw and the anger burned hot enough to make me reckless.

I had packed herbs that day. Nightshade. Hemlock. Things that would kill him swiftly in right amounts. None that would make it look natural.

I had been ready.

Then I saw Fia.

She had fallen and she had needed my help. And somehow… I stared. Somehow I cared.

I forgot about the herbs in my bag. I forgot about my father. I forgot about everything except her.

Despite falling from that height… She looked like she was free.

I wanted that. I wanted to be near it. To understand it.

So I let the plan die. I buried the herbs in the garden and told myself that there were other ways. Better ways.

I told myself I was being smart and strategic.

But the truth was simpler than that.

I was a coward.

I had always been a coward.

My hands tightened on the tie.

Hazel was right. Everything she had said in that dining room was right.

I loved Fia. Or I had loved her. Or maybe I still loved her and I was too broken to admit it.

And now my father was going to take her. He was going to lock her away and use her and break her the same way he had broken my mother.

And I was going to let it happen.

Just like I always did.

The anger rose hot and fast in my chest. It clawed at my ribs and pushed against my throat until I thought I might choke on it.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to tear something apart. I wanted to burn this whole garden to the ground and watch the roses blacken and curl.

But I just sat there.

Useless… Pathetic…

I wad deep in my thoughts when a hand touched my shoulder.

It was cold. So cold it burned.

I jerked back and looked up.

My mother stood beside the bench.

She looked exactly the way I remembered. Dark hair pulled back. Eyes the same shade of green as mine. She wore the dress she had been buried in. White linen with delicate embroidery along the sleeves.

She was not real.

She could not be real.

“You are not real,” I said.

My voice came out rough and boken.

She smiled. It was the same sad smile she used to give me when I was young. When I asked questions she could not answer.

“You came here for a sign, did you not?” she asked. “Why question the reliability of that sign now?”

I stared at her.

She moved closer and sat beside me on the bench. The cold radiated off her like winter air.

“I have to do it,” I said.

The words felt strange in my mouth. Foreign.

Then I laughed. The sound was bitter and sharp and wrong.

“Is it not insane?” I asked. “How much I was willing to take. How much I let this pack suffer through. All of it. Every cruelty. Every injustice. I stood by and watched.”

I looked down at the tie in my hands.

“But the moment it is her,” I continued. “The moment it involves Fia. Suddenly, I want to make a move. Suddenly, I am considering treason and patricide.”

My mother’s hand covered mine. Her touch was ice.

“But it is not the first time you have considered it,” she said.

I closed my eyes.

“When I died,” she continued. “You wanted to do it. You were close. You were even packing herbs that day to kill him and yourself.”

I opened my eyes and looked at her.

“The day you saw her,” my mother said. “She somehow gave you a new perspective. You held on to that. You carried it with you.”

Her other hand came up and cupped my face. Both palms pressed against my cheeks. She was still cold. So cold that it hurt.

“And now that new perspective is about to be taken from you,” she said. “I understand.”

Tears burned at the corners of my eyes. I tried to blink them back, but they came anyway. Hot, fast, and relentless.

“You cannot love a monster to goodness,” my mother said. Her voice was soft, as it was gentle. “If you keep obeying, you are just as bad as him. No matter how myopic and strange your catalyst is, it happened. It has happened. That is what matters, Lysander.”

Her thumbs brushed away the tears on my cheeks.

“Regardless of what started this new fire,” she continued. “It will burn into a brand new day for everyone your father has touched and will touch.”

The words settled in my chest like stones.

I knew what she meant.

I knew what I had to do.

“I know,” I whispered.

My voice cracked on the words, but I forced them out anyway.

“I know what I have to do.”

My mother smiled. It was different this time. It was different from her touch in the sense that it was warmer, and she seemed almost proud.

Then she vanished.

The cold disappeared with her. The air went still and the garden returned to its ordinary silence.

I sat alone on the bench with the tie still clutched in my hands.

The tears kept coming. I let them fall. I did not try to stop them or hide them or pretend they were not there.

I just sat there and cried for everything I had lost and everything I was about to lose.

For my mother. For Fia. For the person I could have been if I had been brave enough to become him.

Eventually, the tears slowed. Then stopped.

I wiped my face with the back of my hand and stood.

The tie hung loose in my grip. I looked at it for a long moment. Then I wrapped it carefully around my hand and slipped it back into my pocket.

I walked back toward the house.

The path felt longer now. Heavier somehow.

But I kept walking.

Because I knew what I had to do.

And this time, I was not going to let myself be too weak to do it.

Father had to die.