Chapter 201 - 200: The True Villain Behind It All!

Eleanore’s mind raced back through everything, Theon’s confession, the careful way he’d claimed ignorance of the black magic and the border attacks, insisting Thornberry’s scheme was separate from whatever else was happening. She’d noted the discrepancy at the time and let it slide beneath the weight of everything else demanding her attention.

"You let us believe we’d won," she said, voice hollow with the realization. "The whole confrontation at the party. Thornberry’s arrest. It was theater."

"Not entirely theater," Mavros said. "Thornberry’s crimes were real, and his punishment was deserved. But convenient, too, for someone else’s purposes, a tidy resolution that closed the case in everyone’s mind precisely when the true architect needed you distracted and unguarded."

He took a step closer, something almost regretful in his expression now, though it did nothing to soften the threat underlying his presence. "I’m sorry it has to be this way, Grand Duchess. Truly. You seem, by every account, to be a remarkable woman. But an empire is an empire, and I’ve waited a very long time for an opportunity like this one."

Eleanore’s heart pounded, fear for herself tangling with fierce, desperate protectiveness for the child she carried and for Stella standing frightened beside her, and somewhere beneath it all, a sharp, burning fury at just how thoroughly they’d all been deceived.

"He won’t get what he wants," Eleanore said, forcing steel into her voice despite the terror clawing at her chest. "Whatever this fragment is, whatever he thinks he’s owed, I refus eto giev it back."

Mavros’s expression flickered, something almost like admiration, quickly suppressed. "No," he said quietly. "I did’t imagine you will. Which is precisely why he wanted you brought here quietly, rather than risk facing you with your husband standing beside you."

He glanced toward the darkening tree line, where the faintest shimmer of movement had begun to stir. "Fortunately for him, Grand Duchess, your husband is currently very far away, busy with War."

Mavros moved before Eleanore could react, closing the distance between them in a single stride and gripping her arm with bruising force. "Enough talking," he said, already dragging her toward the tree line. "We’ve lingered here too long as it is."

"Let her go!" Stella lunged forward, fear for Eleanore momentarily overriding every instinct for self-preservation, but two of Mavros’s men intercepted her easily, hauling her back despite her furious struggling.

"Take her somewhere she won’t be a problem," Mavros called over his shoulder, not even bothering to look back. "But don’t hurt her. I do not wish to face her husband’s wrath. I should rather have him as my supporter." He laughs. "If he can save her, that is."

Eleanore twisted violently against his grip, catching one last glimpse of Stella being forced toward a narrow stone structure at the base of a hillside, an old drainage gutter, half-collapsed and forgotten, clearly meant for nothing more than water runoff during storms.

"Stella!" she screamed, the sound tearing raw from her throat as she watched the men shove Stella down into it, sealing the opening with a heavy iron grate before she could climb free.

"She’ll be fine," Mavros said dismissively, tightening his grip as Eleanore fought against him with every ounce of strength she had left. "For now."

They traveled the rest of the distance in a blur of fear and adrenaline, Eleanore’s mind racing uselessly for some way out even as the terrain shifted beneath her, growing louder, more chaotic, the unmistakable sounds of battle rising up ahead, shouts and clashing steel and the acrid smell of smoke thick in the air.

The royal palace grounds of Zhipher had been transformed into the heart of the conflict itself, soldiers clashing violently across scorched courtyards, and Mavros dragged her directly through the center of it with unnerving calm, as though the chaos around them posed no threat to him whatsoever.

He tied her up onto a wooden cross and raised platform at the heart of the battlefield, binding her wrists to a crude wooden cross with rope that cut sharply into her skin, and then, with theatrical cruelty, called out across the battlefield in a voice amplified by some unseen magic.

"Duke Sinclair! Commander Hael! I present to you, the Grand Duchess!"

The effect was immediate. Eleanore saw the fighting falter in patches across the field as soldiers turned toward the sound, and then, unmistakably, saw Caelestis’s head snap up from where he’d been locked in combat, his expression shifting from fierce concentration to raw, horrified shock the moment he spotted her bound and exposed on the platform.

"Eleanore!"

He was moving before the sound of his own voice had fully died, cutting through the battlefield with a desperation that ignored every ounce of tactical caution, Hael close behind him with the same wild urgency.

"Ah, ah," Mavros called out, raising a hand lazily, and both men skidded to a halt as dark tendrils of magic surged up from the ground around the platform, forming a shifting, hungry barrier between them and Eleanore. "Careful now. Rushing in blindly never ends well."

"What have you done with her?" Caelestis snarled, sword raised, eyes blazing with a fury Eleanore had never seen from him before.

"Nothing yet," Mavros said. "But I’d hurry, if I were you, Commander Hael." His gaze shifted deliberately to Hael, something cold and calculating in his expression. "Your wife is currently resting in a rather unfortunate drainage gutter near the western hills. Charming little structure, really, completely dry at the moment, but I’m told the storm rolling in tonight tends to flood that particular gutter rather quickly. She won’t have very long once the rain starts."

Hael went white. "You—"

"You have perhaps two hours before the water rises high enough to be a problem," Mavros continued, unbothered. "I’d suggest choosing quickly which duchess you intend to save, gentlemen, because I assure you, I have no intention of making this easy for either of you."

Caelestis’s jaw tightened, torn between the desperate need to reach Eleanore and the horror of Stella’s fate ticking down somewhere in the darkness. Beside him, Hael looked frozen, caught in an impossible choice that no man should ever have to make.

"Go," Caelestis said suddenly, voice hard and certain, not once looking away from Mavros. "Hael. Go save Stella. Now."

"I can’t just leave you here to—"