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Home / Urban / THE FORGOTTEN SON-IN-LAW / Chapter One hundred and sixty-five
Chapter One hundred and sixty-five
Author: Sugar boy
last update2025-10-03 20:00:52

Dawn had not yet broken, but Adrian was awake. He always was before the light — sleep came to him in fragments, restless and thin. Tonight, it had not come at all.

He walked the edge of the camp, cloak pulled against the cold, listening to the low stir of soldiers dreaming.

Some muttered names of the dead; others clutched their blades even in slumber. The whole army felt brittle, like glass waiting to shatter.

Then he heard it.

A sharp cry. Muffled. From Selene’s tent.

Adrian’s hand moved instinctively to his sword. He crossed the distance in three silent strides, every muscle tense. He pushed aside the flap — and froze.

Selene was there, kneeling, drenched in sweat. Her scar glowed faintly, angry red in the half-dark. Her sword lay across her knees, trembling with the echo of some unseen battle.

Her eyes shot up to meet his, wide and raw, as though she had been caught not in shame but in a kind of nakedness.

“Adrian…” Her voice broke on his name.

He stepped inside, closing the flap
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  • Chapter Two hundred and Eleven

    When the Walls RememberThe wind had sharpened into a scream.Selene stood by the window slit, her breath fogging against the cold stone, as the howling outside rose to a pitch that seemed almost alive.Varin had gone still — utterly still — one hand resting on the hilt of his sword, his head tilted slightly toward the sound.“They’ve found us,” he murmured.Before she could ask how, the first impact shook the outer gates. A thunderous clang rang through the citadel, followed by another, and another — rhythmic, purposeful.Selene’s pulse quickened. “How many?”Varin’s eyes glinted. “Too many.”He turned to her with a look that cut through hesitation. “Stay behind me.”“I won’t,” she snapped. “I didn’t come this far to hide behind anyone’s blade.”The faintest hint of a smile touched his lips — grim, approving. “Then you remember what it means to be queen after all.”The torches flickered as they moved toward the great doors of the hall. Snow drifted down from the cracks in the roof,

  • Chapter One hundred and Ten

    The Ghost of KingsThe great hall of Orren was a cathedral of shadows.Frost glittered along the pillars like veins of glass, catching the dull gold of the torches Varin had lit. The air smelled of iron and old magic — the kind that lingered long after the last spell was cast, as if the stones themselves refused to forget.Selene moved slowly through the chamber, her steps echoing like whispers between the walls. Each breath she took rose in faint, silver clouds.“This place…” she murmured. “It feels alive.”“It is,” Varin replied from behind her. “Orren was built on the blood of seers. The stones remember everything that happens within them — every oath, every death, every betrayal.”She turned, watching him as he stripped off his gauntlets. His face looked older now than she remembered — not by years, but by weight.His once-black hair was silvered, his armor dented and dulled by countless unseen wars.“You said you still served Adrian,” she said quietly. “Then tell me the truth, V

  • Chapter One hundred and Nine

    The Keeper of the NorthThe snow began to fall long before Selene reached the gates.Not the gentle flakes of peace she remembered from her childhood in Veyne, but cold razors that cut through the mist, stinging her skin and biting through her cloak.Her horse had long since fallen behind, exhausted by the climb through the frost-veiled passes. Now she walked, her boots cracking ice over the dead stones of the forgotten northern road — the old road to the Citadel of Orren.Few remembered Orren now. Fewer still dared to go there.The place had been abandoned decades ago after the Great War — a fortress built by men who once swore loyalty to Adrian’s bloodline.Her steps echoed hollow between the cliff walls, the sky dimming to the bruised purple of near-night. Every sound made her twitch — the scrape of her blade at her side, the hiss of her breath through her teeth. She knew she was being followed.The serpent’s scouts never stopped hunting.Still, she pressed on. The scar beneath

  • Chapter One hundred and Eight

    The Fire and the StormThe rain fell like shards of glass.Each drop hissed against the ground, boiling on contact with the faint trail of light that followed Selene’s steps.She moved through the valley like a ghost — cloak torn, eyes fixed ahead, her arms clutching the sleeping child to her chest.The storm above raged with unnatural fury. Every bolt of lightning split the sky in patterns too deliberate to be random.It wasn’t weather.It was wrath.The gods had found her.The First SignThe ground trembled.From the mist behind her, a colossal silhouette began to form — wings that shimmered like molten metal, eyes burning with the pale fire of creation.The Seraph of Embers.Once the highest of the celestial hosts — now a hunter for the old gods.Selene had seen him only once before, when she and Adrian had defied the Flame Pact. He had stood upon the altar then, sword blazing, demanding her soul as payment for love.Now he came again — not for her, but for the child.“Run all yo

  • Chapter One hundred and Seven

    The Heart RemembersThe ruins of Oramar slept beneath a shroud of mist.Once a citadel of kings, now nothing but stone skeletons and whispering ivy.Selene had learned to love the silence here — the kind of stillness that didn’t judge her.The kind that let her forget that she was once queen of shadow and flame, that her name had been whispered like both prayer and curse.But tonight, even the silence trembled.She felt it in her bones first — a low, distant thrum that echoed through the ground, through her scar, through the very air she breathed. It was faint, but unmistakable.Adrian.Selene’s breath caught. Her hand went to her chest where the old wound still glowed faintly beneath the skin, a scar that had once been her crown and her curse.For months it had lain dormant. Now it pulsed with life — gold light threading through the black veins of shadow.She rose from the stone where she’d been sitting and turned toward the sleeping child wrapped in linen and ash beside the hearth.

  • Chapter One hundred and Six

    The Voice Beneath the FlameWhen the firestorm died, silence took its place — a silence so heavy it hummed in his bones.Adrian remained on his knees, chest rising and falling, the echo of his roar still trembling in the air. The molten sea had gone still, as though stunned by its own reflection.The shaft of sunlight that had pierced the void flickered once — then dimmed — but did not vanish.It remained, faint and trembling, like a promise whispered through chaos.Adrian forced himself to stand. The ground beneath him had cooled into obsidian glass, veins of gold glowing faintly beneath the surface. Each step sent ripples through the light, as if the world itself were aware of him.Then he heard it — not a sound, but a resonance deep within his chest.A slow, endless heartbeat.Not his own.“Do you hear it?” a voice murmured, smooth as smoke. “The pulse that keeps the world from falling apart?”Adrian turned sharply. The figure of the Serpent was gone.In its place stood a woman —

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