Page 64 of Haunted Crowns
Raphael didn’t flinch. “Get up.”
Yori remained still, head bowed, breath unsteady. “She is my child,” he whispered. “And I was not there.”
“Enough. Both of you.” Raphael’s voice cut clean through the chamber, sharp and certain, eyes shifting between his brother and his son.
Yori looked up, hollow-eyed and shattered. Stephan didn’t move. He just stared down at the marble floor as if it could give him answers.
But Raphael didn’t soften. “She is not porcelain. She does not break. She is Dragov. She knows pain and she knows how to rise.” The silence that followed pulsed with heat and fury not yet loosed, then Raphael’s voice dropped cold and final. “Do not insult her with your weakness.”
Yori inhaled, slowly. His shoulders squared, though tremors still ran beneath his skin. Then, like a man pulled from deep water, he rose, despite the grief lining his face.
“You are correct,” he said. “Let us go receive my little girl.”
Raphael turned to Stephan and placed a hand on his shoulder. Not to restrain, but to anchor.
Stephan flinched. Only now did he realize he had drawn blood from his own palms.
Raphael’s voice rang through the chamber like law. “To the High Estate.”
“To bring her home.”
And this time, they moved like men who would not fail her again.
My daughter,
I should be with you today, celebrating your sixteenth birthday. But duty keeps me away. I’m sorry.
You are the daughter your mother and I only ever dreamed of. The world has not always been kind to you, but never forget who you are. You are a Dragov. And Dragovs never yield. Never break. Not to power. Not to fear.
I love you more than this crown will ever let me show.
Papa
—Yori Dragov to his daughter
Chapter 13
The iron door groaned open, steel scraping stone.
Dr. Alfric Faelan, royal physician, and Commander Toren Saverius, Dragov’s fiercest warrior, stepped inside. The stench hit first: blood, rot, old screams soaked into stone. Then they saw her.
Eris lay motionless on the cold floor, her body slack against the stone. Consciousness clung to her by a fraying thread. Blood mapped her neck, shoulders, and chest in brittle, drying trails. Her torn blouse hung in tatters, exposing more ruin than it concealed. Her skirt was twisted around bruised, pallid skin. Her breath barely stirred the sour air.
Silence stretched, then cracked across their faces in a flash of disgust. A muscle ticked in Faelan’s jaw.
"Monsters," Saverius muttered, his voice raw. "They left her like a carcass."
Dr. Faelan dropped to his knees, fingers brushing her jaw and wrist. Her pulse was faint. “She is conscious. Barely.”
They moved fast, laying her flat against the cold stone, unforgiving against damaged skin.
Dr. Faelan’s hands skimmed her skin, assessing the bruises, blood, and any wounds Rurik had carved into her before reaching for the blood drip and sliding the needle into her arm. A slow stream entered her veins; her pulse fluttered, then surged, and finally, sound returned.
Muffled voices echoed, distant and blurred as a sharp weight settled in her arm, a pinch somewhere beneath the noise. Eris’s lashes fluttered. Her eyelids dragged like lead. Shadows loomed above her.
A voice broke through, urgent. “Princess, can you hear me?”
Eris tried to respond, but her lips barely moved. Whatever sound she made was too faint to catch the air.
