Hiding My Twin Heirs from the Ruthless Prince

CHAPTER 80

POV: Maximilian

They tell me at dawn.

I am already awake when the knock comes—sharp, urgent, wrong. The kind of knock that does not ask permission. I sit up before the door opens, my heart already racing, already bracing for something I do not yet have words for.

“Your Majesty,” the captain of the guard says, his face ashen. “There has been… an incident.”

I swing my legs off the bed. “Speak.”

“The tower,” he says. “It caught fire in the night.”

The room tilts.

For a moment, I can only hear the blood rushing in my ears. The words echo back to me, hollow and unreal. The tower. Fire. I rise too quickly, dizziness crashing through me, and grip the edge of the table until the world steadies.

“Was anyone inside?” I ask, though my voice already knows the answer.

The captain hesitates.

My chest tightens painfully. “Answer me.”

“Yes,” he says quietly. “Princess Celeste.”

The name hits harder than any blow my father ever struck me.

I am moving before I realize it—out of the chamber, down corridors that blur together, past servants who press themselves flat against the walls at the sight of my face. I don’t remember giving orders. I don’t remember how I reach the courtyard.

Smoke still stains the sky.

The tower is no longer whole.

Stone has collapsed inward on itself, blackened and jagged, a gaping wound carved into the palace’s oldest wing. Ash drifts lazily through the air, settling on banners and armor alike. Guards move through the ruins with grim efficiency, their voices low, reverent.

I stop at the edge of the cordon, my breath shallow.

“No,” I whisper.

The captain comes up beside me. “We searched the remains, Your Majesty. There was… very little left.”

My hands curl into fists. “Did you find her?”

He looks away.

“There were no remains that could be identified,” he says. “The fire was intense. The upper levels collapsed entirely.”

The words land one by one, slow and crushing.

No remains.

Lost.

Gone.

I stare at the ruins, my mind racing backward through time—through nights of whispered promises, through the way her eyes lit up when she believed me, through the last look she gave me in the tower, resigned and quiet.

I should have gone to her.

The thought splits me open with vicious clarity.

If I had gone that night—if I had ignored the threat, the council, the crown—she would not have been alone when the fire started. I could have pulled her out. I could have—

“Your Majesty,” someone murmurs. “The council is assembling.”

Of course they are.

They call it an accident.

A tragic consequence of unstable wards. A flare of magic that overwhelmed containment. An unavoidable outcome. The elders speak in calm, measured tones, hands folded neatly on the table, eyes carefully sorrowful.

“Her remains were consumed,” Lord Veyrin says. “There will be no body.”

A second empty coffin.

The thought makes bile rise in my throat.

“And the people?” I ask.

“They will be told the truth,” another elder replies smoothly. “That the lost princess perished in the fire. That her suffering has ended.”

I laugh once, harsh and broken.

“Suffering ended,” I repeat. “Is that what you call this?”

They do not meet my eyes.

“You wanted this,” I say, my voice low and dangerous. “Don’t pretend otherwise.”

“We wanted stability,” Lord Veyrin corrects. “And now, it is secured.”

Something inside me goes cold.

The funeral is held three days later.

Public this time. Grand. The cathedral fills with mourners who never knew her, who weep for a girl already buried once before. Black banners hang from every arch. Bells toll in slow, solemn rhythm.

I stand at the altar in full regalia, crown heavy on my head, and watch the empty coffin carried forward.

Again.

My mother does not look at me. She stares straight ahead, her face carved into something pale and brittle. My father stands rigid beside her, his expression unreadable.

When the priest speaks Celeste’s name, something in my chest caves inward.

Forgive me, I think, uselessly.

The words dissolve into the echoing space.

Afterward, the people bow. They murmur condolences. They speak of tragedy and fate and the cruelty of magic. No one asks why the tower burned. No one questions the timing.

They accept the story they are given.

I give a speech because a king must.

I speak of loss and sorrow and duty. I speak of a sister taken too soon. I do not speak of promises broken or choices made in the dark. The crowd listens, rapt, believing every word because they want to.

When it is over, I retreat to my chambers and lock the door.

The guilt does not come all at once.

It arrives in pieces.

In the quiet moments between councils, when I reach instinctively for a book I meant to bring her and remember there is no tower anymore. In the nights when I wake convinced I’ve heard her voice through iron, only to find silence pressing in on all sides.

I stop sleeping properly.

The map of Astoria hangs in my study, unchanged, immaculate. I stare at it often, tracing borders with my eyes, reminding myself of the choice I made. The war that did not happen. The blood that did not spill.

I saved the kingdom.

The thought tastes like ash.

If saving Astoria required sacrificing my sister—if peace demanded her life—then what kind of crown am I wearing?

The council praises my resolve. They speak of how I handled the tragedy with dignity. How the people trust me more than ever.

Trust.

The word makes my stomach twist.

I attend meetings. I sign decrees. I settle disputes. I am everything they wanted me to be. A king without hesitation. A ruler who understands necessity.

At night, I sit alone and imagine the tower burning, stone collapsing, smoke filling her lungs while she was still alive.

The thought becomes unbearable.

I stop imagining.

I bury it instead.

***

Months pass.

The scars on the palace walls fade. The tower’s ruins are sealed off, then dismantled entirely. New gardens are planted in its place. Roses bloom where iron once stood.

I do not visit them.

The people move on. They always do.

So do I—at least, on the surface.

Inside, something calcifies.

I learn how to close doors in my mind the way the palace closed them on her. I learn how to choose stability without flinching. I learn how to silence the part of me that asks what if.

This is what kingship requires.

Acceptance.

One evening, as I review trade documents, my gaze catches on an old journal tucked half-forgotten into a drawer. My hand freezes.

I pull it out slowly.

The leather is worn. The pages smell faintly of ink and dust. I flip through my own handwriting—notes about guards, about whispers, about lies.

About Celeste.

My vision blurs.

I close the journal and slide it back into the drawer, pushing it deep until it disappears into shadow.

Some truths cannot be revisited without unraveling everything that came after.

I stand and move to the window, looking out over a kingdom that sleeps peacefully under my rule. Fires burn in hearths. Children dream without fear of war.

Astoria is safe.

Celeste is dead.

The balance is complete.

I rest my forehead against the cool glass and let the weight settle fully onto my shoulders. I do not fight it anymore. I do not pretend I will undo what has been done.

I accept the crown not as a promise, but as a penance.

If this is the price of peace, then I will pay it every day for the rest of my life.

I straighten, turning back toward my desk, toward the endless work of rule.

The kingdom has forgotten my sister.

I will not.

But I will never speak her name again.

And that, I know with terrible certainty, is how I survive being king.