Hiding My Twin Heirs from the Ruthless Prince

CHAPTER 79

POV: Celeste

I have waited years for this.

Years of practice, of pain, of loneliness, of hurt and betrayal. Years of my anger building up… Just for it to collapse tonight.

The tower breaks at midnight.

I know the moment before it happens, the way you know when a storm is about to split the sky open. The wards hum differently tonight—ragged, uneven, like a breath drawn too shallow. The cracks in the wall glow faintly when I press my palm against them, heat answering heat, power recognizing its own reflection.

I don’t rush.

I learned long ago that haste is how accidents happen, and accidents are what they used to fear most. What they still fear, I suspect. I sit on the floor with my back against the wall and let the warmth gather, slow and deliberate, until it coils beneath my ribs like a held breath.

This is not rage.

This is decision.

I stand and place both palms flat against the stone, fingers spread, feeling the seams I’ve memorized over months of careful pressure. The wards push back immediately, a sharp burn lancing through my chest. My vision flickers. I grit my teeth and lean into it, narrowing the flow until it slides between the layers instead of slamming into them.

There.

The resistance wavers.

I push again, steady and focused. Pain blooms, hot and familiar, but I welcome it. Pain sharpens me. Pain tells me I’m exactly where I need to be.

The wall shudders.

A crack snaps open with a sound like bone breaking.

The wards scream.

It’s not a sound anyone else can hear, but I feel it—a tearing, a sudden unraveling as threads of force snap one by one. The pressure in my chest spikes violently, then collapses inward, leaving me gasping as power surges outward unchecked.

Stone fractures outward from my palms, fissures racing across the wall in jagged lines. Dust explodes into the air, choking and thick. I stagger back just as a section of the wall collapses inward, stones crashing to the floor with a deafening roar.

The lantern shatters.

Darkness swallows the room.

For a heartbeat, there is nothing but the sound of my own breathing and the distant, panicked shouts of guards echoing up the stairwell.

I laugh.

It comes out wild and breathless, torn from my chest before I can stop it. The sound echoes through the tower, raw and free.

“Too late,” I whisper into the dark.

I move quickly now.

I tear a strip of cloth from my sleeve and wrap it around my mouth and nose, coughing as dust fills my lungs. The warmth responds instantly to my urgency, flaring brighter, sharper, illuminating the fractured stone in a dull, pulsing glow.

Fire answers me.

It sparks first—small, angry tongues licking along the broken edges of the wards as residual magic ignites the air. Then it catches, spreading fast as the power I’ve held back for years pours outward.

The tower burns.

Flames race up the walls, hungry and uncontrolled now that the wards are failing. The heat is intense, pressing against my skin, but it does not hurt me the way it once did. I guide it away from my body instinctively, shaping it into a path instead of a weapon.

I run.

The corridor beyond my room is chaos—smoke, falling debris, shouts growing louder as guards rush upward. I keep to the shadows, ducking low as a beam collapses ahead of me, sparks raining down like furious stars.

“Fire!” someone yells. “The tower’s on fire!”

Good.

I slip past a pair of guards coughing in the smoke, their faces streaked with soot and fear. They don’t see me. They don’t expect anyone to be running out of the tower. To them, I am a ghost already.

The warmth coils tight and obedient, clearing a narrow path through smoke and flame as I descend the stairwell. Stone cracks beneath my feet. The tower groans, a deep, wounded sound that reverberates through my bones.

I don’t look back.

At the base, the iron door stands warped and half-melted, its wards flickering weakly. I press one hand against it and release the last of my restraint.

The door tears free from its hinges with a shriek of metal.

Cold night air slams into me, sharp and clean, stealing my breath.

For a moment, I just stand there.

The sky is vast and dark above me, stars scattered like careless promises. The palace grounds stretch out ahead, lit by torches as guards swarm toward the burning tower. Bells ring in frantic bursts, alarms echoing across stone and grass.

I am outside.

The realization hits me with stunning force. My knees buckle, and I catch myself against the wall, laughing and crying at the same time, the sound torn loose by disbelief.

I did it.

I step away from the tower just as part of the upper level collapses inward, flames roaring higher, the structure buckling under its own weight. Guards shout orders. Someone screams that no one could have survived.

They are right.

The girl they imprisoned didn’t.

I pull the hood of a discarded cloak over my head and slip into the chaos, moving opposite the flow of guards, my steps quick and sure. I keep to the edges of torchlight, letting shadows swallow me whole.

No one stops me.

No one looks twice.

By the time the fire is brought under control, I am already beyond the palace walls, my feet pounding against earth instead of stone, my lungs filling with air that tastes like freedom.

I run until my chest burns and my legs tremble.

I don’t stop until the palace lights are a distant glow behind me, until the tower is nothing more than a smudge of smoke against the horizon.

When I finally collapse beneath a stand of trees, the world spins and steadies around me. I lie on my back, staring up at the stars, my body aching with exhaustion and exhilaration in equal measure.

I am alive.

Let them bury another empty coffin. Let them mourn a second time, convinced they have finally erased me. Let them believe the danger died in the flames.

I rise with the sun and walk away from Astoria without looking back.

I take the road south at first, then veer off into paths that don’t appear on any map Maximilian ever brought me. I avoid towns. I avoid questions. I keep my head down and my power wrapped tight beneath my skin, a secret I no longer need to test every hour.

The warmth is different now.

Freer.

Untethered.

It hums beneath my ribs like a promise kept.

As the palace disappears behind hills and distance, something inside me settles, solid and unyielding. The last thread tying me to who I was snaps quietly, without ceremony.

I am not Princess Celeste.

I am not the cursed spare locked away in a tower.

I am the girl who walked out of fire and did not burn.

Whatever the world remembers of me, whatever lie they choose to tell, it no longer matters. I will decide who I become now, far from crowns and councils and brothers who learned how to choose power over love.

The road stretches ahead, empty and endless.

I smile into the morning air, the taste of smoke still clinging to my tongue.

They thought the tower was my grave.

They were wrong.

It was my beginning. Under a new name.