Hiding My Twin Heirs from the Ruthless Prince

CHAPTER 78

POV: Celeste

Pain teaches faster than mercy ever did.

I learn this the first time I stop pulling away.

The wards react the moment I let the warmth rise unchecked, a sharp pressure slamming into my chest like a fist. My breath catches. My knees buckle. The instinct to retreat screams through me, loud and urgent.

I ignore it.

I press my palm flat against the stone wall and hold it there, teeth clenched, vision blurring as the pain blooms outward in hot, vicious waves. The wards hum, tight and furious, threads of force snapping into place beneath my skin. They are not gentle. They are not kind.

Neither am I anymore.

I focus on the sensation instead of fighting it. I break it down the way Maximilian once taught me to break down maps—rivers, borders, pressure points. The pain spikes when the warmth pushes outward too fast. It eases when I slow it, when I narrow it to a thin, deliberate stream.

Control, I realize, is not about suppression.

It is about precision.

I pull my hand away gasping, sweat slicking my skin, my heart hammering hard enough that I taste copper. I slide down the wall until I’m sitting on the floor, shaking with the aftermath.

When I look back at the stone, there is a mark.

Not a crack. Not yet.

But the surface is darker where my palm rested, as if heat has soaked into it.

I begin practicing every day after that.

Not wildly. Not recklessly. I am done with accidents. I am done with losing control. I approach the wards the way one approaches a blade—slowly, respectfully, with full awareness of how easily it can cut.

I choose a spot on the wall and return to it again and again. I press my palm there and let the warmth rise just enough to feel the wards bite back. I hold it until the pain sharpens, until it becomes almost unbearable, and then I pull away.

Over and over.

At first, the pain drops me to my knees every time. I curl inward, gasping, my muscles trembling, my vision swimming. I give myself minutes to recover, sometimes longer. I don’t rush it. I don’t punish myself for weakness.

I catalog it.

Pain flares brightest when I push against the center of the ward. It dulls faster when I angle the warmth, when I slide it sideways instead of straight through. The wards are not uniform. They are layered, woven by different hands, different intentions.

I begin to feel the seams.

On the third week—maybe the fourth, time is slippery here—I manage to hold contact for a full minute without collapsing. The pain is still there, burning and relentless, but it no longer overwhelms me. I breathe through it, slow and steady, my focus narrowing until the rest of the world falls away.

When I pull back, there is a hairline fracture in the stone.

It is real.

I touch it with shaking fingers, disbelief and something darker twisting together in my chest.

They can bleed.

The warmth changes as I do.

It no longer surges unpredictably or recoils when hurt. It listens. It waits for direction. When I focus, it gathers beneath my ribs like a coiled serpent, dense and patient.

I learn how to feed it without losing myself.

Fear used to summon it instantly, violently. Now I use anger instead—cold, precise anger sharpened by memory. I think of Elira’s blood on marble. Of Maximilian’s empty promises. Of the council murmuring about containment and sacrifice like they were discussing repairs to a roof.

The warmth responds beautifully.

It flows where I guide it, pressing into the wards not like a hammer, but like water finding a crack. Each time, the pain spikes—but each time, it recedes a little faster.

The wards weaken so slowly it would be invisible to anyone else.

To me, it feels like progress.

I practice other things too.

The lantern flame is my favorite. I sit cross-legged on the floor and focus on the wick, letting the warmth brush against it gently. The flame leans toward me, elongates, thins. When I pull back, it snaps upright again, obedient.

I learn how much pressure makes it flicker. How much makes it gutter. How much makes it stretch into a shape that doesn’t exist in nature.

I stop before it goes out.

Control is knowing when to stop.

The water in the basin teaches me patience. I let it ripple without touching the surface, small waves forming and fading at my command. When the wards protest, I ease off just enough to avoid the worst of the pain, then press again from a different angle.

Always testing. Always listening.

My body adapts faster than I expect. The constant ache in my chest dulls into something manageable, like a scar that still remembers being a wound. My hands stop shaking afterward. My recovery time shortens.

My mind grows quieter.

I stop replaying old conversations. I stop imagining apologies that will never come. There is no space for that anymore. Every thought I allow has purpose now, sharpened into a tool.

Hope rotted.

Faith burned away.

What remains is focus.

I mark progress with the wall.

The hairline crack becomes a thin fracture. The fracture spreads, branching like veins beneath stone skin. I don’t rush it. I don’t push hard enough to bring the tower down on my head.

Not yet.

Sometimes the pain flares unexpectedly, sharper than usual, and I have to brace myself against the bed to stay upright. When that happens, I close my eyes and lean into it, letting it ground me instead of break me.

Pain is honest.

It never lies about what something costs.

I welcome it.

One night, exhausted and aching, I dream of standing in an open field beneath a black sky. Power moves through me like breath, effortless and vast. There are no walls. No wards. No iron.

When I wake, my heart races—not with longing, but with certainty.

This is not madness.

This is adaptation.

They thought isolation would make me weaker. They thought suffering would make me docile. They thought pain would teach me fear.

They were wrong.

Pain teaches control.

Pain teaches patience.

Pain teaches exactly where to strike.

***

I stop screaming entirely.

The guards must think I’ve finally broken. They must think the tower has done its work. Food still arrives. Water still comes. No one lingers. No one checks for movement.

I am quiet.

I am learning.

Each day, I feel the wards resist less. Each day, the warmth responds faster, cleaner, sharper. I can direct it now without thinking, the way one directs a limb.

When I press my palm against the wall this time, the stone warms beneath my skin. The pain flares—and then flickers, unstable.

I smile into the ache.

“You’re tired,” I whisper, not sure whether I’m speaking to the wards or to myself.

I pull back slowly, deliberately.

The crack widens by a fraction.

It is enough.

---

I sit on the bed afterward, my body heavy with exhaustion, my mind calm in a way it has never been before. I think of Maximilian only once, briefly, like touching an old scar to test if it still hurts.

It doesn’t.

What he chose no longer matters. The crown. The council. The kingdom that forgot me. Those things belong to a world I am done begging to be part of.

I am not waiting to be freed.

I am preparing to leave.

When the time comes, it will not be an escape born of panic or desperation. It will be deliberate. Controlled. Final.

I lie back on the thin mattress and stare at the ceiling, listening to the quiet hum of the wards, the subtle strain now threaded through it like fatigue.

They built this tower to erase me.

Instead, they gave me a place to become something sharper than their fear.

I close my eyes, the warmth coiled steady and obedient beneath my ribs.

Soon, the stone will give way.

And when it does, I will not look back.