Hiding My Twin Heirs from the Ruthless Prince

CHAPTER 77

POV: Celeste

I know something is wrong because the night stays empty.

At first, I think I’ve miscounted the hours. The tower plays tricks on time—stretches it thin, folds it back on itself—so I sit on the edge of the bed and listen harder, my breath shallow, my hands clenched in my lap. I wait for the sound I know better than my own heartbeat. The careful steps. The pause. The knock that comes twice and then once.

Nothing comes.

I tell myself he is late.

I tell myself the council is keeping him busy, that the crown has not settled comfortably yet, that kings do not move freely the way princes once did. I tell myself he will come tomorrow night and laugh softly at my fear, apologize the way he always does, press a book into my hands like a promise made of paper and ink.

I light the candle he left me last time and sit beneath its glow until the wax pools and hardens. I lie down without blowing it out, afraid that darkness will make the silence louder.

The door does not open.

The next night, I am ready.

I stand when the lantern outside dims, my body already braced for the pain of the wards shifting, my mouth forming his name before I realize it. I stop myself. I don’t want to sound desperate. I don’t want to scare him.

I wait.

Minutes pass. Then an hour. Then another.

I pace the length of the room, counting steps until my feet ache. Five from wall to wall. Turn. Five back. Turn. The stone is cold beneath my palms when I touch it, familiar now, almost intimate.

“Max,” I whisper, too softly for anyone to hear.

The iron does not answer.

When sleep finally takes me, it is shallow and brittle. I dream of corridors that never end, of doors that close just before I reach them. I wake with my heart racing and the taste of fear sharp on my tongue.

He will come tomorrow, I tell myself.

He promised.

***

Tomorrow comes and goes.

Then another.

Then another.

Food still arrives. Water still appears in the basin. The tower remains efficient in its cruelty, meeting my physical needs with cold precision while starving something deeper. No one speaks. No one lingers.

Maximilian does not come.

The hope I’ve been nursing begins to sour.

It’s a slow process at first, like fruit left too long in the sun. Hope doesn’t vanish all at once. It wilts. It bruises. It begins to smell wrong. I press my hand against my chest when the realization first forms, as if I can push it back inside.

Something has happened.

He would not abandon me without a reason. He wouldn’t. He promised. He swore it on everything he was.

Unless everything he is now is something else.

I sit on the floor with my back against the wall and replay our last conversation until the words blur together. Soon. The way his voice wavered. The way he didn’t meet my eyes. The way resignation had crept into his posture like a shadow.

I was so busy holding onto the promise that I didn’t hear the warning beneath it.

By the fourth night, I stop standing at the door.

By the fifth, I stop lighting the candle right away.

By the sixth, I stop whispering his name.

The silence grows teeth.

It bites into me slowly, gnawing at the edges of everything I once believed. I find myself listening not for footsteps anymore, but for proof—any sign that I was wrong, that this is all some elaborate mistake.

I hear distant bells one afternoon. Not celebratory this time. Measured. Official.

A proclamation, perhaps.

My stomach twists.

He has chosen.

The realization lands without drama, without a crash. It settles into me like sediment at the bottom of a river, heavy and inescapable.

He chose the crown.

I press my forehead against the stone wall and breathe until the ache in my chest dulls. The wards hum faintly beneath my skin, responding to my pulse, my tension. The warmth inside me stirs, slow and deliberate.

Of course he did.

I laugh then, a short, broken sound that surprises me. The echo bounces back, thin and mocking.

What did I expect?

That a kingdom would kneel to a promise made in the dark? That centuries of fear would crumble because a boy loved his sister? I was a child when I believed that. I am not a child anymore.

He did what kings do.

He chose stability over truth. Order over love. A thousand nameless lives over one inconvenient girl locked in a tower.

Over me.

Anger comes later.

At first, there is only a numb ache, a hollow place where hope used to live. I go through the motions of survival on instinct alone—eat, drink, sleep, wake. The days blur together, indistinguishable except for the slow accumulation of resentment.

Then, one night, something snaps.

It happens when the door opens and closes without ceremony, when a guard sets the tray down and leaves without a word. I stare at the bread, at the soup, at the apple rolled to the same exact place it always is.

This is my life now.

I feel the warmth surge hard and fast, no longer timid, no longer restrained by fear. It responds to the truth with ruthless clarity.

I am alone.

They all left me.

My brother most of all.

The anger burns clean and bright, slicing through the numbness like a blade. I stand abruptly, my heart hammering, my breath sharp. The wards react instantly, pain flaring in my chest, but I don’t retreat.

“Good,” I whisper through clenched teeth. “Hurt.”

The pain sharpens my focus. It always has.

I press my palm flat against the wall and hold it there, letting the warmth push outward, letting the wards bite back. The stone vibrates faintly beneath my hand.

I pull away before the pain overwhelms me, gasping, my vision swimming.

I am not crying.

That realization hits me with strange force. I wipe at my face automatically, then stop when my fingers come away dry.

I haven’t cried since the night he last came.

Something inside me has closed, sealed tight.

***

I think about Elira then.

About her hand on my arm, steady and unafraid. About the way she smiled like kindness was natural, like it didn’t require courage. I think about how quickly that kindness was punished, how easily it was erased.

I think about my parents’ faces, about the way fear hollowed them out until love became conditional.

I think about Maximilian, standing in lantern light, swearing he would save me.

People lie when they are afraid.

Some lies are quieter than others.

The realization settles deep, reshaping something fundamental inside me. Trust, I understand now, is a weakness. Hope is a leash. Love is leverage.

If I am to survive this place—not just endure it, but survive it—I cannot afford any of those things.

I sit back down on the floor and close my eyes.

When I open them again, the world feels different. Sharper. Colder. More honest.

I stop measuring time by his absence. I stop waiting for footsteps that will never come. The tower becomes what it was always meant to be—not a place of waiting, but a place of transformation.

The warmth inside me no longer recoils from the wards. It studies them. It listens. It learns.

I let it.

Each time the pain flares, I breathe through it. Each time my heart races, I slow it down. I catalog the sensations, the responses, the limits. I turn my suffering into a lesson.

This is what they have taught me.

I no longer whisper prayers into the dark. I no longer beg for mercy from walls that do not care. I do not ask why I was born this way or what I did to deserve it.

Those questions belong to someone who believes the world owes her fairness.

I do not believe that anymore.

When the silence settles in around me now, it does not feel empty.

It feels like space.

Space to grow.

Space to harden.

Space to become something that does not need saving.

Maximilian does not come back.

And when I finally accept that truth, fully and completely, something inside me goes very still.

The girl who waited dies quietly in the dark.