The Rejected True Heiress (Liora and Callum) novel Chapter 544

Liora’s POV

I changed into the first thing I found in my closet, or rather, what was left of it after Bianca had raided all of my things for herself: a simple dress that still felt far too fancy for what I expected to walk into.

Surprisingly, by the time I entered, the throne room barely looked like a battlefield anymore. The doors and windows had been thrown open to let the smoke out, students were righting chairs and hauling the broken ones into a pile, and every last red and black banner had already been torn down. Amy was directing the cleanup, wearing a gray dress, her head shaved. In fact, all of the wolfless looked like that. I blinked when I looked at her, confused, but she just smiled at me and waved.

I turned to see the crowd parting for a column of veiled women in dark robes, moving two by two in perfect silence. Between the middle four floated a stretcher draped in gray cloth. The shape beneath it didn’t move.

“Belinda,” my wolf growled.

“What’s left of her,” I thought back.

Marcus’s men reached for their weapons. I waved them down and went to meet the council myself.

The woman at the head of the column lifted her veil, and my stomach still gave a little lurch at the sight of that face. So familiar, yet not her.

“Headmistress,” I said.

“Your Highness.” She looked me over once, head to toe. “The title suits you better than it did the last time we spoke.”

“A lot has changed since yesterday.”

“So I gathered.” Her eyes went to the dais behind me, to the dark stain the students had been scrubbing at for an hour. “I confess I expected to find this palace in far worse condition.”

“It was a group effort.”

Something moved at the corner of her mouth. On her sister, it would have been a smile.

“You did this kingdom a great service tonight,” she said. “And my order as well. Belinda shamed us with her actions. Whatever the histories end up saying about this wedding, the council will remember who ended her.” She paused. “Although I do recall asking you to bring her to us alive.”

“She went off the highest tower in the palace with my mother’s arms locked around her,” I said. “I wasn’t given a chance to keep her alive.”

The headmistress was quiet for a long moment. Behind her, the stretcher hung in the air between its bearers, swaying gently.

She folded her hands into her sleeves. “You’ll take the throne, I’m sure. After tonight, no one alive will dispute it. And a queen needs an advisor.” She inclined her head. “I am offering you my counsel, Your Highness. Personally.”

He was over by the far wall with Zane, helping a limping student onto a bench. Bianca twisted against her chains so hard one of the guards had to catch her elbow.

“Callum!” Her voice cracked across the hall. “Callum, tell them! I submitted! Tell them I cooperated! We were supposed to be married, you were supposed to be MINE! CALLUM!”

He didn’t lift his head. He finished settling the student on the bench, asked him something I couldn’t hear, and reached for the next roll of bandages. As far as Callum was concerned, the woman screaming his name simply didn’t exist.

The guards hauled her through the side doors, and her screaming echoed all the way down the corridor until a heavy door somewhere below cut it off for good.

Zane caught my eye across the room. “I liked her better speechless,” he said with a grin.

I smiled back.

My father found me a little while later and asked, quietly, for a word in private.

His study didn’t smell unused anymore. Someone had lit the fire and opened the curtains to the gray morning light, and a fresh cup of tea sat steaming on the side table where the cold one had been.