I couldn't sleep that night, not after everything that had happened. My mind was restless, replaying the truth I had uncovered. He hadn't invited us because he missed Mother and me. He had done it to watch me die, killed by my own siblings. He was a madman. What other reason could there be for him to twist traditions that had been honored for millennia? The rules of the successor's battle had always been clear, but he bent them to his will, just for the twisted pleasure of watching his children turn on one another like wolves fighting for dominance.
As I made my way back to my room, I noticed Xanthe standing at the door, hesitating. She looked as though she had been debating whether to knock.
"There you are! Quickly, follow me!" she said, urgency lacing her voice.
I wasn't sure what startled me more, her insistence or the way my body obeyed before my mind could process it. Was it fear that moved me? Or something else?
We arrived at her chambers, and the first thing that caught my eye was a grand portrait, towering over the rest of the room. It stole my breath.
It was Mother. Or was it?
She looked different, adorned in regal garments, a crown resting atop her head. Her hair, the same deep red as Xanthe's, cascaded over her shoulders, her hazel eyes filled with an expression I couldn't decipher. But my mother… she had never worn such finery. She had blue eyes, the same shade as mine, and brunette hair.
"Shocking, isn't it?" Xanthe murmured, her gaze fixed on the painting. A faint smile played on her lips before she added, "But that's my mother, not Rhea." She caught herself and turned to me apologetically.
She told me she was sorry, for keeping the truth from me, for pretending we were strangers, for ignoring our existence altogether. The only reason she had never acknowledged me as her brother was that she never believed he would summon us. And, in truth, I knew as well as she did, if not for this battle of succession, we would never have been called here.
There was a rule, an unspoken but unbroken one: the children of a successor must never grow attached. Bonds only made the inevitable harder when the time came to kill one another.
And yet, despite the weight of tradition, Xanthe blamed herself for pulling Mother and me into this. Her own mother had fallen ill when she was just seven, poisoned, she suspected, by one of her father's other wives. That was the same year my mother first arrived at the castle, not as royalty, but as a servant.
Xanthe had clung to her immediately. It wasn't hard to see why, Mother was the mirror image of her late mother. And Father… well, he had always been fond of Xanthe. She was the daughter of the woman he had loved above all else in Caelum. When his beloved died, he lavished Xanthe with gifts and favor, unlike the rest of his children.
But when he saw that she had found solace in a servant, a woman who wore the face of his lost love, he had to have her. He made my mother his concubine.
And that led to me, the cursed, bastard son of the mighty Titus.
The truth was bitter, but it was undeniable. He had never loved my mother. Not even for a moment.