Page 195 of Severed Heir

It hadn’t been chance. It wasn’t instinct. No—it was the damn invisibility quell. He’d been beside me the entire time.

Caius tilted his head toward the sky, a shaky breath leaving him as his eyes lost focus. “Stop fussing.” His lips twitched in a faint, almost-smile. “I always wanted a sister.”

“We could start over,” I said. “You and me.”

“No.” His voice cracked. “Too late.”

I pressed my hands over the wound. There was too much blood. “It’s just an arrow. You’ll be fine. You have to be fine.”

“No.”

“Caius—it’s never too late.”

“For me it is.” His breath shuddered. “Forget the mess that is our bloodline. None of it matters.”

“It doesn’t,” I choked. “May this be the moment it stops mattering.”

“Then let me be the brother who never betrayed you,” he whispered. “The one you deserved.”

“You are my brother, Caius. You are. We have the rest of our lives to make up for it.”

His voice was barely a breath now. “I would’ve been a damn good one. Yeah… I know it.”

“Archer!” I sobbed. “Help him—please! Stop the bleeding!”

“Severyn.”

“Please! He’s dying!”

“He’s gone.”

I shook my head. “No. He can’t be. He—he—” The words refused to come.

I shook Caius’s body, but he didn’t blink. He didn’t move. And the mourning cry of griffins sounded across the peaks from the scream that tore from my lungs.

Archer pulled me off his body. “Archer, he can’t just die like that. Tell me he’ll wake up.”

“Severyn, nothing I say will bring him back. He’s gone, and I know it hurts because you never got the chance to know him.”

I collapsed in his arms, the weight of it all dragging me down.

Then, from across the battlefield, a familiar voice rose above the silence. “My dear daughter,” she said softly. “How much grief I never meant for you to carry.”

My mother stood there. Her dark hair was slicked back, tangled by the wind, just as I remembered. The same striking features, all sharp angles and impossible beauty. Her black eyes locked on mine. Perhaps she had never seen me this broken. Or perhaps she had, and turned away the first time, too.

Archer’s arms fell away. I dropped to my knees beside Caius, tore the arrow from his chest with a strangled sob, and rose—hands slick with blood, the shaft clenched in my grip as I turned and leveled it at her throat.

“Why?” I demanded.

She flinched. “You’re fighting with the very people who would bury you. Think about that.”

And just like that, the battlefield stilled. Death had stepped into the war.

“Who is my father?” I hissed. I wanted to hear it from her. Hear her say his damn name

“I loved the man who raised you more than you’ll ever understand,” she whispered. Her gaze drifted somewhere far away, regret threading through every word. “One day, I chose his life over mine. I thought I was saving him. You have no idea what I gave up, what it cost me. Knox, Klaus... and you. You are my only children.”

Klaus. The sound of his name hit like a blade. I flinched. “What about Charles? Cully?”

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