Chapter 7: The King Who Knows Her
Within minutes, the great hall was completely emptied. The heavy iron doors slammed shut, leaving only Tamara and the Dragon King standing in the vast, echoing chamber.
Tamara was frozen. Her mind, usually so sharp and analytical, was completely short-circuiting. She stared at the man before her, her hand unconsciously rising to touch the spot on her cheek where his thumb had just rested. Her skin still tingled with his warmth.
This wasn’t how the plan was supposed to go. She was supposed to be rejected. She was supposed to be running toward the northern mountains right now.
“Why?” Tamara demanded, her voice cracking slightly as she stepped back, looking up at him with a mixture of confusion and growing defensiveness.
“Why me, Your Majesty? Look at the girls you rejected. They were the most beautiful daughters of the nobility. They have no marks. They bring no omens. I am an outcast. My own father sent me here as a joke to collect your reward.”
Zain did not look angry. He took a slow step toward her, his golden eyes burning with a deep, intensely personal emotion that Tamara couldn’t decipher.
“You still don’t see it, do you?” he asked softly. The terrifying, ruthless cadence of the tyrant king completely vanished, replaced by a voice that sounded intimately familiar, like an echo from a dream she had buried long ago.
“See what?” she whispered. Zain stopped just a foot away from her. He tilted his head, a soft, almost playful smirk touching his lips.
“Don’t you remember me… sister?”
Tamara’s eyes widened in profound shock. The word sister didn’t belong to a king. It belonged to a small, broken piece of her past. Her mind spun backward, tearing through the layers of her memories, traveling back exactly ten years into the deepest, darkest heart of the Whispering Woods.
The image of a bleeding, fragile little boy flashed before her eyes.
Her past was about to rewrite everything she believed.