parentshiftbook Chapter 557: Dilemma
Chapter 557: Dilemma
He had begun to name them then... the pieces of history that refused to fit, no matter how the scholars rearranged the dates.The gaps in their language where certain concepts simply didn’t exist, as if the words had been deliberately pruned from the mind of the world.
He spoke of the dragons and the ancestors, and how the "standard explanations" felt less like history and more like a pretty, painted screen built to cover a void.
Then his tone had shifted, becoming more intimate, more vulnerable. He was deciding to tell her the real reason he had vanished into the dark forest all those years ago.
"Everyone thinks I went into exile because of the guilt," Aldwin mentioned. "And I did. I watched Soreth butcher his own blood and I stayed silent because I was a coward who valued my research more than my soul. But there was another reason. I wanted to know more about the truth of this world. I wanted to find out what lay beyond the edges of the maps. I wanted to see what existed past the borders of everything we were told was possible."
He turned his gaze back to her, his eyes piercing and ancient. "I dedicated those years to researching the world itself. Not the spells, and not the wars. Its nature. Its inconsistencies. And I found... strange things. I found places where the logic of the forest simply ended. I found ruins that didn’t belong to any known era, built with a geometry that made my head ache. I found fragments of thoughts that felt as if they were being broadcast from somewhere else."
His conclusion was a heavy, quiet thing that seemed to vibrate in the corridor. "I have begun to believe that our world is both more than we think it is, and significantly less. It is something else entirely, Your Majesty. Something... constructed."
Eris listened, her heart thudding a slow, heavy rhythm against her ribs. She understood why these beliefs were arising in him. He was a scholar who had finally reached the end of the book and was starting to see the binding. He was circling the answer she already possessed.
The Internal debate raged in her mind. Should she tell him? Could a mind like Aldwin’s survive the knowledge that he was a character in a play? If she told him, would it make the cracks wider? Or would it give them the perspective they needed to mend the tear?
She decided not to lead with a declaration. She wouldn’t hand him the weight all at once.
He had spent years in the inconsistencies, finding things he couldn’t explain with any logic available to him. He had arrived at the same conclusion she had, though he lacked the vocabulary of the "Author." He simply knew that the world was something other than what it claimed to be.
"Mama?"
The voice snapped the tether. Eris’s mind rushed back into her body, the cold hallway vanishing to be replaced by the warmth of her sun-drenched chambers. Rael was looking up at her, his head tilted, his brow furrowed with the specific, piercing attention of a child who knows the adult holding them has been miles away.
"We are finished, Your Majesty," one of the maids announced, stepping back with a low curtsy.
Eris looked at her reflection in the tall, silvered glass. She was dressed in deep traveling furs and charcoal silk. The crown sat heavy and immovable on her head. She looked ready—a queen prepared to command a departure, a woman of substance and power.
But inside, she was still standing in that corridor, feeling the world fraying beneath her boots.
Rael shifted in her lap, his small hand reaching up to touch her cheek. "What are you thinking of?" he asked, his voice soft.
Eris forced a smile, the muscles of her face feeling stiff and foreign. She reached out and playfully traced the slope of his nose, the familiar gesture grounded her for a fleeting second. "It’s nothing, my heart. Just the long road ahead."
Rael giggled at the ticklish touch, his eyes bright. Then, his expression sobered, and he leaned his head against her shoulder. "Why can’t you come with us? Why can’t you go back home to Solmire with me and papa?"
Eris felt a sharp, jagged ache in her throat. She sighed, her hand tightening slightly around him, unable to find an answer that wouldn’t frighten him.
How could she tell him that she had to stay and hold a breaking world together? How could she explain that she was fighting a war against the sky itself?
"Oh, look at her!" one of the maids gasped, clasping her hands over her chest. The women broke into a chorus of dramatic awe, their voices bright and artificial. "Ethereal... like a goddess of the frost."
"The most beautiful in the world," Rael joined in, his voice full of childish pride as he puffed out his chest. "My mama is the most beautiful."
Eris stared at her reflection, but she didn’t see the beauty they were praising. She heard Aldwin’s voice ringing in her ears, and Orrian’s clinical explanations ringing louder. The weight of the truth settled on her shoulders, heavier than the brocade, heavier than the crown.
Their world is a fiction. The thought was a scream in the silence of her mind. Every stone of this palace, every person in this room, every breath she drew was a line of prose written by an indifferent hand.
She pushed the thought away with a violent effort of will. She had to be a queen today. She couldn’t be a ghost.
"And you," Eris said, looking at Rael and forcing her voice to be light, "are the most handsome prince in all the realms. Caelen will have his hands full keeping the ladies away from you."
The maids laughed, the tension in the room easing slightly. Mira, her head maid, stepped forward and checked the clock.
"It is time, Your Majesty," Mira said softly. "The carriage is readied. It is time to say goodbye to his Majesty."
Eris nodded, her hand sliding out of Rael’s hair as she prepared to stand. The play was beginning. The scene was set. And she was the only one on the stage who knew the theater was burning.