Chapter 163: 163-Missing piece
Varitreya clutched the diamond hairpin tightly in her palm, so tightly that its sharp edges dug into her skin.
A thin line of white blood trickled between her fingers but she barely felt it. The pain was small, clean, and real. It was one of the few things she could still trust.
The moment the scent reached Addessa, the blackblood’s attention snapped toward her. She stepped closer, her expression immediately softening with concern.
"Are you alright, Your Highness?"
Varitreya shook her head. "No," she was far from alright.
The word itself almost felt foreign to her. She had spent the whole trip pretending to be fine that the truth felt dangerous when it finally rose to her lips.
Something inside her had been unraveling ever since they left Felor. She couldn’t shake the feeling that she was a puppet suspended from invisible strings, moving exactly as someone else wanted her to move.
Every thought felt suspicious, every memory felt like it might belong to someone else and the person holding those strings wasn’t a stranger but was someone she loved. That was the part she couldn’t bear.
If it had been an enemy, she could have hated them. If it had been a stranger, she could have feared them. But her mother was woven through every part of her life, every instinct, every cherished memory. To question her felt like tearing at the foundation of her own identity.
"What’s wrong?" Addessa asked gently. "Can you share it with me? I’ll give you my best counsel."
Varitreya stared at the blood coating her palm. The sight made her throat tighten.
She had been carrying the suspicion alone, turning it over in her mind until it had grown teeth. Saying it aloud would make it real. It might destroy everything but keeping silent meant allowing the invisible strings to remain wrapped around her.
Then she dropped the bomb. "I think I’ve been compelled."
Addessa froze. The breath caught in her throat. For a moment, sheer shock crossed her face, followed by a sharp, instinctive denial that made her stomach twist.
The possibility seemed almost impossible. Varitreya was a whiteblood, not only that, but an exceptionally powerful one.
It would take an extraordinarily powerful whiteblood to compel someone of her strength without her realizing it.
And yet Varitreya could still remember the sensation of something slipping through her mind. It was gentle and utterly invasive.
She remembered the aftermath more clearly than the act itself: the hollow certainty that her thoughts had been rearranged, and the sickening fear that she might never know which parts of herself were truly hers again.
"Why do you think that?" Addessa asked. Her voice came out carefully controlled, but her pulse had begun to hammer beneath her skin.
She didn’t dismiss Varitreya’s suspicion. Whatever the princess had experienced, she clearly had a reason for believing something was wrong.
"And I suspect that you and the others have been compelled too."
Addessa opened her mouth. She was about to tell Varitreya to take a breath and seek proper counsel because she was beginning to sound insane.
But then Varitreya continued speaking. "Zolani is being a ball of rainbows and sunshine more than usual."
Addessa blinked. The words should have sounded absurd or made her laugh but instead, a cold unease stirred in her chest.
Varitreya’s expression tightened. "And we’re all strangely accommodating of her rainbows and sunshine. Lumi, I understand. That girl is usually nice to Zolani at all times," she looked directly at Addessa. "But you and me..."
Her fingers tightened around the hairpin. "Especially you?"
Varitreya looked frightened and not of Addessa, but of what Addessa might remember. She needed her to believe this. She needed someone else to see the cracks before she lost the courage to look at them herself.
Addessa’s expression slowly changed. A faint pressure gathered behind her eyes as she reached back through her memories, searching for something she hadn’t noticed before.
"Something isn’t right here and I can’t find a single reason why we’re being over the top indulgent to her or anyone else for that matter."
Addessa held back the words that had been forming on her tongue because the more Varitreya spoke, the more those words sank into her and then Addessa realized it.
It really was strange. She wasn’t the type to be friendly with Zolani, not in the way she had been on the carriage ride.
Yet during their entire ride to school, she had been nothing but accommodating toward her. Almost unnaturally so.
The memory suddenly felt wrong. Not false, exactly, but polished smooth, as though someone had scrubbed away every reason she might have had to resist the mixedblood.
Varitreya watched the realization spread across Addessa’s face, and a fragile thread of relief pulled through her terror. She wasn’t imagining it."
"Not to mention, the end of the break feels like it’s a deliberate move to drag us away from Felor," Varitreya continued. "I can feel it."
Addessa’s skin prickled. She wanted to reject the idea, to insist that the unease crawling through her was only fear borrowed from Varitreya’s words but she couldn’t.
Her fingers tightened around the fabric at her side. ’What is going on?’
Varitreya’s fingers tightened around the hairpin until fresh blood welled beneath her nails.
The pain steadied her for half a second. Then the fear returned, deeper than before.
"What do you mean?" Addessa asked, her voice was thinner now.
Varitreya slowly opened her palm. The diamond hairpin lay there, beautiful and unmistakable, now stained white with her blood.
She had held on to it because she was terrified that if she let go, the last proof of the truth would vanish with it. "My mom’s hair pin... It’s most unusual."
Addessa’s eyes fell on it, she had seen it before. She remembered Queen Consort Kheamossa wearing it. In fact, it had been one of her favorite pieces.
"That isn’t strange," Addessa said cautiously. "Maybe she gave it to you and you forgot."
The explanation left her mouth, but it did nothing to ease the dread tightening around her ribs.
"I haven’t seen Mommy since she went to the borders to take care of the werewolf threat," Vritreya’s voice dropped. "And the day she left..." she looked down at the bloodied hairpin. "She was wearing it, Addie."
The words scraped against her throat. She had tried to convince herself that she was mistaken. That grief, fear, or some hidden flaw in her memory had twisted the details. But the hairpin was in her hand, and the blood on it was hers, and the truth kept forcing its way through every lie she had been made to accept.
"She was wearing it," Varitreya repeated, quieter. "I know she was."
Addessa went still. Her stomach dropped. She searched through her own memories, suddenly afraid of what she might find.
The moment she did, the image surfaced. The day Queen Consort Kheamossa had left for the border, Addessa had been in the palace and now that she thought about it clearly, Kheamossa had been wearing that exact hairpin when she left.
The memory was so vivid that Addessa could almost see the light catching on the diamonds.
"Did you see her in Felor?" Addessa asked. The question came out hoarse.
Varitreya shook her head. "No."
The answer left a hollow ache in her chest. She had wanted to see her mother there. She had wanted the hairpin to have an innocent explanation, something that would let her stop being afraid.
"Then how do you have it?"
Varitreya stared at the hairpin. She knew the answer, at least, she suspected she did.
She must have been trying to warn herself. Some part of her must have recognized that something was wrong before the compulsion took hold. Perhaps she had grabbed the hairpin from her mother during the compulsion or before it happened.
Somewhere beneath the spell, she had sensed that her mother was about to make her forget something and had instinctively taken the one thing that could later lead her back to the truth.
The thought made her feel sick. She had fought herself to leave a clue.
A tiny, desperate act of resistance from the part of her that had refused to disappear completely.
"If I have this..." Varitreya’s voice became quieter. She looked at the hairpin as though it were both a lifeline and a wound.
Addessa felt the words before they came, a sick certainty settling over her.
"It means my mom was in Felor... and neither of us remember seeing her there."