The Stand-In Queen Chapter 09
The wind itself seemed to stop.
Everyone stared at me in shock, disbelief filling their eyes.
“H-how can it be you?!” Elara’s voice shook.
Kael stared at me, the wound on his arm forgotten.
“Ayla, what is…”
I met his gaze and slowly drew something from the hidden pocket inside my sleeve.
A token, half the size of my palm, its edges worn smooth, carved with a clan sigil identical to the one hanging from the killer chief’s belt.
“Recognize this?”
My voice was barely audible.
The killer chief’s face changed:
“That… that’s…”
“This is your token.”
I cut him off, my fingertip tracing the rough carving.
“Six years ago, in a cottage a hundred miles from the capital, on a freezing winter night, you broke into a home.”
“An old woman sat under lamplight, mending old clothes. On her table was a bundle of fresh-baked bread and a small jar of plums she had pickled all autumn. She planned to send them to her child in the capital, the one she missed day and night.”
My voice began to tremble, uncontrollably. I saw again that snowy night, saw my foster mother in a pool of blood, still clutching the bundle she never got to send.
“You took what little food she had. You wanted the bread and the plums too. She wouldn’t give them up. She knelt and begged you, said they were for her child… You found her troublesome, and cut her throat.
Silence swallowed the forest. Only my voice remained.
“When I received word and rushed back, snow had covered the blood. I found this beside her cold hand.”
I raised the token.
“Later, after I married into the pack, on the night of the attack, when you surrounded me, I saw the same tokens on your bodies.”
I turned to Kael, watching his face turn ashen.
“The child was gone. I hated. I wanted to die. But when you told me with red-rimmed eyes that you had exterminated those responsible, that blood debt was paid… I felt a flicker of gratitude. I thought her vengeance was finally complete.”
Kael’s lips shook violently. He looked at the token in my hand, then whipped toward the killers, his gaze turning terrible.
“It was you… you hurt my Ayla twice?!”
“You’re only asking now? Isn’t it too late?”
I said calmly, my eyes moving to Elara, who had been shrinking back.
“But what truly killed my heart wasn’t them. It was you.”
Elara shuddered.
“After you returned, that night you called Kael out to ‘catch up.””
I walked toward her, step by step. She retreated in terror until her back hit a tree trunk.
“I was restless, so I didn’t follow. But on my way back to my chamber, I passed your guest wing. Your window was open, candlelight bright, and on your table I saw another token exactly like this one.”
Kael whipped his head toward Elara:
“Elara! You dared to conspire with these criminals!”
“At first I didn’t understand,” I interrupted him, looking at Elara, “until later, when I bribed a frightened maid at your side. She told me you hadn’t returned unprepared. During your years away, you had connected with all manner of outcasts, including these surviving remnants of the rival pack.”
“You kept this token as your command sigil over part of their force. When you learned Kael had destroyed most of them, you planned to use these survivors to stir chaos upon your return-or to use them against me, if necessary.”
I watched Elara’s bloodless face and continued:
“After that night, I didn’t sleep. I finally pieced it all together. My foster mother’s death. My child’s death. You were likely tangled in both. And still, you could play the innocent, return to fight me for my husband, to steal the life I had fought to build. More laughable still,”
I looked at Kael, my eyes flat.
“You swore you loved me, yet you knew none of this.”
I drew a deep breath, forcing down the sob in my throat:
“Drafting that severance wasn’t only because of your indecision and her provocations. It was because… I suddenly saw how absurd all of this was. I had been a fool, living inside lies and schemes. So I played along. I deliberately provoked Elara, intensifying her hatred for me. I knew that with her obsession and her hidden weapons, when she realized she couldn’t win by ordinary means, she would resort to these shadowed forces.”
“And you,” I turned back to the killers, raising my blade to point at them, “and her. The fact that you are all gathered here today is exactly what I wanted.”
“For my foster mother. For my child. For these six years of absurdity. I wanted an ending.”
The moment my words fell, the forest erupted with the sound of rushing footsteps.
