Stolen by the Rebel King
Chapter 350: A Brush With Death

Chapter 350: A Brush With Death

"Prince Silas! You have returned!" The guards on duty jolted to attention as they caught sight of the missing prince. Princess Leonora had strict instructions to send for her if he ever showed up so that she could wring his neck for missing his summons. "Call for Princess Leonora!"

"Men! Go block the exits!" Silas cried out. "Alistair is a monster and he needs to be stopped! Oh my god, Leonora, where are you? Save me!"

Silas was this close to wailing, not caring that he looked like an overgrown child. After the sheer monstrosity he had witnessed earlier, he believed he was entitled to some hysterics. No one in Reaweth’s history had ever dealt with a monster like this!

Normally, he would ask Alistair for help to defeat any monster. But now, Alistair was the monster, which meant that Leonora was the only person that he could ask for help.

"What are you yelling for? Nice of you to finally show up now― what on earth happened!" Leonora demanded as she rounded the corner, the echo of her boots loud and clear on the marble floors.

They halted to a sudden stop as she caught sight of her brother, his clothes tattered and torn, with bleeding wounds all over his body, his eyes bright with fright and unshed tears.

He began to shout and scream, his voice on the edge of tears. "Leonora! Alistair has turned into a monster! He’s in the tunnels! You have to stop him! But don’t fight him! I don’t have magic anymore! He hates fire!"

"You’re going to the healers immediately," Leonora said firmly as she cursed inside her mind.

Her brother really had the talent for wandering into trouble! Out of everyone who had to meet Alistair first, it was her idiot brother, who knew nothing about the threat he faced.

No wonder she felt uneasy after the meeting, as though she was about to be sick.

"I’m not drunk!" Silas cried out, mistaking her curt words for doubt."You’ll have to believe me! He sucked out Lottie’s blood! He had claws for hands! One of them got chopped off and he grew another one nearly instantly!"

"I know you’re not, idiot," Leonora said firmly as she looped one of her arms around his waist, putting his other hand on her shoulders as she all but dragged her foolish brother back to the infirmary. She hated how Prince Nathaniel and that healer from Vramid had taken over Reaweth’s medical care, but now it finally came in handy.

If they failed to treat her brother, she would have them executed, war or not. She turned around and gave her orders.

"Men, guard the exits to the tunnels. Inform King Atticus of any sighting. Do not confront him directly, and arm yourself with torches," Leonora said.

The ramblings of her brother would be incomprehensible to most, but she didn’t spend nine months in the womb with him and an entire lifetime to not understand his particular brand of nonsense.

"You believe me?" Silas asked hopefully.

Leonora usually had no qualms in shooting down stories about his wilder adventures, claiming Silas should spend more time studying and less time fantasizing. Now that they had grown up, she would never entertain his delusions the same way she did when they were both young children.

Which meant that... Silas froze as he stared at Leonora. Leonora nodded, understanding his wordless question.

"Yes, we got the news. He killed Hazelle by draining all her blood," Leonora said, and Silas tripped over his steps. "Apparently, Eugene Attonson had given him a mixture that would turn him into a vampiric monster."

"Fucking hell... He killed his wife?!"

Silas would have collapsed at the news that his sister-in-law was now nothing more than a corpse like all the other women at the brothel, but his sister held him firmly and dragged his body to the infirmary.

"This is all my fault," he lamented as he realized the consequences of his actions. "All these women died because of me. Because I brought him to Jean Nott― This tragedy is my―"

"Shut the fuck up," Leonora ordered, and he obediently obeyed. He spent a lifetime listening to Leonora, and he wasn’t going to stop now. "This mess isn’t your fault. Our idiot brother was the one who got his own hand lopped off when he provoked the wrong man, and then he couldn’t handle the consequences and trusted a con artist."

Silas’s lower lip wobbled. Leonora had a point, but the guilt wouldn’t leave his chest. Lottie and all the other girls died because of him. He had brought his family to ruin.

"If you want to fix things, then you’d better tell everyone what happened," Leonora said as they finally arrived at the doors of the infirmary. She kicked open the door and yelled.

"Prince Nathaniel! Healer Sirona! I heard you wanted more victims to examine? Here you go!"

"Victims?!" Silas squawked, but his beloved twin sister simply deposited him on an empty bed. To his surprise, his sister Daphne was sitting across from him, in a similar bed, her face strangely pale. "Daphne? What are you doing here?"

Oh god. Maybe Alistair got her too. Fuck.

Daphne only stared back in return, shocked at his appearance.

"I’ll report this to the rest of them and hunt him down," Leonora promised.

Alistair was going to pay for his attempt to murder Silas. After all her brother did for him, this ungrateful swine dared to bite the hand that fed him?

Leonora would gladly feed him to the dogs once she separated his head from his body.

Meanwhile, Prince Nathaniel and Sirona swarmed around Silas, taking blood samples and examining his eyes, their expressions grim. All throughout, however, Silas only had eyes for his twin, who was speaking quietly into the sodalite piece in her hand. Her eyes darted over to him critically as she scowled, the frown on her face growing more pronounced at every word.

He overheard words like ’attack’, ’fire’, ’tunnels’, ’claws’, and ’regrowth’. Finally, the conversation ended, and Leonora addressed the room.

"I’ll be leaving to hunt down Alistair. Update me if anything happens to him."

"No, don’t go!" Silas protested, clinging onto his sister’s arm, his eyes wide with terror. "If you go, I’m doomed! I don’t have powers anymore. You have to protect me. Please, Nora!"

He couldn’t help it, the childish nickname he used to call his sister slipped out before he could help himself.

"Please, I nearly died today. Can you just... stay? For a while longer?"

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