The Dragon King's Hated Bride
Chapter 102: The One Who Knows

Chapter 102: The One Who Knows

>>Aelin

The air was thick with panic—screams, wails, the thunder of feet slamming stone floors. I pushed through them all, my heart racing like a war drum.

"Princess!" Ariston’s voice bellowed behind me, but I didn’t stop. I couldn’t.

Bodies pressed against each other in blind desperation, and his voice grew more distant with every second. I glanced back only once—just long enough to see him being shoved sideways by the tide of people trying to get away.

"Princess! Don’t! Wait!!" He reached for me, fighting the crowd like a man caught in a rising flood, but I had already surged ahead.

I was smaller. Faster. And I had something no one else in this stampede had—a direction that led toward danger, not away from it.

I turned a sharp corner, and suddenly, the mass of people thinned. Only a few still ran, and they were headed the opposite way. A demon noble, his crimson cloak shredded and face bloodied, nearly slammed into me. One of his buck horns was broken somehow. He might have fell into the stampede.

He didn’t even look back. Just kept running.

That was when I knew. I was truly going somewhere no one else wanted to go.

The familiar corridors of the palace warped under the pressure of disaster. The air was filled with dust and flickering torchlight, shadows darting like panicked spirits. The abandoned wing lay ahead—silent, detached, forgotten. But Seraphine was in there. She had no idea what was happening.

Or maybe she did. She could still see it from the window. But would she be able to run for her life?

She’s weak

I kept running.

The sound of battle, distant but growing louder, throbbed like a second heartbeat. The halls trembled as something massive slammed into the palace from afar. But then—

Boom.

A deafening crack shattered the quiet. Stone exploded from the far wall, and I screamed as the floor pitched beneath me. I stumbled, catching myself on the cold wall. Pebbles and dust fell from above as the corridor shook. I clutched my chest, breath heaving, heart pounding so hard I thought it would leap from my ribs.

I stumbled to a stop, instinct forcing me to turn toward the nearest window.

And what I saw made the blood drain from my face.

Beyond the cracked glass, the open battlefield burned under the night sky.

The Eye still hung there—massive, ominous, open.

Monsters kept coming out of it. Not one after another, but they were still coming, after a distance, some time.

So many of them, like nothing I’d seen in any book, any nightmare. Some were massive, with jaws that split open sideways, bone white teeth glistening. Others slithered like snakes, with too many eyes and tendrils of shadow. The sky was alive with wings—creatures shrieking like banshees as they dove toward the city below.

And in the heart of it, like a dark star around which everything spun—

Draegon.

His black hair whipped in the wind, stained with black ichor. His claws glistened red and black, and the way he moved—fluid, lethal, devastating—he didn’t fight like a king.

My mouth grew agape when I looked at him.

He fought like a god of death.

His brothers were close behind him, forming a shield wall as they struck and struck again. Soldiers moved in tight formations, spells firing into the air in blasts of heat and color. Demon forces working together to hold the line.

But they were still being pushed back.

My knees buckled, and I had to steady myself against the glass. That was my husband out there—fighting not just for his kingdom but for all of us.

Like a true king, he was out in the frontlines, fighting for his people.

I pursed my lips in shame

And here I was, running through halls like a frightened child.

No.

No, I had a reason. I reminded myself—Seraphine. She was alone. Vulnerable. And maybe... maybe I couldn’t stop the monsters. Maybe I couldn’t stand beside Draegon in the battlefield just yet.

But I could do this.

So I turned away from the battlefield and ran harder than I had ever run before.

Toward the abandoned wing.

***

The corridors were groaning under the weight of chaos. Cracks splintered across the walls, the air choked with dust and the far-off sounds of battle—steel against flesh, roars of monsters, the scream of war horns. Every step I took toward the abandoned wing made the weight in my chest grow heavier.

I knew this place too well. The faded walls. The silence. The way the wind whispered through the broken arches. This was where I had been forgotten for two years. And now, someone else had been left here too.

I reached the door. My hands trembled as I grabbed the cold handle and pushed.

Another violent tremble rippled through the stone floor just as I stepped in, causing the door to rattle against its hinges and the candlelight in the corridor to flicker out behind me.

"Seraphine!" I called, heart hammering.

No response.

"Seraphine, it’s me!" I ran inside, "It’s me, Aelin—please, we need to get out of here, the palace is under attack—"

But the moment my eyes found her, my words faltered.

!!?

She was sitting at the window.

Quiet.

Still.

A ghostly silhouette framed by flickering, infernal light. Her soft hair swayed softly as she had the window open, and her thin hands rested gently in her lap. She sat on the wide stone sill I used to sit on, in the same posture, as if time had never passed at all.

But her gaze wasn’t turned inward in fear—it was locked on the chaos unfolding outside.

Her eyes—those haunting purple eyes Draegon had inherited—were vacant. No panic, no fear. Just disappointment. Disappointment deep enough to hollow the air around her.

"Seraphine?" I said again, more softly this time.

No answer.

Through the window glass, we could see everything. The battlefield below burned red and black. The Eye still hung in the sky like a god watching gleefully.

I stepped closer. She didn’t flinch. Didn’t speak.

I slowly lowered myself beside her, not on the sill, but onto the cold stone floor, just under her knees. I reached up and gently laid a hand on her thigh, grounding myself in the touch, needing to pull her from wherever her mind had wandered.

"You shouldn’t be here," I whispered. "It’s dangerous. You need to come with me. We have to move."

"..."

"Please, Seraphine, say something—" I let out a soft breath, "This place has no protection, no guards, if any monster comes in- we’re done for."

"..."

She blinked once, her gaze still lost in that distant burning sky.

Looking at her made me follow her gaze. But I found nothing there, so I looked back at her and spoke softly, "Is there something on your mind?"

And then finally, her voice, soft and dry like parchment rustling in the wind:

"I am sad."

I frowned. "Sad? Why?"

Her eyes turned slowly toward mine—glassy, tired, almost ancient.

"The one who will liberate us from the dark," she said quietly, "still hasn’t come."

I stared at her.

"What do you mean?"