The Dragon King's Hated Bride
Chapter 13: Letters

Chapter 13: Letters

>>Aelin

A few days passed.

The maids kept rotating their shifts to watch over me. I was even accompanied to the bathroom. But nothing was bothering me. It was like my feelings had shut down.

I had started to feel numb

And that’s when it started. Letters. I started getting handwritten letters from the demons.

The letters came every morning without fail. I didn’t know who delivered them. No footsteps ever echoed outside my door, no shadow ever lingered in the hall. But whenever I woke up—early, always before dawn despite going to bed well past midnight—they would be there. Stacked neatly on the small bedside table.

For a while, I ignored them, letting the pile grow. I mean I had no reason to open them. Why would anyone send me letters anyway?

But eventually, as the letters kept piling up each day, I would wake up and look at the stack, wondering what could be in those envelopes? And just like that I had done the unfortunate thing of opening them. Of reading them.

I shouldn’t have.

The words were venom, scrawled in jagged ink that seemed to press deeper into the page with every hateful sentence. Everyone knew demons despised humans, but this? This was like adding oil to fire. I should have expected this though... so, I guess this one is on me.

But since I had already opened them, I decided to read them too. There was a lot written in the letters but the highlighted points were these;

’Don’t get in the way of Draegon and his new bride.’

’Attention-seeker. If you wanted to die so badly, you should’ve chosen a place no one would find you.’

’Your suicide was just another pathetic attempt to ruin the truce. Do us all a favor and stay quiet.’

The letters scorned me, their sharp edges digging into what little was left of me. They told me, over and over, in every cruel variation, that I wasn’t just hated—I was a nuisance.

An inconvenience.

A mistake.

Oddly enough, I was already so dead inside that the words didn’t pierce as deeply as they might have once. The damage had already been done long before. It was surprising actually, how I felt so numb inside that the harsh words of hate and contempt from a whole species didn’t do much to me.

But the letters reminded me of something, and that thought lingered longer than any of their insults.

I had written letters too...Since I was never given a communication device....

That realization struck harder than the words ever could. I had a good amount of mana. Communication devices are used by the wealthy only since they cost a lot and require a lot of mana as well. The palace could have given it to me to try and communicate with Draegon but even when I requested it, I was told that these devices don’t work well during war since the connection isn’t stable.

I had no choice but to accept that and all I could do was write him letters. Letters I poured my heart into, letters where I kept asking about how he was, how his health was, how was he faring?

I wrote about my day, not mentioning where I was living and how lonely it was here.

I didn’t write about the baby, I wanted to wait for him to reply to me before I told him about it

But he never replied.

None of my letters ever received an answer and after a few weeks I stopped writing. At first I simply thought that the letters might not have reached him because of the war. It was a battlefield where he was and of course, it was no easy task to have them delivered.

But now I think he might just have ignored them.

The silence spoke louder than his words ever could.

If there was one thing I gained from those hateful letters, it was the advice they hadn’t even meant to give. There were a number of letters that had this line in them.

’If you wanted to die so badly, you should’ve chosen a place no one would find you.’

I laughed softly when I read that line. For the first time in weeks, I actually laughed. A hollow, broken sound that scratched at my throat and spilled out into the empty room.

For once, I smiled. Not a real smile. A shattered one, one that reflected the pieces of me that no longer fit together.

Yes. A place where no one would find me. That would be best.

It was good advice.

***

I stayed in the bedroom I once shared with Draegon, barely moving except to breathe. The surveillance that had loomed over me when I was at my weakest had vanished again once I was healed. It proved it was a spectacle for show. No one cared. No one ever had.

And that’s what led me to think about Ruoxy’s words. She had been right all along. Her words echoed in my head. As a human, I would never belong here. There was no place for me among demons. Hundreds of years of hatred and bloodshed couldn’t be erased by one forced marriage.

Especially not when even in the marriage one party hates the other.

The realization settled in like a weight I couldn’t lift. This was it. This was my life. No more waiting for things to get better, no more fleeting hopes that someone might reach for me, save me. There was nothing to reach for, no one waiting.

I couldn’t go back to Havenmore, it would be the same thing there too, just with more physical abuse.

I thought of Havenmore and the life I had left behind. My siblings blaming me for our mother’s death, The king, our father, indifferent to my suffering, barely acknowledging my existence unless it served his purpose.

I had thought leaving would mean some sort of freedom. I had thought anything would be better than Havenmore. But here...

Here wasn’t any better. It wasn’t even much different.

The day dragged on, every second stretching endlessly as I sank further into the darkness swallowing me whole. It was the darkest place I’d ever been, a pit so deep that even the faintest glimmer of light couldn’t reach me.

Maybe ending my life wouldn’t be so bad.

The thought came quietly, softly, like a whisper brushing against the edges of my mind. At first, I fought it, solely because I thought about the peace treaty. It was there because of the marriage, but the more I thought, the less it made sense to me.

What reason did I have to keep going? For the truce? No one cared for me—why should I care for them?

But then, that line from the letters came back to me, mocking and cruel yet oddly grounding. ’If you wanted to die so badly, you should’ve chosen a place no one would find you.’

It was good advice indeed. At least it would spare someone the inconvenience of dealing with my body. And if no one found me, maybe the truce wouldn’t fall apart. Maybe the innocent—those who had no say in this endless war between demons and humans—wouldn’t have to suffer because of me.

That was the last shred of humanity clinging to me. That thought. That faint hope.

I got up. My steps were heavy, but I walked out of the room. No one stopped me. No one even noticed me. I made my way to the same part of the castle where I’d spent the past two years, an abandoned wing no one bothered.

It was the perfect place. Quiet, forgotten, just like me.

I passed by groups of demons along the way, their voices carrying snippets of conversation about Draegon’s upcoming marriage preparations.

The words didn’t faze me at all. If it was perhaps hearing it for the first time, I might have crumbled, bit now?

I felt nothing.

My emotions were as dead as I was inside.

Step by step, I made my way to the place I had chosen. A place where no one would find me, where no one would care enough to look. A place to quietly disappear, to finally let go.