Elçin and Yasar continue without her, disappearing into the ruined corridor. Nesilhan waits until their footsteps fade before turning to face me.
"The Twilight Heir," she says quietly. "There's something I need to tell you. Something I haven't told anyone."
My shadows still. "I'm listening."
She's quiet for a long moment, her golden eyes distant. "When I was young—very young—my mother told me I had a sister. She was born smaller and weaker. The healers said she wouldn't survive the night." Her voice catches. "They told us she died."
The pieces begin to connect in my mind, forming a picture I don't want to see.
"You think the Twilight Heir is your sister," I say. Not a question.
"I don't know." Her hands clench at her sides. "It could be anyone. A lie my father constructed, some illegitimate child he's been hiding. But the timing, the age, the magic..." She shakes herhead. "What if she didn't die, Kaan? What if he took her? Raised her in secret to be everything I wasn't supposed to be?"
"A weapon," I say quietly. "Forged specifically to destroy you."
"Yes."
The word hangs between us like a confession.
"We don't know anything for certain," I say, moving closer. Without the bond, I can't offer the comfort of shared emotion, so I settle for proximity. "Zoran's intelligence is fragmented. Rumors and secondhand accounts. Tomorrow, we'll know more."
"And if it's true? If my father stole my sister and spent all these years turning her into my enemy?"
"Then we get her back." I catch her chin, tilting her face up to meet my eyes. "We show her the truth. We break whatever chains he's wrapped around her mind."
"You make it sound simple."
"It won't be. Nothing worth doing ever is." I release her, stepping back. "But we've survived worse, hatun. A fae queen's bargain. A demon lord's prison. Two months of temporal displacement. One brainwashed sister seems almost manageable by comparison."
Something almost like a smile ghosts across her face. "Your optimism is terrifying."
"I prefer to call it strategic delusion. Much more dignified."
She laughs—a small, broken sound, but real.
"Rest," I tell her. "Properly. Tomorrow will be complicated enough without both of us running on fumes."
She nods, turning to leave. But at the doorway, she pauses once more.
"Kaan? Thank you. For listening. For not... dismissing it."
"Never," I say. "Whatever ghosts your father has buried, we'll dig them up together."
She's gone before I can say anything else, her footsteps fading into the ruined corridors of my palace.
Then I'm alone in the ruins of my throne room, shadows spreading across broken stone like living things. Reclaiming territory. Asserting dominance over destruction.
Two months. We lost two months.
And now there's a rival Twilight Heir—possibly Nesilhan's stolen sister, raised in secret to be the perfect weapon against everything we've built.
The timing is too perfect. The appearance too convenient. Taren has been planning this for decades, and we're only now seeing the pieces fall into place.
But I'm back now. And I remember exactly what I am.
Not the grief-stricken husband. Not the broken father mourning his dead son.
The Shadow Lord who took this throne with nothing but will and violence. The conqueror who built a kingdom from darkness and determination.
