The king's eyes glistened faintly, though no tears fell. Perhaps his body no longer had the strength to weep. His gaze lingered on Lilith with a quiet tenderness, as though he were drinking in the sight of her for the first and last time. His voice, ragged and strained, cracked softly through the silence.
"Your mother… Lilia. She was not one of us. She was human."
The words struck Lilith like a blade slipped between her ribs. Her breath caught; her heart stumbled in her chest. She had long carried the absence of a mother she never knew, an emptiness that no explanation had ever filled. Whispers in old palace halls, half-muttered evasions, the silence of those who served her—those had been her only inheritance. To finally hear a name, her name—it was like a wound she had carried unknowingly her entire life had just been torn wide open.
