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🔥 Chapter 42 – A Kingdom of Thorns
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The first thing Elira noticed when she opened her eyes was the silence.
It wasn't the peaceful kind. It was the kind that settles over ruins. The kind that comes after something has been broken so badly that sound itself seems too afraid to exist in its presence.
She sat on the edge of the bed, her fingers curled into the sheets as memories from the night before stabbed into her like splinters. Kairo's voice — low, taut, bleeding with restrained emotion — still echoed through her chest like a curse.
"You should have never stepped into my world if you weren't ready to burn."
He hadn't touched her since. Not even a glance. Not even a word. His absence pressed against her ribs like a ghost.
The door creaked open, and Elira's breath caught.
But it wasn't Kairo.
It was Alessio — silent as always, but his gaze softer than usual.
"Your things are packed," he said, placing a small envelope on the table. "The jet leaves in two hours."
She blinked. "Jet?"
"Rome." His jaw tensed. "He's sending you away."
Elira stood, the floor suddenly feeling like it was tilting. "He's what?"
Alessio didn't answer. He simply bowed his head and left.
The envelope trembled in her hand. She tore it open, expecting cold instructions. But inside… was a photo.
A single photo.
Of her and Kairo. From weeks ago. Her arms around his neck, his hand on the small of her back, both laughing. Unaware. Untouched by rot.
Behind it, a note. Short. Sharp. Unmistakably him.
> "This world was not meant for you. And I was never meant to keep you safe."
— K
Her knees buckled.
---
Meanwhile, at the Voltteri compound, Kairo sat in his underground office — the one no one but he and Leoranzo ever entered. The walls were lined with iron panels, ancient Voltteri codes carved into them. A place where blood oaths had been signed and lives erased.
Kairo stared at the monitors, but his mind was miles away.
He had sent her away.
Not because he wanted to.
But because if he didn't — she'd be next.
"She doesn't belong here," he muttered under his breath, as if trying to convince himself.
From the shadows, a slow clap echoed.
"Touching," came Leoranzo's voice, smooth and poisoned. "Even for you."
Kairo didn't turn. "You have something to say, say it."
Leoranzo stepped closer, the smirk on his lips venomous. "You're unraveling, cousin. First you lose control in that meeting. Then you let the girl walk through our halls like she's not a liability. And now—"
"Careful." Kairo's voice turned glacial.
"Or what?" Leoranzo challenged. "You'll kill me? You can try. But you and I both know you're not thinking straight. And that's dangerous. For all of us."
There was a pause — a crackle of electricity between two dynamos ready to collide.
"Get out," Kairo finally growled.
But the damage had already been done. The seed had been planted.
Leoranzo left with a satisfied smile.
---
Back in her private quarters, Elira wasn't packing. She was searching.
For what, she didn't know.
Until she found it — a hidden drawer at the bottom of the antique dresser.
Inside was a file.
Labeled: Operation Madrigal.
It wasn't supposed to exist anymore. Kairo had told her he'd destroyed it.
But here it was — thick, bloodstained, and real.
Her hands trembled as she flipped through it.
The photos.
The names.
The dates.
And there — at the bottom — a name circled in red.
Her father's name.
Her eyes widened in horror.
He hadn't just hidden things from her. He'd buried the truth so deep it was wrapped in ashes.
And suddenly, she wasn't sure if the man she loved was a savior.
Or the architect of her destruction.
---
The silence in the underground corridors of Villa Voltteri was thick with anticipation.
Elira walked a few steps behind Kairo, the weight of his earlier words still dragging heavily against her ribs. "You want to play this game, Elira? Just remember, I taught it to the devil first." His voice had been colder than the marbled halls of the Voltteri crypts.
She wasn't afraid of him. But she was afraid of what he could turn her into.
They reached a large door at the end of the corridor. It opened with a soft groan, revealing a dimly lit chamber lined with monitors, maps, and blinking red dots. A full surveillance and war planning room—the kind of place where empires fell and coups were birthed.
Kairo's right-hand, Matteo, stood waiting inside. He bowed slightly.
"She's here," Kairo said flatly. "She sees everything now."
Elira looked around, her breath catching. On one screen: Celeste, lounging in a hotel suite in Venice. On another: Leoranzo meeting with unknown men in Prague. A third showed files—names of those close to Elira, even her family—under red-marked 'threat level' labels.
"I warned you, Elira," Kairo murmured without looking at her. "This world doesn't just sing lullabies. It screams."
Elira swallowed hard. "And you want me to become like you?"
"I want you to survive," he said. "If that means tearing the girl you were limb by limb and rebuilding her into someone who doesn't flinch, then yes. I'll do that."
She turned toward him, eyes shining—not with tears, but defiance. "And what about you, Kairo? Who tore you apart?"
For a second, just a flicker, he stilled.
The tension was cut by Matteo clearing his throat. "The informant we sent to monitor Leoranzo has been compromised. His body washed up on the Croatian coast."
Kairo's jaw clenched. "Another traitor bought off."
Elira moved closer to the monitors, pointing to a highlighted file. "This man… he was my father's advisor when I was a child. Why is he under investigation?"
Kairo stared at her. "Because he's one of the people who betrayed your father. You think your family fell because of external enemies? No, Elira. They were eaten from the inside."
The floor swayed under her. "You're lying."
"I never lie. I just let people keep believing their pretty delusions… until they shatter."
Her knees weakened, but she didn't fall. "Then tell me everything. Not just what hurts—but what made you bleed too. I can't follow you into this darkness unless I know the monsters that raised you."
A silence fell.
Then Kairo, the ghost of a boy lost long ago behind his stone eyes, turned toward the farthest wall of the chamber. He pressed his palm to a cold brass symbol.
A secret panel hissed open.
Inside: a single old photograph, curled at the edges. A child barely ten, standing between two bloodied corpses. His hands were red. His eyes wide. Kairo.
"I was ten when I killed my uncle to save my mother. I failed."
Elira's breath hitched.
"I buried her the next day."
He looked back at her, voice low, hollow, and terrifying in its rawness.
"You still want to know me, amore mio?"
---
The silence between Kairo and Elira was not hollow—it throbbed. It pulsed like a second heartbeat, vibrating through the steel walls of the corridor they walked together. Side by side, yet not truly together.
Outside, the storm had quieted, but the echo of it still lingered—winds tugged at the corners of the Voltteri estate, pulling at windows like restless ghosts.
They had left the hospital wing. Dr. Vannis had been summoned to another wing, and Elira had excused herself before Kairo could ask anything more. Now, walking toward the East Wing's old archives, she seemed drawn to shadows, her pace neither quick nor hesitant. Just… lost.
Kairo kept a close distance. Not crowding, but present—an unspoken tether.
"Why are we going here?" he asked finally, his voice low.
Elira's fingers brushed against the edge of the old stone wall as they entered the abandoned library hall—sealed after the last Voltteri patriarch had died. Dust floated in the golden streaks of light like forgotten memories.
She turned to him slowly, eyes distant.
"You said I reminded you of someone," she whispered. "But I remember nothing. Not even a mother's lullaby. Not a father's hand. Nothing. Except… a black coat and burning roses."
Kairo stiffened.
Elira walked to the center of the hall where an old Voltteri insignia was carved into the floor—cracked from age and heat damage. She knelt, fingertips grazing the marble crest as though it could unlock something.
"I used to dream of this place," she said, her voice trembling. "Before I even knew it existed."
Kairo stepped forward, now alarmed. "What do you mean?"
She looked up. "There's a passage here. Underneath."
Kairo crouched beside her, stunned. "No one alive knows about that—except the elders. And Lorenzo."
A click.
Elira's hand pressed against a hidden seal—one she could not possibly have known. But the symbol had called to her like muscle memory. Like blood answering to blood.
With a hiss, a concealed slab shifted, revealing a staircase descending into pitch darkness.
She stood.
He grabbed her wrist.
"Elira—how do you know this?"
"I don't." Her voice cracked. "But I have to see."
A war brewed behind his eyes. Logic waged against instinct. He wanted to shield her—turn her around, lock this room, bury its secrets. But something deep within him… something darker… whispered to let her descend. That this was not coincidence. It was legacy.
He nodded once, then pulled out a compact flashlight from his coat.
"Then we go together."
They began down the stone staircase—its air colder, heavier, as though soaked in centuries of ash and memory.
Halfway down, Elira paused again. The walls were carved with Voltteri creeds—but one inscription made her falter. She reached for it.
It was a child's name.
Elaria Voltteri.
The same middle name from the forged orphanage records. The one she'd dismissed.
Her knees buckled.
Kairo caught her before she hit the ground.
"Elira?"
She didn't answer.
Her lips trembled. Her breath became shallow.
"I think…" she whispered, barely audible. "I think I'm not who I thought I was."
And Kairo, holding her against his chest, felt the last shards of his already splintered compass collapse.
---
The moment Elira stepped into the Voltteri estate's east wing—the one that hadn't been opened in years—a strange chill met her spine. The long hallway was cloaked in dust, tapestries drawn, and the scent of time clinging to every corner. She had followed the trail of Kairo's past, a half-broken journal, a sketch of a little boy holding a glass chess piece… all tucked away in one of the old bookcases she'd stumbled upon in the library.
Elira clutched the journal close. It belonged to his mother.
The name Alessia Seo was scrawled on the first page. Elegant, delicate strokes that bore no resemblance to the iron-hard legacy her name had become. Kairo never spoke of her. No portraits hung. No stories told. The entire family had scrubbed her away like a forgotten breath.
But why?
Elira pushed open a creaking wooden door at the hallway's end. Inside was a private chamber—untouched, wrapped in white sheets and shadows. The faint scent of lavender lingered, somehow preserved in silence.
The journal trembled in her hand as she turned to a page marked with dried petals.
> "He has his father's mind, but not his cruelty. Kairo sees everything but says nothing. If he ever grows up in this house, I fear he will become a weapon instead of a soul."
Elira sank onto the bed. That's exactly what had happened.
Kairo had grown in palaces made of glass but ruled like a ghost among kings. His mother had seen it coming. And no one had stopped it.
"Why are you here?"
The low voice sent Elira spinning around.
Kairo stood at the threshold of the door, his eyes darker than the hallway behind him. Hair damp from rain. Jaw set. He must've followed her, or perhaps he'd already known where she'd end up.
"I… I found this," she whispered, lifting the journal. "Kairo, why did you hide her? Why do you never talk about your mother?"
Silence fell between them, thick as storm clouds. His eyes moved slowly to the journal, then to the room around them.
"Because she was murdered in this house," he said quietly, stepping inside.
Elira's breath caught.
"She tried to escape the Voltteri name. She wanted to take me and disappear. Leoranzo was only sixteen, but he had already begun pulling strings with my father. They stopped her. My father locked her in this very room and—" He paused. His voice cracked like splintered marble. "She died here. No one said anything. No one dared. And I… was five. I watched through the glass door. I did nothing."
The floor beneath them might as well have broken.
"Kairo…" Elira breathed.
He turned from her, walking to the covered mirror in the corner. His hands reached up, pulled away the sheet.
A massive silver-framed mirror reflected them both, standing in the hollow shell of a forgotten love story. Kairo's face looked carved from shadow, his reflection tired, haunted, and young all at once.
"You asked why I built my empire on silence," he murmured. "Because the screams of the past still echo louder than anything I've done since."
And then he turned to her, vulnerability like bleeding glass in his gaze.
"Now do you still think I can be saved?"
---
The silence between them stretched across the cavernous study like a taut wire, humming with unsaid truths and unshed tears. The fire in the hearth hissed low, its flame feeble now, as if even it dared not burn too bright in the presence of the unraveling storm.
Elira stood near the antique globe, her fingers tracing the ridges of old empires long gone. Behind her, Kairo remained unmoving, his hands in his pockets, jaw clenched tight, trying to read her through the veil of her silence.
"I asked you a question," he repeated, this time softer. "Why didn't you tell me about the call?"
Elira turned slowly. Her face—calm, composed—was the kind of mask that had taken her years to perfect. But her eyes betrayed her, those storm-tossed irises shimmering with the pain she refused to speak aloud.
"Because you would've gone to war," she said quietly. "And I would've lost you to it."
Kairo took a breath, his knuckles whitening. "You're not supposed to protect me from my own war."
"I'm not trying to protect you from it," she corrected, her voice trembling now. "I'm protecting what's left of me."
He stepped toward her, slow and deliberate, until the space between them shrank into a breath's width. His gaze searched hers—not for guilt, but for the raw thread of honesty that still connected them.
"You don't think I deserve to know when my family is plotting against me?" he asked, softer now.
"I think," she murmured, "you deserve to live long enough to win."
Her hands reached up and gently touched his chest, right over his heart. He didn't flinch. He didn't lean in either. He stood there like a statue, afraid that if he moved, she'd vanish like smoke.
"I don't want to be the reason you bury another part of yourself, Kairo. I've seen what this world turns you into when you bleed too often. And I… I want to keep something human alive in you."
For a moment, Kairo forgot how to breathe.
Outside, the storm had returned—rain slamming against the windows like warning shots. But inside, time paused.
He reached up and cupped her face gently, as if he were holding something ancient and fragile. "You don't get to carry this burden alone, Elira," he said, voice a husky whisper. "Not anymore."
Tears threatened, but she blinked them back. She had cried in front of him once. It had felt like baring her bones to fire.
"I don't know how to keep you," she confessed, barely audible, "and still keep myself."
"You don't have to choose," he said. "We burn together, or not at all."
She let out a shaky breath, eyes fluttering shut for a beat. When she opened them, she leaned in—not for a kiss, not for forgiveness, but for closeness. Her forehead met his, a simple surrender in the storm's eye.
And in that stillness, a new truth was born between them. Not peace. Not redemption. But understanding.
Far above, in the upper floors of the estate, Leoranzo stared at the CCTV feed with a smirk, sipping from a crystal glass. In his other hand, he held a small velvet box—the same one that once belonged to Kairo's mother, the one that had disappeared during the Voltteri estate's infamous fire years ago.
Inside it?
A ring.
A key.
And a name that would bring kingdoms to their knees.
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