Chapter 219-Betrayed

Chapter 219: 219-Betrayed

"The most suitable?" Varitreya’s voice rose. "What about me?"

The room fell dead silent. Emotions were running high and the atmosphere grew tense.

Velanora’s expression changed. "Varitreya..."

"No. I want to understand." She stepped farther into the room. "I was raised to inherit the throne... I am your daughter... I am the bloody blood heir.... everything I’ve done... everything I’ve prepared for..." She paused, caught her breath. "... was because I was supposed to become queen one day."

Her voice trembled despite her efforts to control it. "And you simply handed it to Maisa?"

Maisa looked horrified. She felt the heartbreak Varitreya was feeling. It was transimtted through their bond. And it cut in to her, deeply.

"Varitreya, I didn’t know..."

Varitreya turned toward her. "Don’t."

The single word stopped Maisa from continuing. Varitreya looked back at her mothers. "Why would you do this without even speaking to me?"

Kheamossa placed her cup down. "Because the decision had already been made, Varitreya."

"By whom?"

"By us."

"That isn’t an answer!" Varitreya argued, it made no sense. Why Maisa? Why a redblood that had no relationship with them?

Velanora rose from her seat. "Varitreya, calm down."

"How can I calm down?" Her eyes were beginning to glisten. "I wake up to find out that an entire week has disappeared, Maisa has somehow become queen, and you two have retired without telling me anything!"

Her gaze shifted toward Maisa. "And now everyone is calling her our queen."

She looked back at her mothers, struggling to keep her voice steady. "Did I do something wrong? Was I not good enough?"

Velanora’s expression softened further. "Oh, my darling..."

She approached her daughter, but Varitreya stepped back. She put distance between them, the last thing she wanted was to embrace her mother after the woman stabbed her in the back.

"Don’t. Touch. Me."

The former queen stopped and for the first time, Maisa who was at the side, understood just how deeply the revelation had hurt Varitreya.

This wasn’t simply about losing a title. It was about losing the future Varitreya had spent her entire life preparing for. Her inheritance, her responsibilities, and the place she had always believed she would occupy had been taken from her without warning.

And Maisa was standing at the center of it. She wanted to explain that she knew nothing about what was going on.

That she hadn’t asked for the throne, hadn’t agreed to the coronation, and hadn’t even known the royal family had decided to retire but the words wouldn’t come.

Everything was happening too quickly. She was still trying to understand how she had lost seven days, how the blood cocoon had been activated, and where the child was.

Now she was apparently the queen of an entire nation and the four women standing beside her were her queen consorts.

She looked at Velanora and Kheamossa. "Why didn’t anyone tell me anything?"

Kheamossa studied her. "Tell you what, dear?" She acted ablivious to what Maisa was asking about.

"That I was going to be crowned! That you were retiring! That the entire kingdom was going to be handed over to me!" Maisa’s voice grew louder with every question. "I don’t even know what happened during the last seven days!"

A strange silence followed. Velanora and Kheamossa exchanged another glance. It was brief, but Maisa noticed it and so did Varitreya and the others.

"What?" Varitreya demanded. "What aren’t you telling us?"

Kheamossa sighed. "Perhaps you should all sit down."

"No." Varitreya shook her head. "I’m tired of being told to sit down whenever someone has something to hide from me."

She turned toward Maisa again. "Tell me something."

Maisa looked at her. She had a bad feeling about the question Varitreya was about to raise as Varitreya was a bit emotional and unstable.

"What sorcery did you use on my parents?"

"Varitreya..."

"Did you compel them? Did you use your blood? Did you somehow make them abandon the throne and hand it to you?"

"That’s not what happened!" Maisa fired back.

"Then explain it!" Varitreya raised her voice higher than Maisa’s. "Why you?"

Maisa opened her mouth to put her case forward but no words came out. She had no explanation.

She hadn’t known about the coronation, hadn’t known about the retirement, and hadn’t even known that the entire kingdom had been addressing her as their queen. Yet how could she prove that she hadn’t been involved when everything pointed toward her?

Varitreya’s eyes narrowed. "You were the first one to wake up, weren’t you?"

Maisa hesitated. She shook her head, the train of Varitreya’s thoughts was misunderstanding her and she couldn’t allow that.

"Yes, but..."

"What happened before we woke up? What did you see? What aren’t you telling us?" Varitreya come onto her with questions. "Were you ever asleep at all?"

The question made the others eye Maisa from a different perspective.

"I don’t know!" Maisa answered. "I was asleep and... I don’t know what’s going on."

The desperation in Maisa’s voice silenced the room. She looked at Varitreya, then at the others.

"I swear I don’t know. I woke up in the gazebo, and it was already daylight. I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t burning in the sun. Then I saw the flowers, and I felt..." Her hand moved unconsciously toward her stomach. "I felt like something was missing."

Her voice weakened. "I thought we had lost our child. I thought the Mother had taken it..." She stopped, helpless on what to say to prove her innocence. "I don’t know anything about the coronation... I don’t know why your mothers retired... I don’t even know why everyone is calling me queen!"

She swallowed. "Everything is just as new to me as it is to you."

For a moment Varitreya looked as though she wanted to believe her but the hurt was too fresh.

Her gaze moved to Maisa’s hand resting over her stomach and then to the two women who had raised her.

"You expect me to believe that?" She asked all three of them. "Do you take me for a fool?"

Maisa fell silent. She wanted to defend herself. She wanted to tell Varitreya that she would never deliberately take something that belonged to her and that she had never wanted the throne and would gladly surrender it if that would make this nightmare disappear.

But she couldn’t find the words or where to start. Not when the very people who should have been able to explain everything were sitting quietly before them.

Addessa stepped forward. "Enough. Maisa is clearly just as confused as the rest of us."

"Since when are you on Maisa’s team?" Varitreya turned toward her. "And what about my parents? Are we supposed to pretend this is normal?"

"No," Addessa answered. "But accusing Maisa won’t give us answers... And for the record, I am not picking teams."

Lumi nodded slowly. "We need to understand what happened during the missing week. The coronation, the retirement, the queen consort titles... all of it."

Zolani looked from one person to another. "I don’t know what we’re supposed to feel anymore."

Maisa lowered her eyes. She had wanted to spend the day finding their missing child and find out how they’d had a child in the first place.

However, she had walked into a palace where an entire nation believed she was their queen, where her mates had somehow become her consorts, and where Varitreya’s parents had willingly surrendered the throne that had been promised to their daughter to her.

The worst part was that the two people who could explain it all were refusing to offer an explanation.

Velanora finally approached them. "There’s a great deal you don’t remember," she said gently. "And there are reasons things happened as they did."

Varitreya laughed bitterly. "Of course there are."

She found her mother’s explanation to mock every training and rules she’d forced herself to adapt to in order to honor her role as the blood heir.

Kheamossa’s eyes settled on her daughter. "Some truths are difficult to accept, Varitreya."

"Then perhaps you should stop deciding which truths I’m allowed to know, mommy."

The words left the room silent. Varitreya thought back to the missing pieces from Felor and felt like there was more to the story and she was intentionally being kept in the dark.

"God, I wish you’d all stop lying and manipulating me... I don’t find this game fun at all..." Tears traced down her cheek. "I feel betrayed... wounded and... you’re all traitors."

Maisa looked at the two queens. Something about their expressions troubled her; they weren’t surprised by the questions or even particularly concerned by the accusations.

They seemed to have expected this confrontation and that could only mean one thing. Whatever had happened during the seven missing days had not been an accident. Someone had planned it.

Someone had made decisions on their behalf, and the consequences were now unfolding around them.

Maisa’s fingers curled against her dress. She had a terrible feeling that the missing child was only the beginning of what they had lost.

And as she stood in the room, surrounded by people who seemed to know more about her new life than she did, one question became impossible to ignore.

What had happened to them during those seven days?