Chapter 115: The Arrow That Aimed for a Father’s Heart

Zephyra stood frozen outside the heavy double doors of her mother’s chambers, staring at the two maids who had the audacity to block her path as if she were some common intruder.

"What did you just say?"

The older maid lowered her head so far her forehead nearly touched her clasped hands. Her voice trembled.

"Her Majesty... gave strict orders last night. No one is to enter these rooms. Not the attendants. Not the guards. Not even... Princess Zephyra."

Zephyra blinked once. Twice. Then a short, disbelieving laugh escaped her throat, sharp and incredulous.

"You’re telling me my own mother forbade me from entering her room?" She tilted her head, long silver-white hair cascading over one shoulder like liquid moonlight. "That is the funniest thing I have heard in my entire life."

She didn’t bother asking further questions. She didn’t demand explanations or raise her voice. She simply stepped forward. The maids panicked, raising their arms in a desperate, futile attempt to stop her.

One of them even grabbed lightly at her sleeve. Zephyra barely felt the resistance. One firm push of her shoulder and the heavy double doors swung open with a low, resonant groan.

The scene that greeted her made her eyes widen.

Morwenna lay on the large canopy bed, deeply asleep. The usual regal composure that never left her face, even in rest, was gone. In its place was a soft, almost peaceful exhaustion mixed with something lighter... something content, almost cheerful in the curve of her lips.

Her breathing was slow and even. Scattered across the floor, draped over the low table, hanging from the edge of the bed, and half-buried beneath the silk sheets were clothes.

Elegant night robes of deep emerald and black. Outer garments embroidered with royal patterns. And pieces that clearly did not belong to a queen alone. A man’s dark outer robe. A discarded belt. Boots kicked carelessly near the foot of the bed.

Zephyra’s eyes narrowed into sharp slits.

She understood in an instant.

Daemon.

He had slept with her mother.

A cold, heavy weight settled deep in her chest, spreading outward until it felt like ice coating her ribs. She had always known, somewhere in the quiet, dangerous place where her instincts lived, that the man was a womanizer.

He never acted like one. He carried himself with quiet restraint, almost indifference toward women, as if their beauty and status meant nothing to him.

Yet something about him had always set her instincts on edge, like a bowstring drawn too tight. Yesterday, when her mother had shown him unusual care and importance—far more than she had ever shown any man who approached the throne—a mild, unwanted suspicion had formed in the back of Zephyra’s mind.

Now that suspicion stood confirmed before her eyes in the form of scattered clothing and her mother’s unusually soft expression.

He had seduced her mother.

Morwenna, for all her overwhelming power and centuries of rule, had always been strangely naive when it came to matters of the heart. How could he touch her? How dare he lay a hand on the woman Zephyra had spent years protecting?

*I’m sorry, Sana. I’m sorry, Roxy.*

Zephyra’s fingers curled tightly at her sides until her nails bit into her palms. She would not kill him. Not yet.

But she would make him regret every second he had spent in this room. She would make him understand that some lines could never be crossed without consequence.

She scanned the chamber carefully. Only Morwenna slept deeply on the bed, her face turned slightly toward the window where soft morning light filtered through the curtains. Daemon was nowhere in sight.

Then the restroom door opened with a quiet click.

Daemon stepped out, wearing only black pants that hung low on his hips. Water still clung to the ends of his dark hair, dripping slowly down the defined lines of his neck and shoulders.

He ran a hand through the damp strands, rubbing the back of his neck with a tired, almost casual motion, as if he had just finished washing away the remnants of a long night.

He walked toward the bed without looking up at first, bare feet silent against the polished stone floor—

Then he turned.

And saw her.

The easy, unguarded expression on his face vanished in an instant. For a fraction of a second, something raw and completely unshielded flashed through his eyes—shock, recognition, and something far deeper that he had not expected to feel.

Then it settled into something quieter... heavier... almost aching.

"Zephyra," he said, voice low and rough around the edges. "I actually wanted to talk to you. It’s good that you already came."

He approached with a small smile, but behind that smile his thoughts were crashing against each other like violent waves against stone cliffs.

*I have a daughter.*

*I already missed so many moments.*

*I never got to see her take her first steps. Never got to hear her first words. Never got to teach her how to hold a weapon or watch her grow into the fierce woman standing in front of me right now.*

*I want to hold her.*

His eyes shimmered for the first time in a long while. Not with power. Not with the cold, Something older. Something that had been buried under centuries of war, reincarnation, bloodline seals, and the weight of a life that had ended once already.

A father’s gaze, looking at the child he had never been allowed to raise in this life, looking at the young woman who had grown up without him, who had learned to protect herself and her mother in a world that gave no mercy to the weak.

Zephyra had already summoned her bow.

The sleek, silver-white weapon materialized in her hand with a soft hum of energy, the string half-drawn from sheer reflex.

The familiar weight grounded her. She had expected many reactions from him the moment he saw her standing there.

Guilt. Panic. False charm meant to soothe and deflect. Maybe even arrogance, the kind of smug confidence men wore when they thought they had already won.

What she saw instead was the complete opposite.

The way he looked at her... as if the mere sight of her alone had stolen the air from his lungs. As if something inside him had cracked open the moment their eyes met, spilling out emotions he had no right to feel.

There was no calculation in that gaze. No performance. Only a quiet, almost painful intensity that made the space between them feel heavier than it should have.

For a brief, dangerous second, confusion flickered through her chest.

Then understanding followed, cold and sharp as a winter blade.

*Another trick.*

He thought he could deceive her the same way he had deceived her mother. He thought a soft look and a gentle voice would be enough to lower her guard.

He thought she was just as na?ve. But Zephyra had spent years protecting Morwenna from men exactly like him—men who smiled while calculating the value of a queen’s heart, men who approached with honeyed words and hidden intentions.

So many had come over the years. Some for her mother’s overwhelming power, hoping to bind themselves to a Domain-level existence and rise on her strength.

Some for the throne itself—marriage to Morwenna would have made any man king of a vast and ancient kingdom.

And some had approached with nothing but raw lust in their eyes, seeing only beauty and status and the chance to claim both.

Zephyra had driven them all away. One by one. Arrow by arrow. Threat by threat. She had stood as the wall between her mother and every ambitious or hungry man who thought a queen was easy prey.

She had watched them all leave with fear in their eyes or blood on their clothes.

And this human... this man she had personally helped when he stood at the very brink of death, when his body had been broken and his life force flickering like a dying candle... had repaid that kindness by revealing his true nature the moment her mother showed him warmth.

Zephyra’s grip tightened until the wood of the bow creaked faintly under her fingers.

She raised the weapon fully and pointed it straight at his chest, the arrow already nocked and humming with gathered power.

Daemon did not move.

He simply stood there, barefoot on the cold floor, looking at her with that same quiet expression. The expression of a father who had finally found his daughter after missing an entire lifetime of moments.

No fear. No calculation. Only something deep, aching, and unbearably soft in his eyes—as if the arrow aimed at his heart mattered far less than the fact that she was standing in front of him at all.

Zephyra’s jaw clenched so hard her teeth ached.

She poured a massive amount of energy into the arrow. The air around the bowstring warped under the sudden pressure.

Light gathered along the shaft in swirling threads of silver and pale gold until the entire projectile burned like a miniature star, dense with enough concentrated power to pierce through almost any defense in its path.

The hum of energy filled the room, vibrating against the walls and the scattered clothing on the floor.

Then she released it.

The arrow tore through the air with a sharp, screaming whistle, carrying enough force to shatter stone and split steel. It flew straight toward Daemon’s heart—

And the world seemed to slow.