Betrayed by My Ex, Marked by His Alpha Emperor Brother

Chapter 52

Seraphine’s POV

The palace corridors had never felt so long.

Three days. Three days since the attendant had handed my unread letter back to me. Three days since Kaelen had waved me away like dust from his sleeve. Three days of silence so absolute it screamed.

I pressed my back against the wall of my chamber and stared at the ceiling. The plaster was cracked in one corner. I’d never noticed that before. Strange, the things you see when your world starts to fracture.

He hadn’t even blinked.

The attendant’s words echoed in my skull, playing on a loop I couldn’t silence. “His Majesty said he has no time, my lady.” The boy had been polite about it. Gentle, even. As though delivering news of a minor scheduling conflict rather than a death sentence.

No time.

Not “not now.” Not “perhaps later.” Just—no time. As if I were a stain on his calendar. A smudge to be wiped clean.

I caught my reflection in the mirror across the room. My hair was still perfectly arranged. My gown still immaculate. Every detail curated, polished, flawless. The image of a woman who belonged in an emperor’s orbit.

But the eyes staring back at me were hollow.

He looks at you like you’re something stuck to the bottom of his boot.

I flinched. Pushed away from the wall. Grabbed my plainest cloak from the wardrobe and threw it over my shoulders, pulling the hood low over my face.

I couldn’t stay here. Not in these rooms that smelled like expensive perfume and failure. Not surrounded by silk pillows and embroidered lies.

I knew where I needed to go.

The underground tavern had no name. It squatted beneath a crumbling tannery in the lower quarter of the capital, accessible only through a narrow staircase hidden behind stacked leather hides. The air inside was thick with pipe smoke and the sour reek of cheap ale. Tallow candles guttered on rough-hewn tables, casting more shadow than light.

I didn’t belong here. Every instinct screamed it. The hem of my cloak dragged through something wet on the floor, and I refused to look down.

But desperation has a way of making the unthinkable feel inevitable.

I found him in the back corner.

Gareth Nightfire—prince of the blood, son of an emperor, brother to the throne—sat hunched over a scarred wooden table with some dice and a pile of cheap coins that wouldn’t buy a decent meal. His dark hair hung lank across his forehead. His jaw was unshaven. The fine cut of his coat was marred by a wine stain on the lapel and a tear along one cuff that hadn’t been mended.

He looked like exactly what he was. A man who had been discarded.

A few other gamblers sat across from him—rough men with flat eyes and calloused hands. One of the men scooped the dice, shook, and threw. Gareth watched the result with dull irritation.

I pulled back my hood.

“We need to talk.”

Gareth’s gaze lifted. Traveled over me. Recognition flickered—followed immediately by contempt.

“Well, well.” He leaned back in his chair, arms folding across his chest. “The emperor’s loyal little lapdog. Slumming it tonight, are we?”

“Privately,” I said through my teeth. “Now.”

He studied me for a long, insufferable moment. Then he jerked his chin at the gamblers. “Get lost.”

They didn’t argue. Coins were swept into pockets, chairs scraped back, and within seconds the corner was empty except for us and the guttering candle between us.

I sat down across from him. The chair wobbled on uneven legs.

“Whatever it is,” Gareth said, reaching for his tankard, “I’m not interested. I have my own problems, Seraphine. I don’t need yours.”

“Your problems and mine have the same name.”

He paused. The tankard hovered near his lips. His eyes—dark gold, so like Kaelen’s and yet so different, harder, hungrier—narrowed over the rim.

“Go on.”

“He’s shutting me out.” I kept my voice low. Controlled. But even I could hear the fracture beneath the surface. “Completely. Not gradually—overnight. Ever since that woman arrived, ever since she wormed her way into the palace, it’s like I’ve ceased to exist. I sent him a letter. He didn’t even open it. His attendant said—” My voice caught. I swallowed. “He said the Emperor has no time.”

Gareth set down his tankard. A thin smile curled his mouth—not kind, not sympathetic. Mocking.

“And this surprises you?” He laughed. Short and ugly. “You, the ‘future empress.’ The woman who paraded through court with that stolen brooch pinned to your breast like it meant something.” He leaned forward. “Let me save you some time, Seraphine. It never meant anything. You were never going to be his queen. You were a convenience at best. A decoration. And now he’s found a prettier one.”

The words landed like slaps. Each one precise. Each one true.

And that was what finally cracked me open.

“I know,” I whispered.

Gareth’s smile faltered. He hadn’t expected that.

“I know it was never real,” I continued. My hands were shaking under the table. I pressed them flat against my thighs. “I know what I am. What I’ve always been. Do you want to hear it? The whole pathetic truth?”

He said nothing. But his eyes sharpened. Predatory attention.

I took a breath that tasted like smoke and humiliation.

“Five years ago, during the Imperial Masquerade Ball, I wasn’t a guest.” The confession scraped my throat raw. “I was a cleaning maid. At the Moonlight Inn. The one near the palace district where the overflow guests stayed.”

Silence.

Gareth’s expression didn’t change, but something shifted behind his eyes. A calculation beginning.

“I was assigned to clean the private suites after the guests departed. Most rooms were a mess—spilled wine, torn costumes, the usual filth. But one suite was different. It was barely touched. The bed was rumpled, the window was open, and on the pillow—” I paused. The memory was still vivid. That gleam of gold against white linen. “On the pillow was a brooch. A golden wolf crest. Imperial craftsmanship. The kind of piece that cost more than I’d earn in a lifetime.”

“You stole it.”

Not a question. A statement. Flat and absolute.

“Yes.” The word tasted like ash. “I stole it. I hid it in my apron and walked out. Nobody checked. Nobody noticed. I was invisible. Just another servant scrubbing floors.”

Gareth’s tongue pressed against the inside of his cheek. He studied me the way a merchant studies a flawed gem—assessing what remained of its value.

“And then?” he prompted.

“And then I left the inn. Used every coin I’d saved to forge credentials. A minor noble house. A fabricated lineage. I taught myself court etiquette from books. Practiced my accent until no trace of the lower quarter remained.” My fingers curled into fists beneath the table. “When I finally entered court society, I let everyone assume the brooch meant I had some connection to the emperor. A past encounter. A romantic link. I never confirmed it outright—I just never denied it.”

“Clever.” Gareth’s tone held grudging acknowledgment. “And completely fraudulent.”

“He never looked at me, Gareth.” My voice cracked despite every effort to hold it steady. “Not once. Not the way he looks at her. When he sees me, his expression—it’s like looking at something that disgusts him. A stain he can’t be bothered to clean.” I exhaled. Ragged. Broken. “The brooch was supposed to be my way in. My proof that fate had connected us. But it was always a lie. And now the lie is unraveling, and when it does—when he finds out what I really am—”

“You’ll be thrown from court. Stripped of your position. Probably imprisoned.” Gareth finished the thought with clinical detachment. “Fraud against the Imperial House carries severe consequences.”

“I know.”

He picked up his dice. Rolled them between his fingers. Click. Click. Click.

“So what do you want from me?” he asked. “Sympathy? I’m fresh out.”

“I want an alliance.”

The clicking stopped.

“I still have access,” I said, leaning forward. “As his senior aide, I see documents, schedules, communications. I know which chambers are unguarded and when. I know the rotation of his personal attendants. I know—” I steadied myself. “I know everything about how his household operates. That information has value.”

Gareth’s jaw tightened. He set the dice down. Carefully. One by one.

“And what exactly would we do with this information?”

“Whatever it takes to survive. Whatever it takes to make sure that woman doesn’t get everything while we’re left with nothing.”

“Bold words from a maid pretending to be a lady.”

“Bold words from a prince who gambles with cheap coins in a hole that smells like a sewer.”

His eyes flashed. For a moment, I thought he would throw me out. His pride—battered as it was—still had teeth.

But then something else moved through his expression. Something colder. Deeper. The same corrosive thing I saw every time he looked toward the palace on the hill.

Envy. Pure and lethal.

“Once he has a legitimate heir,” I said quietly, “where does that leave you, Gareth? The bastard half-brother with no title, no lands, no standing. You’ll be nothing. Less than nothing.”

His knuckles whitened around the tankard.

“You think I don’t know that?” His voice was barely above a whisper. Venomous. “You think I don’t lie awake every night knowing that everything—everything—was handed to him? The throne. The power. The name. While I got table scraps and a pat on the head.”

“Then stop accepting scraps.”

The candle flame guttered between us. Shadows twisted across his face.

Gareth was quiet for a long time. The noise of the tavern pressed in around us—laughter, arguments, the clink of tankards. None of it touched the silence at our table.

Then he looked up. And in his eyes, I saw something that hadn’t been there before.

Purpose.

“If we do this,” he said slowly, “we do it properly. No half-measures. No panic. One shot, and it has to count.”

“Agreed.”

He leaned back. Crossed his arms. A dark, vicious light flickered behind his gaze.

“Then here’s what we need first.” His voice dropped low. “We need a scandal. Something so devastating that no amount of love or loyalty can survive it. Something that breaks them apart—permanently.”