Chapter 197 Part 2
**James**
The revelation settled over the room. Conner’s brow was furrowed in deep thought. Clint’s usual smirk was gone, replaced by a grim understanding. Cassius nodded slowly, as if a long-unanswered question had finally been resolved.
“For centuries, none disputed his claim,” I continued. “The world was too broken, the survivors too scattered. He cultivated that flicker of life, and Talos, as you know it, was born from the ashes. But as I grew, as my own power began to approach its zenith, things changed. Whispers started. Challenges to his rule. Other tribes, long dormant, began to stir, claiming older, purer bloodlines. It seemed like simple politics, the predictable grasping for power.”
My voice hardened, the memory a raw wound. “But it wasn’t. It was orchestrated. Every alliance against him, every border dispute, every assassination attempt—it was all part of a larger, insidious plan. A plan to destabilize Talos, to weaken my line. A plan to ensure that when the time came, the King of Talos would be too embroiled in his own survival to notice a single, special girl in a human orphanage.”
Avery’s breath caught. Donn’s head snapped up, his Reaper’s eyes sharp and focused.
“My father was killed during one of those ‘disputes,’” I said, the words tasting like ash. “An ambush, perfectly timed, ruthlessly executed. I was barely of age. I was forced to take the throne, to choose between avenging my father and holding my kingdom together. I chose duty. I chose Talos.”
I walked over to the window, staring out at the moonlit kingdom my father had rebuilt. “And then, a few years later, a ‘coincidence.’ A whisper from a scout about a new, uncatalogued shifter with an unusual scent signature, registered at an orphanage deep in human territory. It was a minor detail, a loose thread in the grand tapestry of running a kingdom. I should have sent someone else. But something… some instinct I couldn’t explain… compelled me to go myself.”
I turned back to face them, the final piece of the puzzle clicking into place with chilling certainty.
“It was never a coincidence. Just as it was never just politics that killed my father. There is a hand guiding all of this. A malevolent intelligence, moving pieces on a board we never even knew we were playing on. An entity powerful enough to issue a cosmic decree of extinction, to imprison the Ravens, and to manipulate the fates of kings and queens to prevent a prophecy from coming to pass.”
I looked at each of them in turn—Alden, his ancient face grim with confirmation; Avery, the center of it all, her expression one of steely resolve; Donn, the defiant Reaper; Vincent, the embodiment of shadow; my brothers.
“We know who the real enemy is now. It was never Cora. She was a pawn, a rabid dog set loose in a direction she was pointed. The true enemy is the one who held her leash. The one who feared the union of our powers. The one who fears what Avery’s children—the children of dragons and mythic beings and a shadowmancer queen—will be capable of.”
I let the silence hang for a moment before I delivered the final, damning conclusion.
“It has always been the Goddess.”
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