Lord of the realm

Chapter 227: Why did you betray me?

"Why did you do it? Why betray me?"

His grip tightened slightly, not enough to crush, but enough to make breathing difficult. To make speaking nearly impossible.

"Answer me!" The command carried force that made reality ripple.

"You were my family! Taught me! I trusted you more than anyone else! And you were working with her the entire time? Planning my death from before I was even born?"

Morgana tried to respond, tried to form words past the constriction of his hand. Her face was going red from oxygen deprivation, tears leaking from her eyes.

Suyajna moved to intervene, dark energy gathering around her hands.

Jaenor’s other hand gestured casually, and a barrier of pure force appeared between them, not origin energy, not aura, but something more fundamental. It held Suyajna back effortlessly, preventing her from reaching them.

"Stay there," Jaenor said, his layered voice carrying absolute authority.

"You’ll get your turn. But first, I want answers from the woman who claimed to care about me."

He released the barrier around Morgana’s throat slightly, allowing her to breathe but maintaining his grip.

"Talk," he commanded.

"Explain. Make me understand how someone who said they loved me could do what you did."

Morgana took several gasping breaths, her healer’s instincts automatically assessing the damage to her throat. Then she looked at Jaenor, really looked at him, at what he’d become and something in her expression shifted.

Defiance.

"Because I loved her more," she whispered, her voice raw.

"Because I met Suyajna, and for the first time in my life, I felt truly seen. Truly understood. And when she told me her plan, when she explained what she needed... I couldn’t say no."

She looked at him with such hatred that it made Jaenor believe that she wasn’t the Morgana he knew.

"I did love you, Jaenor. That wasn’t a lie. You were family. You were my nephew, my student, someone I genuinely cared about. But love isn’t always enough. Sometimes... sometimes you love multiple people, and you have to choose between them. And I chose her."

"You chose wrong," Jaenor said flatly.

"I know," Morgana agreed.

"I know that now. Looking at you, at what you’ve become despite everything we did to you, I know I was wrong. But I can’t take it back. Can’t undo what’s been done. I will do it all over again."

"I won’t apologize for what I did. Because I did everything right and did it with my full mind."

"Sorry doesn’t fix it," Jaenor said.

"Sorry doesn’t give me back the life I should have had. The choices that should have been mine. The identity that wasn’t shaped by your manipulation."

His grip tightened again, and Morgana’s eyes widened with fear.

"So tell me," Jaenor continued, his voice dropping to something barely above a whisper but infinitely more dangerous.

"Why shouldn’t I kill you right now? Why shouldn’t I end the woman who betrayed me in the most fundamental way possible?"

Morgana met his eyes, those impossible deep dark eyes that held judgment and power and absolute certainty, and she didn’t look away.

Morgana struggled under Jaenor’s grip, her fingers clawing at his hand, her legs kicking uselessly in the air. But despite the physical distress, despite the oxygen deprivation making her vision blur, she found her voice.

"You want... to know... why?" She gasped out, her words coming in strangled bursts.

"Why could I... do this... to you?"

"Yes," Jaenor said, his grip unwavering.

"Explain. Make me understand how family could become this."

Morgana’s expression twisted, pain and anger and years of suppressed bitterness all surfacing at once.

"Because... men... destroy everything," she spat, her voice gaining strength even as his grip remained firm.

"Everything wrong... with this world... traces back... to men. Wars. Slaughter. Oppression. The Separation itself... happened because... men couldn’t share power... couldn’t compromise."

Her eyes blazed with genuine conviction, with belief that had clearly been festering for decades.

"The Arkwright bloodline... especially. Do you know... what it was like... being born into that family... as a woman? Being invisible. Irrelevant. Just a... a vessel... for producing more male heirs."

Tears of rage mixed with the tears from oxygen deprivation.

"They never cared... about my feelings. My thoughts. My potential. I was nothing... but a tool... for continuing the bloodline. For political marriages. For... for maintaining their cursed legacy. And when I manifested... origin energy instead of aura... they dismissed me completely. Said I was... was defective. Broken."

Jaenor’s expression remained cold, but he loosened his grip slightly, allowing her to breathe more easily.

Not out of mercy, but out of desire to hear everything before making his decision.

Morgana took several gasping breaths before continuing.

"I left. Fled that family... as soon as I could. Joined the Covens... where at least women... had power. Had authority. Where capability mattered... more than gender. But even there... even there... I saw it. Men are controlling. Men destroying. Men making decisions... that got people killed... while claiming it was... for the greater good."

Her voice grew stronger and more passionate, fueled by decades of accumulated resentment.

"And then I met her. Met Suyajna. And she saw me. Actually saw myself. Not as a failed Arkwright. Not as a tool. But as a person. Someone with value. Someone with potential. Someone who mattered."

She looked past Jaenor toward where Suyajna stood restrained by his barrier.

"She told me her plan. Told me what she needed. And I believed her. Believed that the world would be better, genuinely better, without the Arkwright curse continuing. Without another generation of male heirs perpetuating cycles of violence and destruction. That using you... using your power for something greater than yourself... was justified."

Morgana met Jaenor’s eyes directly, and there was no apology in her gaze now.

Just conviction.

"I followed her because she gave me purpose. Because she showed me a vision of a world where women like us, powerful, capable women, didn’t have to bow to male authority. Didn’t have to watch men destroy everything beautiful and claim it was necessary.

Where we could be sovereigns. Queens. Gods."

"So you never loved me," Jaenor said quietly.

"Never saw me as family. It was all manipulation from the beginning."

"I..." Morgana hesitated, then continued with brutal honesty.

"I cared about you. In my way. The way you’d care about... about a pet. Or a project. Something you’ve invested time in. But love? Family? No. That was always performance. Always part of the plan."

She paused, then added:

"From the moment Suyajna told me what she needed, you were just a tool. You became a means to an end. A vessel being prepared for its purpose. And everything I did every lesson, every kindness, every moment of seeming affection, was calculated to ensure you’d develop properly. To make you trust me so completely that you’d never suspect what was really happening."

Something inside Jaenor cracked. Not broke, he was too far beyond that now. But cracked. A final piece of hope, a desperate wish that maybe there’d been some genuine care beneath the betrayal, finally died.

"Then you’re not even worth the effort of killing," he said coldly.

His hand began to tighten, fingers closing around her throat with increasing pressure. Morgana’s eyes widened, genuine fear finally breaking through her ideological conviction.

Her hands clawed at his grip more desperately now. Her legs kicked with renewed panic. She tried to speak, to plead, but his grip was too tight, cutting off air completely.

Five seconds.

Ten.

Fifteen.

Her face was turning purple.

Her struggles were weakening.

Death was approaching, and she could feel it.

That was when Suyajna acted.

"JAENOR! RELEASE HER!"

Dark energy exploded from the daemon god, a massive beam of concentrated power that tore through Jaenor’s barrier like it was paper. The beam was easily ten feet wide, composed of forces that could destroy a mountain, and it struck Jaenor directly.

The explosion was catastrophic.

A sphere of destruction fifty feet across erupted where Jaenor had been standing, the shockwave flattening everything nearby. The sound was thunder multiplied a thousand times, painful even to divine hearing.

Morgana was thrown clear by the blast, landing hard twenty feet away. She gasped for air, her hands going to her bruised throat, her entire body shaking from how close she’d come to death.

Suyajna appeared beside her instantly, her daemon-enhanced speed making the distance meaningless. She knelt, her hands glowing with dark energy as she assessed Morgana’s injuries.

"Are you hurt? Did he damage anything vital?" Suyajna’s voice showed genuine concern, perhaps the only genuine emotion she was capable of beyond malice.

"I’m... fine," Morgana croaked.

"Just bruised. He could have... could have killed me easily. But he was... taking his time. Making a point."

"That was foolish of him," Suyajna said, helping Morgana to her feet.

"Giving me time to intervene. He’s powerful, yes. But he’s still thinking like a mortal. Making mistakes that power alone can’t compensate for."