The Dragon King's Substitute Bride

Chapter 110

CHIIO

Tsuneo

I couldn't believe it. My own father, the king of the Dragon Empire, a king of the Celestial Realm, had been hiding.

Hiding from what?

"Why?" I asked, my voice filled with a mixture of confusion and anger.

My father took a deep breath, his eyes filled with a mixture of sadness and resignation.

"I... Shame, honestly."

"What?"

He didn't answer at first, as if he hadn't heard me. But then, slowly, he glanced at me, his eyes distant, unfocused. There was a sadness there, one that I hadn't seen before. It was unsettling.

I studied his face for a moment, the lines deeper than I remembered. His eyes, once so sharp and

calculating, seemed guilty.

He looked away, his gaze drifting back to the Pool. For a long moment, he said nothing, just staring into the water as if searching for answers. Finally, he spoke, his voice heavy with. something I hadn't expected-guilt.. "I dreamed of your mother."

The words hit me like a stone to the chest. It was as if I already knew what he was going to say. My mother was his phoenix, his equal in every sense. Her presence still lingered in this palace, in every room, in every corner of our lives, but I'd known when I first woke up and found out that she was considered dead that the only thing holding him on this plane was duty.

Duty did not make the heartbeat.

It was a line from a poem that he read to me often as a child. It was a poem about grief, written by an ancestor who

simply called himself A Husband Without A

Was it you?

not a poem, it was simply a journal entry. The last one I made before I left to the sacred lands and our daughter, the

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my voice colder

her. In the dream, it felt so real, as if no time had passed. We were... together again. I could feel her, hear her voice. For a moment, I thought I was dead. I

could see

silence was all the confirmation I

did," he admitted, his voice barely above a whisper. "I wanted to stay with her. It felt... peaceful. I had not remembered how... blissful it

swirling

yet here he was, that he had wanted to abandon us all. He had

were going to stay

dead until I woke up. It had felt the way you would imagine death... We were back in that meadow we

in the cavern, warm, with no knowledge of how long I had been down there, and the guilt hit me so hard I could

approaching him.

said, his voice cracking. "For Haruka's death. For the way I've failed the kingdom. The way I have failed you. For what I've allowed to happen. I've watched as my children. turn on one another... You had to kill two of your siblings, Tsuneo... I've made you my heir though you are the youngest... Of all my wrongdoings and misteps... it was the knowledge of what

had never felt so inadequate as a father until

his head. "I have always taught you to face

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was so prepared to run. To stay with her and drift into

"Yet, you are here."

I wanted to be," he

You could have ended

and turned slowly toward me. My eyes

knew the moment I woke up and knew that mother was gone that... that you thought of it, that you had a