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

A

Was it you?

simply a journal entry. The last one I made before I left to the sacred lands and our daughter, the first golden dragon,

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voice

feel her, hear her voice. For a

I could see it in his

all the

his voice barely above a whisper. "I wanted to stay with her. It felt... peaceful. I had not

swirling in my chest. This

ours. And yet here he was,

stay

his voice croaking. "For a dream..." His voice cracked. "I had thought I was dead until I woke up. It had felt the way you would imagine death... We were back in that meadow we met as if we had all the time in the world. There was no guilt. No grief..." He shuddered

casket. I woke up in the cavern, warm, with no knowledge of how long I

I asked, approaching him.

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 would have happened to you in taking my seat that hurt the most... I couldn't bear it... I

never felt so inadequate as a father

head. "I have always taught you to face your failures, your

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I was so prepared to run. To stay with her and drift into my next life...

"Yet, you are here."

to be," he

You could have

and turned slowly toward me. My eyes

you thought of it, that you had a million plans to make it happen... I knew that the only reason you were still here was