Fated Eclipse: The Illegitimate Princess And Her Alpha Suitors

Chapter 180: The First Reading

Lyria’s POV

I turned toward the dais.

The Queen’s expression was composed and pleasant, as though what she had just announced was nothing more than a small and sensible adjustment to the morning’s proceedings. As though it were a kindness.

I looked at Jacinta, and she was smiling.

I looked away and pressed my hands together in my lap.

They knew.

Or they suspected enough to act on it, which amounted to the same thing. I could not read, at least not properly and not with any ease.

The royal family was aware of the fact that I could not read. And now, before the court, before every noble seated in this hall, before the entire kingdom watching on the scrying veil, they intended to make that plain by asking me to do the one thing I could not do, and allowing everyone to watch me fail at it.

It was neat. I could not fault the construction of it.

I turned my gaze forward, and it collided with Lucian’s.

It was brief, only long enough for me to notice, and perhaps long enough for him to notice that I had.

Then he looked away.

He moved without hesitation toward Jacinta instead, his parchment held loosely at his side, his steps unhurried across the polished floor.

But I understood what it meant—not his choice, which he had not been given, but the direction of it. The royal family had, in a single quiet instruction from the Queen, communicated two things at once to everyone present in this hall and everyone watching beyond it.

The first was to come...the fact that I could not read.

The second was who, between Jacinta and myself, they considered to be the true Moon of this kingdom.

Jacinta received the parchment with a gracious incline of her head, her fingers closing around it with the ease of someone accepting something they had been expecting all along. She did not look at me again. She did not need to. The smile had already said everything it needed to say, and she was too practised in the art of court to repeat herself unnecessarily.

Lucian stepped back after giving it to her, and Jacinta rose.

Her posture was flawless, as it always was—spine straight, chin at precisely the correct angle, the sunflower gown catching the light.

She cleared her throat once.

Then she looked down at the parchment.

And she began.

Home is a word we speak with ease,

So small upon the tongue,

Yet vast as any ocean’s breadth,

Or songs no longer sung.

Sometimes it is a room of warmth,

Where laughter fills the air,

Where voices call you back by name

And someone knows you’re there.

And sometimes it is heavier—

A place where grief has stayed,

Where silence keeps the shape of those

Whose debts were never paid.

It wears the face of memory,

Of all we left behind,

The ones we wronged without a thought,

The ones who stayed unkind.

And yet—it need not be

A house, a hearth, a door.

For home is not a place at all,

Not walls, not roof, not floor.

It is the one who steadies you

When all the world grows dim.

The friend who holds your silence well,

The voice that calls you in.

A lover’s hand. A knowing look.

The person who remains.

Who sits with you through every storm

And does not count your stains.

Home differs, yes, for every soul,

No two are quite the same.

But home, at last, is always this:

The one who speaks your name.

The one you turn to without thought.

The one who is your rest.

Of all the definitions given,

This endures the test.

For places burn and structures fall

And walls do not hold long—

But people carry home

Wherever they belong.

Jacinta’s voice moved through the verses steadily.

Each line arrived where it was meant to arrive, delivered with practised ease. There was nothing uncertain in it. Nothing hesitant.

She simply read.

And the hall listened.

I listened too, every line of it.

And I thought of my mother and Patricia. I thought of the one home I had in them. What I believed in them.

I did not know home could be linked to people. I did not know that it could be interpreted that way, and I had to admit, it was beautiful.

The words lingered even after they had been spoken, settling somewhere within me in a way I could not easily explain.

Home, not as a place.

Not something that could be locked away or taken or denied.

But as something one carried, lived and endured.

I had never allowed myself to think of it that way before.

My fingers tightened slightly in my lap before I forced them to still.

The hall remained quiet, from the weight of many thoughts being held at once.

Somewhere to my left, I could hear the faint rustle of fabric as someone shifted in their seat. Somewhere else, the quiet exhale of a breath that had been held just a moment too long.

No one spoke.

Not yet.

I turned, just slightly, and noticed Lucian was once more watching me, but he quickly looked away.

It was subtle.

Quick enough that someone not looking for it might have missed it entirely.

But I did not.

Jacinta then smiled.

”That was quite exquisite, Duke Aurelgrave.”

Lucian inclined his head in a bow. ”I am glad it was able to resonate with you.”

Jacinta nodded. ”Quite well, too.”

There was a pause and then the Queen spoke.

”Perhaps Your Highness could explain what the poem meant to her?”

There was silence again.

And it was only when I turned that I realized the Queen had been speaking to me, and not Jacinta.

”Well?” she asked.

I swallowed, and then nodded as I stood up. I did not move to take the parchment from Jacinta, because I had everything memorised after all.