Third Person's POV
"How could you kill her?!" Lia cried as she held the owl in her arms. "How could I? If I didn't give birth to you, your fate would be just like that bird you hold dear." Opal stood up and slowly walked over to Palari.
"She said it again. She's really Ria. I'm dead. She'll kill me." Palari mumbled. She looked up to see Opal approaching her. She pushed herself up quickly and ran over to her parents. "'Mother! Father! Help me! Older sister will kill me!"
Opal grabbed Palari's hair before she could get close and pull her back. "Imagine if I was a regular person." Opal whispered before she pulled out a dagger and stabbed Palari in the shoulder. The latter screamed out and tried to fight back but a punch to her face made her quiet down.
Opal threw Palari towards her sons. "Watch her." Opal turned and smiled. "Hello children. Did you miss me?" Heri rushed forward with tears in her eyes. "Are you really-." She was slapped so hard that she spat out blood and fell to the ground.
Opal glared down at her. "You and your sister really disgust me." Heri curled into herself and kept her head down.
Opal looked at Jailin. "You're smarter than your sister and actually stayed to yourself. Very well done." Jailin bowed. "Thank you mother and welcome back."
Kasian walked towards her with a smile. "Wife." Opal pulled out another dagger and stabbed him. Kasian stepped back and clutched his stomach. "Stay over there and shut up. I'll use you when I want you." Kasian walked to the side and sat down. A healer immediately stepped out of the shadows and tended to his wounds.
Opal walked towards Lia, who was looking at her mother in fear. "Mother. I didn-" Opal raised her hand and slapped her hard. "A regular woman. Imagine that." Opal dragged her off the ground by her hair and slapped her again.
"You made up lies to cover your tracks and make it seem as though you were afraid of what I would remember as an experiment. I almost laughed when I heard the excuse. Your father was one of the idiots that thought it made sense. What's the excuse this time?" Opal slapped her again.
Opal dropped her. "Crawl over there, kowtow to your nieces and sincerely apologize. Hope they forgive you because if they don't, I'll kill in a worse way than that bird." Lia shook her head. "I didn't know-." Opal didn't give her a chance to try to talk her way out of it and stepped on her ankle.
"I'll go! I'll Go!" She screamed. Opal lifted her foot and stepped back. Lia slowly crawled over to Sena and Sera. She kowtowed three times to each of them. "I'm sorry. I truly am sorry. I'd understand if you didn't believe me or want to forgive me, but I truly am sorry."
Sera glared at her. "We never did anything to you, and you actually did such a thing. What was the reason?" Sera's eyes filled with tears, but they didn't spill.
"Truthfully, target wasn't you. When I heard that someone had left that mansion, I wanted to go personally and see who it was but was stopped. When I heard that the plan still went forward after seeing it was you two, I felt guilty but thought that your grandmother would get the message and leave my father alone. I didn't know until Father stormed into my courtyard that you were on the brink of death." Lia shakily explained.
"My grandmother never wanted him. She came here despite her recovering body to make sure things went smoothly for the peace treaty. The moment she stepped into this Kingdom, you set your sights on her. She didn't remember anything and was just a regular woman with a weak body and no martial arts. Why target her?" Sena's glare didn't ease up.
"The news we would get concerned us. She acted just like our mother. We thought she was genuinely faking her persona, and it made me dislike her more and more. We thought she was behaving like this solely to take over my mother's position as Queen and steal our father from us." Sena scoffed.
"You really know how to pick and choose news, don't you." Sera shook her head. "I don't forgive you. My child died because of you. We only just found out about its existence, and you stole that from me." She grabbed Calin's hand. "From us."
"Everyone was looking forward to the new addition of the family, and you were running on fake news and selfishness. No wonder Grandmother remembered and pretended she didn't. To get away from you." Rya glared at Lia.
"You remembered?" Malari asked softly. "I remembered when I woke up and asked when I could leave." Malari held onto her husband and sobbed.
"Despite how I am, I always believed that I raised you the best that I could. I gave you everything I could and yet ten years erased everything. A year older than what you were when I left. How impressive. Despite knowing how out of the box your aunt can get, you decided to trust her blindly. Congratulations to my two daughters, you've completely disappointed me."
"If he married someone else, he wouldn't want us anymore! I heard him. I heard his say that he wished we were all his but the only one that is truly his child is Kai. How do we compete with that? We aren't his children, Heri and Jailin were adopted. How do we compete when a new woman comes in?" Opal scoffed.
"Bira." Bira stepped out of the shadows and bowed. "You've been with me the longest. Explain to my stupid disappointment of a daughter who her father is." Opal stated.
"Kasian Relia is your father. Your blood father." The room went silent. "What?" Lion was shocked.
Opal laughed. "Oh wow. I'm amazed at this nonsense." She pointed at Lion and then at Kasian. "They don't look alike? At all?"
"At the time, I wore a mask because I knew Kai and I would immediately look like mother and son. Jailin was still young. His features were changing. Heri looked like Kasian and Lia looked like me. Only Kain and Lion looked like their father. Rain obviously looks like me." Rain smiled at her words at the end.
However, Kai and the others were in shock. In one breath, in less than an hour, they realized; their mother was alive and was nearly killed multiple times, she wanted to get away from them because of what they did, all of them had the same mother and father.
"Then you really are her. That Opal." Kasian suddenly spoke up. "This revelation doesn't change what you did. None of you." Opal shut down any additional thoughts they had.
"This time back was to officially reveal my identity. Who knew, my sister conspired with my daughter to attack me, but my sister realized it was my nieces and still attacked them. It was deliberate. Those slashes and stabs were deliberate which means you knew she was pregnant, which meant that you had someone working for you."
Opal snapped her fingers and Kana walked into the hall, dragging a few people behind. "Now I knew Malek and the others arrived the last time I was here and stayed. what I hadn't expected was that they actually listened to Palari's nonsense and helped her. I already had a problem with them before this, but this really signed their death warrant."
Malek, Mia and Lai were thrown at Opal's feet. They looked up in shock. "Master." Opal smiled. "Malek, it's been a while. I heard you and Mia have children now. Or did. They died a few days ago. Didn't they?" She stooped down in front of him.
"Why? I didn't know it was you and all I did was relay information." He asked mournfully. "Your children's lives were repayment for my grandchild's. With those brilliant eyes of yours, you would've seen her touched her stomach instinctively and know she was pregnant. I bet your wife relayed that information and Palari decided that they were the best targets to get back at me for her humiliation." Opal pulled out another dagger, this one was different from the other two.
They were throwing daggers; this one was different. It was curved and gave off a purplish glow in the light. "I didn't know." Malek replied. "You and Mia have been with me though war, building my own force, raising my children, perfecting my healing and martial arts. Yet at the time when you were a crucial part of the plan, where were you?" Malek lowed his head.
The cold blade lifted his head, and he looked into her eyes. "Where were you, Malek?" Tears touched the blade and Opal scoffed. "I have to thank you actually. I don't think I would've lived so peacefully for so many years with my children and grandchildren." Malek smiled.
"But that isn't going to stop me from killing you."