WAR OF HEARTS ↠ KOL MIKAELSON [1]

2:12

| THE STAND:
CHAPTER TWELVE |

"Why not tell me your version of another tale?" Aya asked, voice dripping with cultured menace as she circled Marcel like a panther with a full belly but no lack of appetite. "The one about the witch regent cast out by her own kind, and the two vanishing Monroes?"

Marcel's smile faltered—just a flicker—but it was gone a heartbeat later, replaced by the poker face he'd spent years perfecting. Composed. Calculated.

"I don't know that story," he replied with a shrug, his tone lazy. "Witch politics ain't my scene."

Aya gave a quiet, condescending hum. Her eyes scanned his features like she was reading ancient text beneath his skin, trying to decipher the truth. She didn't believe him. Of course she didn't.

"You were Davina Claire's guardian once," she said silkily, her tone smooth but her words sharpened to cut. "And just as she, along with Ares and Rhea Monroe, are about to be recruited by a global consortium of the most powerful vampires still walking this Earth... her title as Regent is revoked. Stripped. Rendered powerless overnight."

She let the words settle, watching for another crack in his armor. "Ares followed her into the shadows, naturally. Loyal. Predictable. But Rhea?" Aya tilted her head. "She vanishes. No public display. No signature fire. She simply... disappears."

She took a step closer. "Don't you find that suspicious? Three strategic pieces removed from the board in one fell swoop. Almost like someone arranged it."

Aya had always known how to string words like pearls on a thread—beautiful, precise, deadly when worn with the right intent. Marcel respected that. But he also knew better than to be baited by her.

He chuckled, casually. "The covens hate me. Always have. You really think I've got the kind of pull to get them to impeach their own Regent? Come on."

Aya said nothing, just raised a brow.

"Ares and Davina? They're thick as thieves. They'd walk off a cliff together. So it ain't surprising he ghosted too." Marcel let the statement hang. "And Rhea? Lately? She's... volatile. Goes where the wind takes her."

He made sure not to meet her gaze too directly when he said it.

Because he knew exactly where Rhea was.

Still holed up in the Mikaelson compound, tucked behind layers of magic and grief and mistrust. But he couldn't tell Aya that. Couldn't give her even a thread to pull.

So he lied. Beautifully.

⸻

Meanwhile, the city pulsed with tension.

Klaus and Lucien were tearing through the French Quarter, hunting for Cami—Aurora's latest prize. The jealous vampire had taken her, predictably, leaving chaos in her wake.

Back at the compound, the sound of Tristan's agony rang through the halls—Hayley's hybrid venom burning through his veins like acid. His screams had grown ragged, hoarse, the kind that stuck in the walls like bad memories.

Upstairs, Rhea lay in her bed, staring at the ceiling as though it held the answer to some ancient question. The fire she'd wielded earlier, when she tortured Aurora with Freya, had since flickered and gone cold.

Her depression didn't just return. It roared back—suffocating and wild. Her mind was a pendulum, swinging without rhythm between raw power and profound emptiness. Sometimes she felt like she could scorch the world in rage. Other times, she felt like a child again—small, lost, and afraid.