The Abandoned Luna's Journey to Power Chapter 342: Late Night Talk

Cindy's POV:

The monastery's guest room was devastatingly simple.

We added plenty of firewood to the fireplace, but the cold still managed to seep up through the stone floor.

Viola and I lay on the narrow, hard bed, without changing our clothes. Both of us stared at the stained ceiling above.

"Cindy," Viola suddenly said. Her voice sounded dry in the quiet night. "Are you asleep?"

"No." I turned over to face her.

In the dim firelight, Viola's face was still pale, her brows tightly furrowed. Her eyes were filled with unmistakable disgust and frustration.

"Every time I close my eyes, I see Sephiria looking so thin and weak," Viola said through clenched teeth, her voice shaking. "And then when I think about Prince Niall, that rotten old man, I feel sick. I almost threw up my dinner. How can he be so disgusting? How does he even call himself an Alpha?"

I decided to stay silent.

My mind was also filled with Sephiria's empty eyes, and the way she used all her strength just to say that one word—cold.

It wasn't just the temperature; it was the icy feeling of being hopeless about the world and people.

"Viola," I said softly, hearing a sadness in my tone I hadn't noticed before. "I finally realized something today. Back at the academy, and even on the battlefield, we always believed good people would get good results, and bad people would get punished. We thought that people who ended up miserable probably did something wrong or just weren't strong enough.

"But after seeing Sephiria, I realized I was wrong."

I closed my eyes, and a single tear slid down the corner of my eye. "Some people spend their whole lives being gentle and kind, never hurting anyone. Their only mistake is being too soft and believing too much in 'destiny' and 'love.' They hand their lives to someone else. When that person betrays them, they become the most helpless people in the world.

"It's not that the Moon Goddess is punishing them. They're just unlucky and have no one to lean on."

I grabbed the corner of the blanket tightly and said slowly, like making a vow, "I won't let Sephiria die alone in this cold place. No matter what, I'll stay with her until the end. I want her to know that even if her husband abandoned her and her daughters betrayed her, there's still someone in this world who remembers her kindness. She hasn't been thrown away."

Viola reached out and held my hand tightly. "Yeah," she said firmly.

The night grew deeper.

The snow outside seemed to get stronger. The howling wind sounded like countless restless spirits crying above the monastery.

The fire in the fireplace slowly died down, leaving only a few tiny red sparks glowing in the gray ash.

But I still couldn't fall sleep.

The mystery around Prince Niall stayed in my mind like a thick fog that wouldn't go away.

"What exactly does he want?" I kept asking myself.

If he just wanted a beauty to satisfy his twisted desires, then with his status as a prince, he could find any young Omega he wanted. He could keep them outside or make them his mistress like Leanna. There was no reason for him to risk public scandal by using a Bond-Breaking Order to torture his wife just to clear the Luna spot.

And if it was for a political marriage to get the Blaze Pack and the Academy on his side, like I thought before, it just didn't make sense.

King Ryken was at the peak of his power and ruled with an iron fist. Adam had great military achievements and commanded the Onyx Legion. Prince Noah was low-key, but he wasn't a pushover.

The power structure in the Kingdom was solid. Prince Niall, a notorious and sidelined prince, had no real chance of reaching the throne.

But if he had no ambitions, why did he pick Viola? She was a newly promoted knight who had just become famous on the Southreach battlefield and had a sensitive background.

Why did he immediately move on to another powerful target after I turned him down?

And why did he move so quickly and ruthlessly when it came to divorcing his wife and driving her to death?

It was almost like he was in a hurry to prove to some powerful force that he was "single."