CHAPTER 135: ONE HUNDRED & THIRTY FIVE

Lucien

The ink is black. The letters were meticulously carved into the reddened flesh in thick and bold cursives. It covered her pulse, making it hard to watch if it sped up or slowed as she lied to me.

She is thin. Too thin. Her hair is thinning. Lack of nutrients. She hasn’t been eating enough.

We will fix that.

Blood stains the bandages around her left hand. It hasn’t stopped bleeding. The slash across her cheek has been sewn shut in jagged stitches. The amount of silver inside her--not to speak of the collar--must be enough to have put a stop to her metabolism. It is any wonder she is still breathing at all.

The under of her eyes are bruised with purple, her gaze hollowed out. It looks like fatigue. But most don’t know that there is a reason Silver is called poison. A reason why the first treatment administered to someone who had even a bit of it in their system is to flush it out.

Because eventually, it takes root.

And from the looks of it, it has begun to. You find yourself always fatigued. And even when you try to sleep, you cannot. I wonder if she’s realized it yet. That she hasn’t slept in days. And I’ve been unable to reach her because of that. I wonder if she’s notice her inability to function isn’t because of her lacking strength.

It’s because her body is using up all of it’s energy fighting what should normally have placed a full blooded Lycan in a comatose state.

My fingers thrum against the table, idly.

There’s a certain calm that settles in once you’ve planned every death in the room. Once you’ve decided who bleeds first, who begs last, and who dies before they even realize it. Premeditated murder is such a soothing hobby.

Valka’s amber eyes do not stay on mine long. Even if that wasn’t her one tell when she’s lying, she should know better than try to lie to me. If I’ve had the liberty of counting how many lashes she has on her eyes and how many times she blinks in a minutes, it is a grave insult to think I cannot tell the disruption in her heart’s rhythm when she lies.

I cock my head towards the pup, the rattle in my chest growing restless. He’d gotten under my skin, but not in the way he thinks. It’s fucking disgusting when you learn you’re about to be a father from your woman’s past lover.

My lips curve into a dark smile. Because if there’s one thing that still gives me joy, it’s being very, very petty.

"How many years ago was it? A hundred and forty?" I begin lightly, as though recounting a bedtime story, "Valka brought a wolf to me. Said he was broken. Asked me to fix him." My chin rests lazily against my fist. The entire room shifts around my every movement, every sharp point moving with my every blink. "Would you like to know what happened?"

The boy-king looks unwell by my lack of a response, and his brows arch slightly.

"She was so used to shoving me around," I say conversationally, "that when she tried to get over me by fucking someone else, she shoved him a little too hard. And broke his spine."

Grey eyes darken slightly with understanding--beautifully so--and I chuckle.

"You’ll have to try harder, boy," I murmur, my gaze flicking back to Valka. "My wife’s a freak in the sheets. If she truly fucked you..." I let the words drag, savoring the stillness that follows, "...you’d be dead."

Valka glares at me. It’s easy to interpret the look--she wants to hit me. Which is incredible foreplay, by the way.

The worry lessens, allowing me a clear mind and vision, as everything around me has been in swirling shades of red since I got the letter.

I knew it was a trap. And it was incredibly foolish to walk in alone and make a bluff about the numbers I had. Truth is, Averis was a success, but it was impossible to travel with that many men across with the urgency that drove me. I’d taken only a fraction of them along. The rest of my legion was three days away from arriving.

I could smell the gunpowder. The fuse lines. The moment I’d stepped inside, I had counted every single man, visible and hidden. And all that keeps me seated isn’t the hope for an alliance, but the single signal that everything banks on. Everything.

Raucous laughter pulls my focus from the chandelier several feet above, where I intend to hang Lilith’s body for all to see. "Well then, I suppose congratulations are in order," he says cheerily.

And in a celebratory fashion, he snaps his fingers. A bow string snaps somewhere and an arrow is released.

It slices through the air with speed and because it comes from directly behind Valka, it skims the slash on her cheek in a slight caress, cutting her stitches open, before hurtling for my head with a spin.

I catch it, plucking it from the air right before my face. And it takes every breath in me not to aim it for his head. Not yet, I think to myself. Not yet.

It crumples in my grasp, turning to bits of snow and Rafael claps wildly, like it is the most delightful display he had ever seen. While Lilith has the sense to shift uncomfortably in her seat, sweat breaking against her pale forehead.

"This has been the most entertaining evening, I must admit," Rafael says. "But I agree that we have dallied for too long. We must come to an agreement and I see now that I cannot, for the life of me, let you both go."

He entwines his fingers in front of him. "These are my new terms. I will let her leave, if you will agree to stay back in her place. With your surrender, the men you have in my kingdom must be removed as well. Those are the only condition in which your precious wife and unborn child leave this hall alive. Fast as you may be, it is nearly impossible to be able to stop so many arrows that quickly. Familiar situation, isn’t it? You know, the chains, the men, going on your knees and pleading. The likes. It was always going to circle back to this. I will always be steps ahead, so long as I have her."

I feel it then.

The rumble in the earth under my feet. My gaze snaps up to Lilith’s and I know she felt it, too.

I exhale evenly, feeling the restraint I keep on myself loosen and crack. "Unlike you, I am never taught a lesson twice."

When the first explosion hits the left wall of the castle, the entire world lurches.

The chandelier above us sways violently, raining shards of crystal and molten wax. The tremor ripples up my spine, and before the scream even leaves someone’s throat, I’m already moving.

Rafael’s goblet tips, wine splattering across the floor, dark, thick, spreading like blood.

Valka jerks at the sound, her chair skidding backward, eyes wide and disoriented. My boots slam into the table, flipping it sideways as I launch myself across the room, closing the distance between us.

I reach her. Almost.

My hand brushes her arm and for one single heartbeat, relief slams through me so hard it’s almost pain.

Then the second explosion hits. Too close.

The floor bucks under us. A column splinters. Stone and flame swallow the far end of the hall. My body slams into the wall with bone-shaking force, the air bursting out of my lungs. The ceiling gives way in a shriek of metal, and the world turns white and red and soundless.

Fuck knows I don’t pay Trenton enough for this level of accuracy and this scale of destruction.

When the ringing fades, the scene reforms in fragments, the floor littered with shattered tiles, men scrambling, fire licking up the drapes, and Valka--

My head snaps up, following the trail of her scent and I find Rafael dragging her, using the very distraction I had created to get his hands on her.

I run, unwilling to let her slip through my fingers again.

A guard steps into my path, blocking me off. His neck snaps before he finishes the motion. Another comes from nowhere and shrieks as he jerks to a halt like phantom hands hold his feet and he glances down with horror as ice spreads from the tip of his toes, spreading up his body with the swiftness of a plague and he is frozen to death in that one breath.

The next dies with my claws in his chest and the one after that is speared through his gut in one clean burst.

Only a few feet away, Rafael realises I have nearly caught up. He has his hand fisted in Valka’s hair and the other clutches a massive sword pressed to her throat. He’s shoving her backward toward the door, his face twisted, his mouth moving though I can barely hear a word over the roar in my ears. "Stay back!"

My jaw clenches. The air around me drops, the mist coiling up from the floor as my power stirs to life, hungry and cold.

"Rafael," I growl, voice raw from the smoke.

The blade tears into her throat without hesitation, spraying blood, and Rafael snarls, eyes crazed, "I’m not fucking joking."

I halt.

Valka twists in his grip, trying to fight him off, but he drags her through the archway, steel cutting deeper into her skin.

My pulse spikes, but I force myself to stay still until he crosses the threshold.

"Shut it!" he roars at the three guards flanking him.

"No!" Lilith screams, but the neither of us are quick enough to reach before the doors echo shut, sealing us inside the burning hall together.