CHAPTER 424: CHAPTER 424: WHAT. DID. YOU. DO?

The sound of Kian’s foot cracking against the stone broke the silence like thunder.

One second, Cyrus was sitting there—unmoving, hollow—and the next, Kian’s hand was fisted in his hair, dragging him up by the roots before he even had time to breathe.

The first hit landed hard.

Then another.

And another.

Cyrus didn’t move. He didn’t block. He didn’t even flinch.

Blood splattered across the floor, dark against the pale light streaming through the narrow window. The snakes in his hair hissed weakly, writhing for a heartbeat before retreating, their forms melting into nothing until all that remained was the red mess of his real hair, tangled and wet.

"Say something!" Kian snarled, his voice rough, cracking around the edges. "Fucking say something, damn it!"

He slammed Cyrus against the wall. His claws scraped against the stone beside his head, leaving deep gouges. "What did you do to her?"

Cyrus’s head lolled to the side, eyes unfocused. His breathing was shallow, his lips trembling — not from fear, but from something heavier. Something broken.

"She went out," Cyrus whispered again, as if repeating it could somehow make it true.

"Stop lying to me!" Kian’s roar shook the air. "Where is she?"

Cyrus didn’t answer. He just stared — past him, through him — eyes empty.

Kian hit him again.

The sound echoed through the chamber like a blade splitting bone.

"Where is she?!"

Still nothing.

"Look at me, you damn snake!"

Cyrus finally lifted his head. And for a moment — just a moment — Kian wished he hadn’t.

Because those eyes weren’t defiant. They weren’t angry. They weren’t anything close to what Kian expected.

They were empty. Hollow. Like the life inside him had already been carved out and thrown away.

"Everything," Cyrus rasped. His voice cracked like dry leaves. "Everything’s wrong with me."

Kian froze, chest heaving.

Cyrus’s blood dripped down his chin, onto Kian’s hand, warm and thick.

"I shouldn’t have touched her," he whispered, barely audible. "I should’ve stayed away. She—she didn’t deserve this."

His words trembled, raw and broken, like each one tore out a piece of his soul.

Kian’s jaw tightened. His claws retracted slowly, but his hands didn’t fall away. "What the hell are you talking about?" His voice was quieter now, but sharper — like the silence after thunder. "What did you do?"

Cyrus swallowed hard, shaking his head. His eyes glistened, the tears gathering before falling soundlessly.

"What. Did. You. Do?"

The words hit the room like a thrown stone, jagged and unsteady. Kian’s palms were still slick with blood and dust from the hits he’d given, his breathing a hard rhythm that matched the pounding of his heart. He pressed his knuckles into Cyrus’s shoulder once, like a beast trying to steady itself, and the question vibrated through the space between them.

Cyrus looked up, and for a moment Kian thought his eyes would be full of defiance—old Cyrus, the man who never backed down. Instead, there was nothing. Hollow. Raw. Broken in a way that made Kian’s stomach drop so low he felt it in his knees.

"She—she never wanted to be marked," Cyrus said, voice thin, shredded by guilt. "She told me once—she said she would never be owned. She swore she’d never be like her mother. I knew that. I knew. I heard her. I—"

His fingers clawed at the stone floor then, nails scraping, as if the physical pain could anchor him back to something solid. He inhaled raggedly, and the confession stumbled out in quick, terrified breaths. "But when I—when I tried—I thought she wanted it. Her body... it didn’t reject me. It accepted me. I thought—God, I thought she wanted me, Kian." His laugh was a cracked thing. "I am so stupid. I am so—"

He couldn’t finish. He couldn’t form the rest of the sentence without the word tearing free in a sob. It tore out of him anyway.

"I made her mine," Cyrus whispered. The weight of those simple, impossible words bent him. The room seemed to tilt. He pressed both hands to his face, trying to staunch the flood he’d unleashed, but the tears spilled like rain down a cliff face—hot, humiliating, relentless.

Kian watched him. He watched the man he’d sparred with, traded words with, and spat on in anger crumble into a child who’d broken something he couldn’t fix. Confusion fought with something hotter in Kian’s chest—something he didn’t want to name. He had promised himself distance. He had sworn away the ache—until now, until the evidence of it sat like a stone in the center of the room.

"You..." Kian’s throat closed. The forest of emotions inside him tangled. Fury, yes. A jealousy that tasted like iron. But threaded through both was an odd, raw pity. Cyrus was not the villain of this scene; he was its ruin.

Cyrus’s sobs shook his shoulders. He tried to explain, voice fraying at the edges. "She didn’t say no. She didn’t push me away. I thought— I thought she wanted it. I should have stopped if she looked hurt, if she looked—" he laughed bitterly, "if she looked anything but herself. But she—Kian, she looked like she trusted me, and I—" He broke again.

Kian’s muscles bunched and released. He had the urge—like a rising tide—to strike again, to punish, to rip the confession from Cyrus and force it closed. Instead, the air left his lungs in a long, ragged exhale. He let his hands fall away. He loosened his grip until it was nothing. He stepped back, running a hard palm through his hair, fingers tangling in the dark strands until he felt the raw skin beneath.

The motion was small. Human. Almost apologetic. Kian didn’t know what to do with that apology. The lion in him wanted retribution, but Kian the man—Kian the ruler—could see the brokenness and the truth laid out, messy and bleeding. He let Cyrus go.

Cyrus collapsed forward, chest heaving, arms wrapped around himself like a shield that did nothing. He looked up at Kian through dark lashes, voice barely a rasp. "I’m sorry. I am so sorry. I thought—"

Kian’s eyes were unreadable. He didn’t answer. He couldn’t. Answers wouldn’t fix the echoing hollow in his gut or Isabella’s absence or the sick, animal sting of betrayal—of loss. Instead, he stood with his hands at his sides, palms open, useless now.

A sound cut through the thick air then: a dry, humorless chuckle that belonged on the edge of a cliff.

Zyran leaned in the doorway with that predatory slouch he favored whenever he wanted to look taller, the shadow of him long in the pale light. He wasn’t smiling—no, this was worse—his mouth was curved in a small, bitter amused line. He had the grace of someone bored by drama that did not involve them. He looked at the two men as if they were a pair of performers failing at a farce.

"I don’t care about the theatrics," Zyran said, voice cold as a knife wrapped in silk. He pushed himself up and crossed the room in two long strides, boots whispering on the stone.

He smelled of smoke and something ancient—an underworld scent that filled the room like a challenge, but Kian didn’t flinch. He met Zyran’s presence with the same cold authority that made kings kneel. "Who came first, who touched who, it all makes a lovely tale for the court. But hear this—" He stopped, stepped between them as though to divide the heat. His eyes were slow, measuring. "She better be safe."

The words landed with absolute clarity. No plea. No negotiation. A promise with an ugly edge.

"If anything happens to her," Zyran continued, his voice dropping like a seal being broken, "neither of you live to see tomorrow." He raised a single finger—small, theatrical—but every inch of that gesture carried the weight of a death sentence that would be executed without mercy. "I give you my word."

Kian’s shoulders tightened at the promise. Cyrus flinched as though his name had been hoisted on a pike. For a breath, the room felt suspended on the hinge of that threat.

Zyran’s eyes flicked to each of them, slow and contemptuous as a judge passing sentence. The amusement left his face, replaced by something that could have been sympathy if the man were capable of it—fractured, minimal.

"Make sure she’s safe," he said, finality wrapped around every syllable. Then, with the same bored contempt he’d worn when he arrived, he turned and left—each step away a deliberate dismissal. The heavy door swallowed the sound of his departure like a closing maw.

When the silence fell again, it was raw and ringing. Kian’s hands curled lightly at his sides, then eased. Cyrus remained on the floor, breaths coming in small, wet bursts. The room smelled of iron and regret and something like a memory.

Kian sank down on the nearest fur, not sitting like a king but like a man exhausted by the weight of consequence. He pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead and let out a sound that might have been a laugh, might have been a sob. The edges of his promise to himself—the one that said he’d walk away—cracked under the pressure of this morning.

Outside, the palace hummed with the slow pulse of life continuing regardless. Inside, two broken beasts and a man with a cold mouth sat with the pieces of someone neither fully owned nor entirely free.

Kian stared at the floor and didn’t know which of them he was angrier with—Cyrus, for what he had done; or himself, for feeling like the one who’d lost. The truth sat in the space between them, heavy and terrible.

And for now, there were no answers. Only the sound of Cyrus’s ragged breathing and the memory of Zyran’s promise, echoing in the bones of the stone room.