Tenebrarum took a final step. The floor groaned in protest. The air grew thick with the promise of violence, heavy with a shape not yet fully formed.
"Let's go."
He did not move. He did not gesture. He was a statue of cold command, his voice stripped of everything but finality.
Aurelia shook her head, her fingers brushing Sorana's grey-tinged skin. "No. I have to be here. It's not what you think—Kaelen helped—"
"I. Do. Not. Care."
The words were not spoken. They were a scream, raw and rupturing the charged silence of the room. Aurelia flinched as if struck.
"You come with me now, or I will make sure you never see her again."
Aurelia froze, her gaze locked on him. She understood, completely and utterly. He wasn't threatening to lock Sorana away. He was promising to end her—the same way he had ended Felicia, the kind maid whose name was now only spoken in whispers.
Kaelen took a half-step forward, instinct warring with survival. To intervene was to sign a death warrant for everyone in the room. He saw the beast coiling behind his brother's eyes, a breath from the surface. His own voice emerged, taut with suppressed fury and helplessness. "Aurelia, go. I will take care of her. I swear it."
But why would she listen? She stayed on the bed, solid as rock, her loyalty a silent wall against his tyranny.
"Since you prefer force."
Tenebrarum's hand shot out. His grip was iron, unbreakable.
He wrenched her from Sorana's side, her fingers tearing away from the maid's cooling arm. He did not lead her. He dragged her, her feet stumbling over the splintered ruins of the door, out of the chamber and into the swallowing dark of the hall.
"You will not force me," Aurelia spat.
She wrenched her arm back, pulling with a desperate, furious strength. The force of her own motion tore her from his grip and sent her stumbling. She landed hard on the floor, the delicate white lace of her dress ripping with a sound like a stifled gasp.
"You are stubborn, but I'll control you," Tenebrarum growled, the words low and rough with impatience.
Before she could scramble away, he bent and hauled her up, throwing her over his shoulder like a sack of grain.
Her white hair cascaded down his back, a stark waterfall against the dark fabric of his coat. One arm locked around her legs, his grip vise-like and unyielding, pinning her in place.
She hung there, breathless, humiliated, and utterly trapped as he carried her from the ruined room without another word.
She jolted up and down with every heavy step he took.
All Aurelia could see was the dark cloth of his coat and the floor passing in a blur beneath her.
Helpless, she hit his back with weak, frustrated fists, but he didn't even flinch a muscle.
Then he entered a room—walking farther than she remembered—and dropped her unceremoniously onto the bed.
She scrambled back, her eyes darting around.
The heavy drapes, the scent of charcoal and cold stone, the oppressive silence—
It was his room.
The inner room.
Memory crashed over her: the taste of his skin, the breaking bed, the chain hitting the floor. Her throat tightened.
She remembered his every touch. Her own voice begging for more echoed in the silence of the room.
"What are you doing?" Her voice was thin, strained, her eyes locked on the impassive mask.
His hand came down firm, an inescapable press against her shoulder, forcing her back into the mattress. "You'll stay right here."
He turned and walked to the door, his movements unhurried. She heard the metallic scrape as he removed the key from the lock.
In a surge of frantic energy, she launched herself from the bed and ran toward him.
"You are wicked!" she cried, her violet eyes blazing. "Why do you love hurting me?"
She stood before him, small and trembling, her head barely reaching his chest. Her words were sharp, but her stature made them seem less like a challenge and more like a plea hurled at a stone wall.
"I hurt you?" A low, cold laugh escaped him. "How amusing. You are a fool, little rabbit. If I wanted to hurt you, you would already be dead."
He pushed her aside—not roughly, but with a dismissive ease that felt even more demeaning. She stumbled back, catching herself against the edge of a heavy chair.
Thud.
The door shut with finality.
Through the thick wood, she heard the turn of the key in the lock.
She rushed forward, twisting the handle. It didn't budge. She threw her weight against the door, again and again, but it was like slamming herself into a mountainside—solid, unyielding, and utterly indifferent.
He had locked her in. Not in a cell, not in a tower—in this room.
The room where he had marked her body and her memory in equal measure.
A cage lined with ghosts of his touch.
Aurelia's strength drained away as suddenly as it had come.
She slid down the length of the door, back scraping against the wood until she crumpled on the floor.
Her white hair fell like a curtain around her face. She pressed the heels of her hands into her skull, as if she could push the thoughts out, the memories back.
But tears came anyway— silent and heavy—tracing paths through the dust and dried blood on her cheeks.
Sorana.
The name was a fresh stab of guilt. Was she still breathing? Was the grey pallor spreading? Kaelen had promised to help… but Kaelen was not here. No one was.
I'm cursed.
The thought settled in her bones, cold and certain. Anyone she followed, anyone she let close, ended up broken, bleeding, or worse. Her brother. Felicia. Now Sorana. She was a beacon for ruin, and the only one who seemed immune to her poison was the man who had just locked her away—the same man who might be the source of the curse itself.
Her greatest enemy.
And her greatest love.
How could two such different truths exist inside the same heartbeat?
He was the storm that destroyed everything in its path, yet she was the fool who stood in the rain and called it shelter.
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To be continued...