Chapter 55: Unanswered

Vaeron stopped where the hall widened into an empty crossing of stone and silence and found himself standing at a quiet edge of the palace, alone upon a high balcony. The cold wind swept through the open space, carrying with it the bite of northern winter, yet it barely touched him as he remained unmoving, lost within the gravity of his thoughts.

Beyond the balustrade, Blackvale stretched outward in solemn stillness, dissolved into the layers of shadow and mist. Snow drifted endlessly from the low-hanging sky, falling not in gentle flurries but deliberate sheets.

Moonlight glimmered weakly against polished stone, tracing the severe geometry of spires and bridges that cut across the darkness at impossible heights. Far beneath, the lower levels of the city were swallowed by fog and snowfall, leaving only silhouettes and faint torchlight flickering like distant embers trapped beneath ice.

For a long moment, he stood there, unmoving, but his mind went back on track to the ordeal that transpired.

He had known resistance before—fear, revulsion, calculation—but never this. Never a restraint offered without challenge, a refusal that did not tremble with panic or invite punishment by daring him to push harder.

Women had always yielded in ways both eager and inevitable that even some had begged. Others had hardened themselves into pretense only to unravel beneath his touch. Desire, once stirred, was a thing that always took its course.

Always.

But she—his wife, Punishment, and a kind he abhorred—didn’t recoil, and that was the wound. She didn’t flee, nor strike, nor plead for mercy. What she did was simply… withdrawn. Closed herself off not in fear, but in decision, as though what he wanted, what he expected, had weight but not authority.

The memory unsettled him more than her breath hitching ever could have. The image of her instant terror, her panic, her fear, her rejection, all collided into him with a truth that made him ball his fist.

He wanted her, so much that rationality was buried under the thick shroud of lust. Her body had answered him. He would not pretend otherwise. He had felt it in the subtle arch of her spine, the involuntary tilt of her throat, and the way warmth gathered beneath his hands. Desire had been there; real, unfeigned, and undeniable longing, and yet she had stopped him anyway.

Shit.

The contradiction gnawed at him. Vaeron flexed his fingers slowly, as though only now noticing the lingering heat beneath his skin from the chill.

Of course, it should have ended there. A refusal was not new in form, but in substance. What unsettled him the most was the fact that he could have continued. He could have ignored it, as others had done to him in their own way, taken what had already been offered by instinct if not by word.

But something had stayed him. It was never mercy nor even a flicker of mortality like his brother had presumed. It was recognition.

The werewolf Princess had not denied him because she lacked want. She denied him despite it, and that had never happened before.

Vaeron slowly exhaled through his nose, grounding himself in the familiar weight of the night. Blackvale loomed around him unyieldingly, just like he remembered. This place knew him and here, nothing questioned his will. Nothing surprised him.

Except her.

He had seen her composure fracture, watched her struggle to reclaim it with the discipline of someone long practiced in endurance. Neutrality, she had clung to it like a shield, as though naming it ever made it real, and gods help him, he had wanted to tear it away not for dominance, but to see what she guarded so fiercely beneath it.

And that want still lingered sharply in an unspent manner.

Before his thoughts could drift any further, the whisper of approaching footsteps reached him, pulling his attention back to the present.

They halted a short distance behind him, careful not to intrude upon the space he occupied at the balcony’s edge. The cold wind carried her presence before she presented herself.

For a time, the silver-haired said nothing, allowing the silence to stretch between them.

Vaeron did not turn. He did not need to. He was aware of her all the same, including the quiet certainty of her presence settling behind him like a weight he did not shrug away.

Seconds passed, or perhaps longer when her voice broke the silence. “I’ve known you quite a long time to understand your silence is either torn with trait or speculations,” She said, staring at him with those bright amethyst eyes. “Which amongst them?”

“Speculation is rather a good thing. I don’t find the harm in it,” he brushed off casually.

“No,” She tore her haze away, staring at the open view beyond the palace. “I suppose Blackvale has its way of drawing many of them, especially now your position is at the brick,” She said softly. “I must warn you; the trial isn’t as effortless as you last found it. Things have changed immensely ever since your absence.”

“Mm,” he said. “Does that explain the supplementary ward at the threshold?”

“Yes,” She replied. “There have been… circumstances.” Her gaze remained fixed on the city below, amethyst eyes reflecting the pallid moonlight as snow drifted past the balcony’s edge. “On several occasions now, the dead have not remained where they fell. Bodies have gone missing, either taken, emptied, or returned incorrectly. Entire patrols are reduced to remnants, with no sign of struggle beyond the absence itself,”

Vaeron’s expression did not change, but something in his posture tightened at the word ’dead’. “So I’ve been told,”

“The wards were reinforced after the third incident,” she continued. “At first, we believed it to be grave-robbers, cult remnants, or desperate alchemists chasing forbidden practices, but the pattern grew too precise. Too… reverent,”

“Malachi,”

She nodded, and her lips pressed thin before she continued. “He is doing this not to desecrate the dead but harvest them, thereby building his own armies. It took the council quite some time to discover that the living was part of his target,”

“The living?”

She hesitated, just briefly before answering. “Aye. They vanish as well. Not many nor enough to incite panic, but enough to be noticed by those of us who count,” The wind rose, tugging at her silver hair as she folded her arms within her sleeves. “We’ve distributed quite a reasonable number of our men to the Gate, supposing he decides to attack. However, as years passed, there was no sign of him. We were convinced something must’ve happened. Anything to deflect the upcoming threat. Until now,”

Vaeron’s gaze lowered to the city, to the towers and bridges swallowed by night and snow. A slow breath left him before he said, “I doubt,” he said. “His absence was merely a distraction,”

The fact that he was just finding out about everything seemed to irritate him more than the knowledge itself.

“I sent word to you,” She said suddenly. The admission slipped out softer than intended. “During your absence,” She continued, more carefully now. “Not once, not twice but over the years. Reports at first. Council matters. Then… updates that no longer required a reply,” Her fingers flexed at her side. “I thought, if nothing else, you would want to know from me first… after what we shared,”

The wind came after she concluded, flickering the torches from the corridor walls. Vaeron didn’t reply as his gaze still lingered on the open city.

The silver-haired steadied her breath, though the effort showed when she continued. “I told myself you were occupied or unwilling, just like the rumors. Or that silence was simply your way of closing a door without ceremony,” She glanced at him then, searching his profile. “But you never returned even a single word, Lust,”

Then she moved, walking towards him only to close the distance. “But that has never altered the way I feel for you,” She declared. “Nor does your… sudden betrothal,”

***

A/N: We’ll be keeping a goal for STTLOS! Let’s get this book among the popular ranking, and there would be a mass release of 3 Chapters!

Thank you for your support!:))

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