Chapter 67: A choice

As if that wasn’t enough, a woman emerged from the entrance of the arena, her silver gown brushing the obsidian floor graciously.

Lucrezia’s eyes were drawn to her like a magnet, her majestic hair falling graciously behind her back, and the gown revealing the glow of her luminous skin. She had high cheekbones that complemented her features, eyes soft and unguarded as she proceeded towards Vaeron standing in the midst of the figures.

Lucrezia had never known someone to be that… captivating that she found herself drawn to her presence alone. “W-Who’s she?” The cold winter’s air brushed her skin, and she drew her cloak closer.

“A temptation,” The woman answered, and Lucrezia’s eyes narrowed. Temptation? “This phase is of the mind. You didn’t expect the choice to be merely his, did you?”

Lucrezia was speechless.

Indeed, she’d expected something worse, but now, it occurred to her that deciding amongst them on his own was something easy.

“When an essence is stripped off, the hardest way to test a mind is to create something out of the essence to test what remains of a body,” She explained. “She acts as a distraction, his Sin in flesh,”

Lucrezia’s mouth formed a slight ’O’, and her gaze returned to the arena. She noticed the unmistakable allure in his gaze as she approached him, unable to leave her sight. She knew that look, and her chest tightened in something close to jealousy.

Realizing that sentiment, Lucrezia’s eyes widened slightly. She drew in a deep breath, shrugging it off immediately it came, convincing herself this was a trial, and she wasn’t meant to react this way. Wasn’t the severance meant to prune any force of attraction to the spectators?

The thought barely settled before the woman reached him. She stopped an arm’s length away, close enough that the space between them felt deliberate.

Her silver gown caught the dim light, its folds echoing the fall of Lucrezia’s own cloak, and for a disorienting instant, Lucrezia thought she was seeing herself in the woman.

The resemblance struck her breathless. It wasn’t in the face but the way she carried herself, mimicking… her?

“Vaeron,” She said softly. His name curved from her lips with a familiarity Lucrezia had never allowed herself in anything close to softness but certainty, duty, and gods help her, desire.

Her chest tightened painfully.

The woman did not touch him. She did not need to. Her gaze alone held him unguardedly, asking nothing while offering everything. It wasn’t just seduction, but another form of recognition.

The woman raised a hand, fingers hovering just shy of his chest. “Do you remember what it felt like before duty hollowed you out?” She asked gently.

Vaeron’s jaw tightened ever slightly. He did not answer, but those hazel eyes betrayed him in the way it was drawn unguardedly, reflecting her like a mirror.

Despite it, Lucrezia could still notice the strain in his face from the effort of the previous duel, holding himself to avoid falling.

The silver-clad figure stepped closer now, closing the space he had not since her arrival. “You wanted before wanting became a crime. Before you learned to call it weakness,” At that, her fingers finally brushed him, resting over his heart, and Lucrezia’s pulse roared in her ears.

She caught the way the pain earlier slowly ebbed into something bearable in his face. It took her a moment to realize the woman was offering him what she’d hoped he would get. It was supposed to make her feel relieved, but when she leaned in, lips near his ear, Lucrezia knew something was wrong.

She whispered something Lucrezia couldn’t make out, leaving only the deliberate motion of her lips. She drew away wearing a harmless smile, and only then did Lucrezia realize what was amiss. The woman was not pulling him. She was waiting.

“I-Is he to decide?” The question slipped out before she could stop it.

“She is the deciding variable,” The woman beside her answered almost immediately. “Which means that if he claims her, she remains, and if he does not, then she dissolves,”

Lucrezia’s breath hitched and she watched him close his eyes. For one terrible moment, she thought he would reach for the woman, that he would take the offered absolution and let it burn everything else away because his Sin was strong. Refusing a part of himself felt like anguish on another level.

Just like her mother, whose wolf form had been stripped away, Lucrezia knew how bad it hurt. How much worse she appeared day after day, and years after another, until pain existed as her and her wolf never returned.

Instead, he opened his eyes and stepped back, and her heart fell into her stomach.

The woman’s expression did not change, but something in her shimmered, like a reflection disturbed. “You will bleed longer,” She warned him in a tone that made her heart skip. “You will ache and not survive this phase. But if you choose me, I can make this end. We can continue as one, together,”

“I know,”

“And still you refuse me?”

There was disbelief in her tone that Lucrezia forgot to breathe. H-He couldn’t…

Staring at those eyes, “Yes,” he responded without doubt or remorse, but Lucrezia could clearly see the constraint by the way veins popped in his head.

“Very well then,” She said. “Carry on,” and stepped back, silver unraveling from her form, light thinning like breath on cold air. As she faded, her gaze never left his, and Lucrezia felt the echo of that look settle somewhere deep in her bones.

When the woman vanished completely, the absence hurt more than her presence ever had. It struck with sudden force when Vaeron fell to his knees, the sound of it dull against the floor.

Lucrezia gasped, her fingers digging into the edge of the dais as a chill ran through her. How could he endure this? How could he survive the trial without strength? Panic coiled in her chest, tight and suffocating, and for a heartbeat, she imagined the creature she had married broken and defeated before her eyes.

Lucrezia leaned forward, urging him silently with the weight of her gaze, yet she could do nothing. He did not look up as if whatever remaining strength had held him upright seemed to have left with her.

The air between them thrummed with silence, heavy as the stones beneath her, and oppressive as the unyielding trial that awaited him. And worse, no one moved to help him.

Then suddenly, Vaeron’s head lifted slowly, his eyes catching hers but there was no fear in them. And then she saw it: the glimmer of something dark, coiled just beyond the light, moving with intent, as if it had been waiting for this exact moment.

His gaze tore from hers the second it landed, his hand clutching his chest as if he were holding himself together. Pain, or something far heavier, crossed his features, and for a moment, Lucrezia felt the full weight of his fragility, exposed in the midst of the trial.

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