Chapter 112: Isolation

Chapter 112

The walk back to the mansion was a blur of cold moonlight and simmering resentment. Every time Lucian swallowed, the musky aftertaste of the deer’s blood reminded him of his fall from grace.

He reached the back entrance, moving like a ghost through the stone corridors, avoiding every gaze and every shadow where Marco might linger.

He didn’t return to the master suite. Not yet. He couldn’t go to her smelling of the wild, draped in the evidence of his desperation.

He bypassed the main rooms and entered a private bathing chamber, a sprawling sanctuary of black marble and gold fixtures.

With trembling fingers, he tore the ruined silk shirt from his body, the fabric damp and stained, and threw it into the bin, already thinking when he’s done showering he’s burning it.

He didn’t care about the fine tailoring; he wanted the memory of it burned to ash. He turned the gold handles of the bath, the sound of the water roaring into the deep basin like a waterfall.

He didn’t wait for it to warm. He stepped into the rising water, clothes and all, sinking beneath the surface until the world was nothing but a muffled, watery silence.

He stayed under until his lungs burned, scrubbed his skin until it was raw, and used the most expensive oils to mask the scent of the forest.

He needed to be the King again. He needed to be the iron-willed Sovereign Isabella expected, even if he felt like a hollowed-out shell inside.

Meanwhile, in the Master Suite Isabella had pushed the tray of food away, the savory scent of the broth now making her stomach turn.

The emotions coming through the bond had shifted from a sharp, predatory high to a heavy, drowning shame.

What are you doing, Lucian? she wondered, her heart aching with a rhythm that wasn’t entirely her own.

She stood up, her legs feeling stronger than they had an hour ago, fueled by the stabilization Clara had mentioned—and perhaps by the vicarious strength she was drawing from Lucian’s hunt.

She walked toward the window, looking out into the dark treeline. She couldn’t see him, but she could feel the change in the air.

The “wall of iron” she had felt earlier hadn’t disappeared, but it was cracking. Isabella’s fingers grazed the cold glass of the window, her reflection staring back at her—pale, wide-eyed, and draped in a shirt that belonged to a man currently trying to wash her influence off his skin.

But that’s not what caught her off guard. What caught her off guard was the girl staring back from the reflection—a stranger she barely recognized.

Isabella leaned in closer, the cool glass pressing against her forehead as she squinted at the image in the moonlight.

Her eyes, which had always been a striking, clear gold, were now encircled by a potent, glowing red ring.

It had been a faint, flickering thing when she first woken up from Lucain trying to drain all her blood the first time but now it was unmistakable, pulsing with the same rhythm she felt thrumming in her veins.

Shock rippled through her, a cold jolt that made her move away from the window and toward the large, floor-length mirror near the dressing area.

She needed to see. She needed to know what was happening to her. As she stood before the silver-backed glass, a sharp gasp escaped her lips, her hand flying to her throat.

The mark Lucian had accidentally placed there—the sacred brand of their bond—was no longer the vibrant, angry red it usually was.

It had paled significantly, the edges softening and turning a ghostly, lighter shade as if it were beginning to fade into her skin.

“No,” she whispered, her voice trembling. The guilt she had been nursing turned into a sharp claw in her chest.

It was her fault. She had tried to reject him in that orange room; she had let Caleb’s whispers weave a blade that she used to cut at the very thing that kept her tethered to Lucian.

She was losing the mark because she had doubted the man who was currently scrubbing his skin raw in a dark room just to be worthy of her again.

She looked higher, her eyes traveling to her hair. Her naturally stark white locks, which usually fell like a curtain of winter, now shimmered with strange gold tips. It looked as if the sun had been trapped in the strands, a physical manifestation of the Lycan heat that was boiling her blood.

But the most jarring change was her skin. She remembered the black, web-like veins of the blight—the rot that had been stealing her life, inch by agonizing inch.

She pulled back the collar of Lucian’s shirt, tracing the line of her shoulder. The black was gone.

In its place was skin so smooth it looked like polished marble, radiant and flawlessly healthy, possessed of a vitality that felt almost violent in its intensity.

The blight had been cured, but at a cost that made Isabella’s stomach lurch with a fresh wave of nausea.

Caleb had used the rot as leverage, a cruel bargain played against her own desperation and fear, and looking at the flawless expanse of her skin now felt like looking at a receipt for a debt she could never repay.

She turned her head, catching the way the moonlight hit the gold-tipped strands of her hair.

It was beautiful, undeniably, but it was a beauty that felt violent—a predatory radiance that didn’t belong on the girl she used to be.

She was getting paler by the day, her skin losing the last traces of a human flush and turning into something closer to the white marble of the statues in the garden.

I’m disappearing, she thought, her fingers tracing the ghostly, fading mark on her throat.

The silence of the room began to press in on her.

Every time she looked at the pale mark, she saw her own betrayal. She saw the moment she let Caleb’s poison in, the moment she reached for a “cure” that had effectively stripped her of her humanity and was now, apparently, stripping her of her mate.

She sank to the floor in front of the mirror, the silk of Lucian’s shirt pooling around her. She didn’t try to find him. She didn’t try to leave.

The fire in her blood was still there, but it felt dampened by the sheer weight of her isolation.

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