Chapter 133: My cold chest.

Chapter 133

The electrically charged atmosphere that had nearly consumed the kitchen softened, but it didn’t disappear.

It merely settled between them as Lucian silently guided Isabella back toward the high-backed velvet stool.

His hand remained firm on her lower back, a steadying weight that felt both protective and a quiet claim.

Isabella sat with her knees still feeling a bit like water, and placed her plate back onto the cool composite surface of the island.

The steam from the stew had vanished, leaving the rich sauce to thicken as it cooled, but her appetite was the furthest thing from her mind.

Lucian didn’t leave, he took the stool beside her, carefully not putting pressure on his injured chest, his long legs appearing elegant even in such a mundane setting.

He didn’t eat—he had no need for the salt and herbs—but he sat with her in the modern kitchen.

Isabella picked up her spoon, stirring the vegetables in a slow circle. She had nodded when he told her not to let the ghosts of a dead world pull her away.

She had understood the intensity in his eyes, the raw desperation of a King who had finally found something worth waking up for.

But understanding wasn’t the same as being at peace. “Lucian?” she started, her voice small, barely rising above the hum of the refrigerator.

He turned his head toward her, those gray eyes tracking the slight tremble in her hand. “Yes, Isabella?”

She hesitated, the “grumpy dinosaur” joke feeling like a lifetime ago. She wanted to be brave, to be the woman who could stand beside a twelve-century-old sovereign without flinching. “Can I… can I ask you something?”

Lucian hand twitched, his mind scrambling over different questions Isabella could possibly ask and all came to his injury.

Isabella looked up at him, her brow furrowed in a mix of curiosity and a lingering, quiet hurt. “I know I called you an old man, and I know twelve centuries is a long time to be alone, but… when you looked at me just now, when I asked if I was your first… you weren’t here. You were somewhere else.”

Lucian’s expression didn’t shift, but the air around him grew still. He leaned back slightly, his fingers tapping against the edge of the island—a sound like a ticking clock in a silent room. He had expected any other question but not this.

“I told you, Isabella, the past is a shadow.”

“But shadows have shapes, Lucian,” Isabella countered, her voice growing a bit stronger as she pushed the plate away.

She took a slow breath, closing her eyes for a heartbeat to anchor herself. She could feel a strange heat humming beneath her skin, threatening to turn her words into a frustrated snarl, but she fought it down.

She didn’t want to sound like a bratty child throwing a tantrum; she wanted to be the woman who could look a King in the eye and demand the truth of the ground she was standing on.

She opened her eyes, finding his stormy gaze waiting for her, as unyielding as the mountains he had outlived. Isabella reached out, her fingers trembling slightly as she rested them near his hand on the cold composite stone, but she didn’t pull away.

“Lucian,” she began, her voice gaining clarity that seemed to push back the oppressive silence of the mansion.

“I am trying to understand. I am trying to navigate a world that feels like it was built for someone else, wearing your clothes and sleeping in a bed that has seen a thousand years of history I wasn’t part of.”

She paused, looking at the way the light caught the silver in his irises, searching for the crack she had seen earlier—the moment of hesitation that had felt like a punch to the gut.

“I don’t want to fight with you, Lucain. And I don’t want to be a replacement for a memory you’re too afraid to face,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper that carried the weight of her entire soul.

She leaned in just an inch, her gaze unwavering. “Who was Bella to you, Lucian?” The name hung in the air, vibrating with a significance that made the very shadows in the corners of the kitchen seem to twitch.

Lucian didn’t move. He looked like a statue of marble and ice, his features locked in a mask of regal indifference, but Isabella saw the way his jaw tightened—the barest ripple of muscle that betrayed the turmoil beneath the surface.

Isabella didn’t even truly know why she had brought the name Bella up now. She didn’t even know for a certainty if Lucian had ever known a woman by that name, but the memory of Caleb showing her that haunting vision in the forest wouldn’t leave her mind.

Even if that vision had been a manipulation, a cruel trick of the mind, she could still feel there was some jagged shard of truth embedded in it.

Bella had looked exactly like Isabella—a mirror image across time. If the whispers Elena had implied were true, then the vision Caleb showed her wasn’t a total lie; it was a truth twisted by a master deceiver.

Elena had hinted that the events in that vision did happen, but the roles had been swapped to poison Isabella’s heart.

In the vision, Caleb had been the golden Crown Prince and Lucian the villain, when in fact, Lucian was the true heir, the one who had actually lived that history.

If Bella was a doppelgänger, then Lucian should have recognized Isabella the moment he saw her.

He should have seen the ghost in the girl but he seemed to not have and that was the main conflict in Isabella head but Lucian’s agonizing hesitation to answer her—the way the world seemed to stop at the mention of that name—made her answer terrifyingly clear.

There had indeed been a Bella, a ghost who still held a piece of his heart in her cold, dead hands.

“How..” Lucain looked confused at

“How…” Lucian whispered, the word barely escaping his lips, sounding less like a question and more like a crumbling stone.

The sheer, unadulterated confusion in his voice was a jarring contrast to the absolute authority he usually carried.

He didn’t just look startled; he looked as though Isabella had reached into his chest and pulled out a secret he hadn’t yet fully understood himself.

“How do you know that name, Isabella?” The gray of his eyes was swirling now, a chaotic storm of silver and ash, as he searched her face.

It was as if he were seeing her for the first time, or perhaps, seeing through her to someone standing just behind her shoulder.

“Who spoke it to you, Isabella? Was it Clara?” Isabella felt a shiver of cold dread wash over her, despite the heat still pulsing beneath her skin.

The way he was saying the name—not with the practiced indifference of a King, but with the raw, fractured ache of a man who had been wounded—confirmed everything.

Elena had been right. The vision Caleb had forced into her mind wasn’t a complete fabrication; it was a stolen history.

Caleb had played the part of the Crown Prince in that mental play, casting himself as the hero while painting Lucian as the monster, but the reality was the opposite.

Lucian was the heir. Lucian was the one who had lived through the tragedy. And Bella… Bella had been the centerpiece of that tragedy.

A girl who looked so much like Isabella that it was impossible for it to be a coincidence. “I saw her, Lucian,” Isabella’s voice trembled a bit at the memory of the vision.

Everyone snapping into place, Lucain being the crown prince. “I saw a vision. Caleb showed me things… he showed me a world that looked like a fairy tale turned into a nightmare. He made himself the Prince and you the villain, but I know better now. I know he lied about the roles, but he didn’t lie about her. He didn’t lie about the girl with my face”

She leaned in, her eyes searching for any sign of recognition in his. “If she looked like me, Lucian, why didn’t you say anything? When you first saw me in that forest, when you almost killed me, why didn’t you recognize your past love?”

Lucian’s breath hitched, the memories of their first encounter rushing back. He didn’t answer immediately; instead, he reached out, his hand hovering near her face.

“Because I was blind, Isabella,” he whispered. “Thousand years of existing in a void—of rotting in the cold, dark place—doesn’t leave a man whole. When I woke up from that grave and saw you in the moonlight, I didn’t see a face I recognized.”

He finally let his hand drop. “I had no memories of Bella, forgotten the curve of her smile, the exact shade of her eyes… the darkness had eaten it all. It wasn’t until you looked at me with that same defiance—until you called me a ’monster’ and ran off with caleb.”

He closed his eyes, “When I saw Caleb standing there, alive and mocking me, I felt a rage I couldn’t name, Isabella. I didn’t know why I had killed my own blood in the past, or why the sight of his face made my very soul scream for retribution. I had to let Clara reach into the rot of my mind. I had to endure the ritual just to find the name I had lost to the shadows.”

He leaned closer, his gray eyes snapped open, and the intensity within them was enough to make Isabella catch her breath. “I remember her now, Isabella. I remember that she was the only reason I drew breath in a world of treachery. She was my first, my only, and the reason I didn’t let the darkness consume me entirely during the Slumber, Isabella.”

“She didn’t just have your face. She had your spirit. Your stubbornness. Your light. The Fates are cruel, but they are not so heartless. I don’t see a doppelgänger when I look at you, Isabella. I believe—no, I know—that the essence of the woman I lost is sitting right in front of me.”

Isabella felt a tear prick at her eye, the weight of his confession and that beautiful but tragic vision crashing over her. It wasn’t just a coincidence of birth or a trick of the light. He truly believed she was her.

But what if she wasn’t? “So you don’t just want me because of the mate bond, Lucian?” she asked, her voice a mere thread of sound.

Lucian reached out, cupping her face with both hands, his thumbs stroking her cheeks with a tenderness that felt like a silent vow.

“The bond is merely the tether. I might not still have my full memories yet but I want you because the ghosts of the dead world have finally been silenced by the sound of your heart beating against my cold chest, Isabella.”

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