Chapter 23: Cave?

Chapter 23

Third Person POV

Lucian’s body finally surrendered. After those final, raspy words, the rigid iron in his spine snapped, and he slumped forward.

Isabella barely caught him. The weight was immense; Lucian was a 6’6″ wall of muscle and ancient bone, and at 5’5″, she felt like a toothpick trying to prop up a falling skyscraper.

She grunted, shoving her shoulder into his armpit and hooking her arm around his waist.

“Okay, okay, I’ve got you,” she panted, though she absolutely did not ’have him.’

“God, what do you eat?” Lucian didn’t respond to her witty insult. He let out a low, guttural groan near her ear—a sound of genuine, unbridled agony that made the hair on her arms stand up.

Through the bond, the pain was no longer a dull echo; it was now a pounding throb in her own chest, timed with the rise of the morning heat.

The sun hadn’t broken the horizon yet, but the mere approach of dawn was acting like a magnet, pulling the holy water in his veins toward the surface of his skin.

They moved like a two-headed disaster through the misty forest. Isabella dragged him, her legs shaking with every step

Twice, her shoes caught on protruding roots, and they nearly went down in a heap of shredded silk and denim.

“Almost there,” she lied, her face flushed with effort. “Just a few more… miles… of me destroying my spine for you.” Despite her being in a serious situation, Isabella still tried to make jokes.

She nearly ran headfirst into a tree when Lucian’s weight suddenly shifted, his knees buckling completely.

He slid from her grip, hitting the forest floor with a heavy thud. “Your majesty!” She dropped beside him, her chest heaving.

She tried to haul him into a sitting position against a thick oak, her hands trembling as she felt the unnatural cold radiating off him.

“Come on, stay with me. You can’t die on a bed of pine needles” Lucian’s eyes were half-closed, the red light in them flickering like a dying candle.

He was muttering something—a prayer or a curse, she couldn’t tell. Isabella stood up, wiping sweat from her brow, and scanned the trees.

She was ready to give up, she couldn’t tell where she was dragging him to, doesn’t even know how many miles they had passed.

The worst of it all was she doesn’t even know his name, she just kept calling him ’your majesty’

Isabella eyes scanned through the misty forest when she saw a flicker. A warm, golden light dancing through the thick gray mist about a hundred yards away.

Her heart leaped. “Help?” she whispered. Then louder, “Hey! I see a light! I think I found it. I’m going to go get whoever is in there. Don’t… don’t move. okay?”

Lucian’s hand twitched, his fingers clawing at the dirt as if trying to pull her back. His lips moved, a faint

“No…” or “Wait…” escaping him, but Isabella was already moving. She ran. Her tiny legs thudded against the damp earth as the outline of a structure began to take shape through the fog.

It looked exactly like the stories—a small, wooden cabin with smoke curling from a chimney and a herb garden visible through the golden glow of the windows.

Maybe he wasn’t a madman after all, she thought, a surge of hope blooming in her chest. Maybe the witches really are still….

She reached the threshold, her hand extending to knock on the heavy oak door. And then the world flickered.

Like a glitch in a video game, the golden light snapped into darkness. The warm wood turned to cold, jagged stone.

The smell of burning lavender shifted instantly to the stench of damp rot and dust. Isabella skidded to a halt, her hand frozen in mid-air. There was no door. There was no cabin.

She was standing at the mouth of a gaping, pitch-black cave. The “light” she had seen was nothing more than the glow of moss clinging to the wet rocks inside.

“What?” she whispered, her voice trembling. “No. No, it was right here.” She turned back toward the forest, but the mist had swallowed the path.

She was alone at the entrance of a hole in the earth, and the King she was supposed to be “bound” to was somewhere behind her, groaning in the dirt.

“Hello?” Isabella’s voice was barely a breath, but the cave caught it, stretching the syllable into a hollow, mocking echo that bounced off the wet stone walls.

She stared into the dark maw of the cavern, her brain struggling to reconcile the cozy cottage she’d seen seconds ago with this damp, rotting hole.

Great, the one time I decide to trust the ancient vampire, I get ghosted by a house. she thought, looking at the moss, then back at the trees.

She couldn’t leave him out there. If the sun hit him while he was already falling apart, she had a feeling she’d find out exactly what “agonizing dissolution” felt like firsthand.

The cave was miserable, but it was deep, and it was dark. It was a shield. “Fine,” she muttered to the empty air, turning and sprinted back into the mist.

She was sure she knew the way. It was just a straight shot back, past the crooked pine, past the cluster of ferns.

She reached the clearing where she had propped him up against the oak, her lungs burning.

“Okay, your majesty, the bad news is the house was a lie. The good news is I found you a very lovely, very damp hole to—”

She stopped. Her heart did a slow, sickening roll in her chest. The base of the tree was empty.

The dirt was scuffed, and the pine needles were disturbed where he had fallen, but the massive, 6’6″ vampire was gone.

“Your majesty?” she called out, her voice rising an octave. She scanned the gray soup of the mist, but nothing moved.

“Hey! This isn’t funny! I’m the one who’s supposed to be disappearing, remember?” Panic, sharp and cold, began to claw at her throat.

She moved deeper into the trees, her hands out in front of her. “Your majesty!”

Silence.

A terrifying thought struck her: What if the pack scouts had found him? What if that Marcus guy had circled back?

Or worse—what if he’d tried to move on his own and fallen into the ravine?

“Your Maj—”

Before the last syllable could leave her lips, a hand—ice-cold and smelling of ozone and old blood—clapped over her mouth.

Isabella’s breath hitched, her back slamming into a chest that felt like a wall of frozen rocks.

She went rigid, her eyes wide with terror as she prepared to bite down on whatever was holding her, but a familiar, lethal vibration hummed against her ear.

“Be silent, abomination,” Lucian’s voice was a whisper, barely audible over the sound of her own thudding heart.

He was leaning heavily against her, his weight almost crushing her into the dirt. He was trembling—not with fear, but with the sheer effort of staying conscious.

His other hand was gripped tight around a jagged piece of wood he’d picked up, his knuckles white.

Through the gap in his fingers, Isabella could see why he had hidden. Through the mist, not twenty yards away, a low thudding was approaching.

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