Chapter 25: Greater dark

Chapter 25

Isabella didn’t move for three long seconds. Her brain was stuck on a loop, replaying the sight of the bleeding King scaling a nightmare just to whisper it into submission.

“What the… what the actual hell?” she finally breathed, her voice cracking. The silence of the forest was more terrifying than the roaring had been.

She scrambled across the dirt, her knees scraping against rocks and frozen pine needles until she reached him.

Lucian was sprawled at the base of the sleeping hound, his body partially tangled in the creature’s matted gray fur.

“Your Majesty?” she choked out, kneeling beside him. She grabbed his shoulders and shook him, but his head just lolled back, his skin so pale it was almost translucent.

“Hey! Wake up! You can’t just do a cool move like that and then die. That’s—that’s cheating!” He didn’t move. Not a flicker of an eyelid, not a twitch of a finger.

The violet veins in his neck were pulsing slower now, a dark, bruised rhythm that felt like a countdown.

Isabella looked up. The sky was no longer gray. A sharp, cruel sliver of gold was piercing through the canopy. The sun.

“Oh, no. No, no, no.” She looked at the cave, then back at the man who was currently a six-foot-six pile of dead weight.

If the sun touched those holy burns, she knew instinctively that he wouldn’t just be hurt—he would be practical almost die.

And if he went, her neck started to throb in sympathy, a reminder that they were two souls on one sinking boat.

She stood up and grabbed him by the wrists, planting her feet and heaving with every bit of strength her small frame possessed. He didn’t budge.

“Come on! Work with me here!” she grunted, her face turning scarlet from the effort. She shifted her grip, turning around and tucking his heavy arms over her shoulders, leaning forward until her spine felt like it was going to snap.

With a primal scream of frustration, she managed to lurch forward a few inches. Then a foot.

The golden light was crawling down the trunks of the trees, chasing them. “Just… twenty… more… feet!” she panted.

Every step was a battle against gravity. Her shoes skidded in the mud, and at one point, she fell to her knees, nearly face-planting, but she didn’t let go of his cold hands.

She dragged him like a sack of stones, her breath coming in ragged, sobbing gasps. The heat of the morning was already starting to prickle at her skin, and she could feel the air behind her getting brighter, deadlier.

With one final, desperate surge of adrenaline, she heaved him across the threshold of the cave.

They tumbled together into the damp, lightless interior just as the first beam of pure sunlight struck the very spot where Lucian’s head had been resting seconds before.

Isabella collapsed on top of him, her chest heaving, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird.

The cool, damp air of the cave felt like a blessing. She rolled off him, gasping for air, and looked back at the entrance.

The Sentinel was still there, a mountain of fur blocking half the light, breathing the only sound in the woods.

She turned her gaze to Lucian. He was still out, his face a mask of exhaustion even in sleep. “We made it,” she whispered to the shadows, her voice trembling.

“Now… how do I make sure you actually wake up?” She looked down on Lucain, her heart racing. She was about standing up, her eyes darting toward the back of the cave to see if there was a spring of water, anything useful or if they weren’t alone, when a sound ripped through the silence.

Lucian released a guttural, harrowing groan of pure agony. His eyes remained shut, but his entire body began to shake violently, his muscles seizing in a series of brutal tremors.

The “sleep” command he’d used had drained his mental shields, leaving his physical form completely defenseless against the poison in his blood.

Isabella shrieked, dropping back to her knees. She panicked, her first thought being that the sun had somehow reached him, but they were deep in the shadows.

The light wasn’t the problem, it was the holy water. The violet lines on his neck and chest were no longer just glowing; they were expanding, branching out like jagged lightning under his skin.

They looked like they were trying to cook him from the inside out. “Okay, okay, think… I have to get this stuff off him,” she whispered, her hands flying to the remnants of his clothes.

The fine silk shirt was already shredded and soaked with a mixture of river water, sweat, and whatever black fluid was weeping from his wounds.

With a frantic tug, she began to strip the remaining fabric away. It was a struggle—even unconscious, his body was rigid as stone—but she managed to peel the ruined cloth from his torso.

She left him half-naked, his broad chest exposed to the cool cave air. Even in this state, he looked like a fallen god carved from crystals but the beauty was marred by the horrific, pulsing burns.

“I need to get you off this dirt,” she panted. She grabbed his heavy, black coat and spread it out on the floor.

Moving him was like trying to shift a mountain. She heaved and shoved, her own neck throbbing in a rhythmic, agonizing pulse that told her exactly how much pain he was in.

Finally, she managed to roll him onto the coat.

Lucian’s head fell back, his jaw tight. A thin trail of black blood escaped the corner of his mouth.

“You can’t die,” Isabella whispered, her voice breaking as she looked at his battered chest. “I didn’t drag you three miles through a haunted forest just for you to quit now. Do you hear me, Your Majesty?”

She looked around the dark cave, her eyes landing on nothing. She squeezed her eyes shut, forcing her panicked brain to travel back to the dusty corners of the Pack’s restricted archives.

She had spent years there, desperately searching for a cure for her broken wolf, but she’d scanned plenty of forbidden texts on the Enemy along the way.

Holy water doesn’t just burn, she remembered a passage from an ancient, moldering leather book. It purifies. To an unholy vessel, purity is a corrosive acid. It won’t stop until the host is hollowed out or the light is neutralized by a greater dark.

“Greater dark,” she whispered, her eyes snapping open. She looked at Lucian. His skin was beginning to smoke, a faint, wispy gray vapor rising from the violet lightning bolts on his chest.

She looked around the cave again, more desperately this time. Was there anything darker than this man laying on her feet? Isabella had no idea but she knew she needed to find a way quickly.

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