Chapter 37: Survive

Chapter 37

The golden haze that had filled the room vanished as if the air had been sucked out of the cabin.

The shock of Clara’s wide, accusing eyes made Isabella’s hands, which had been tangled in Lucian’s hair, suddenly find their strength. She shoved against his bare, broad chest in panic.

Lucian, still caught in the intoxicating swirl of her blood and that soul-deep kiss, was caught off guard.

His knee stumbled back on he damp rug until his lower back collided with the edge of the heavy coffee table with an echoing thud.

A low groan escaped his throat—not just from the impact, but from the sudden, agonizing disturbance of their physical connection.

The bond, which had been singing with a radiant heat, suddenly turned into icy wind at Lucain annoyed mood.

“Clara!” Isabella scrambled off the couch, her legs nearly giving out. She ignored the way her own lips felt swollen and hot, ignoring the drop of blood that had dried on her cheek like a brand.

She rushed to the fireplace, sinking to her knees beside the witch. Clara was a wreck. Her green gown was ruined, clinging to her frail frame like moss on a drowning stone, and her skin remained a terrifying shade of blue.

But her eyes—now fully open and clear of the water—were burning with a dark, hateful clarity. “Don’t touch me,” Clara hissed, her voice dry.

She flinched away from Isabella’s reaching hand as if the girl were made of the silver that had nearly killed them.

“Get away from me, you wretched

thing.” Isabella froze, her hand hovering in mid-air.

“I was trying to help… Lucian dragged you out of the water, we thought you were—”

“You were busy,” Clara spat, her gaze flicking over Isabella’s shoulder to where Lucian was slowly standing up.

The King was composed again, but it was a brittle, dangerous kind of calm. He wiped a smear of shimmering red from his lip with the back of his hand, his eyes fixed on the witch with a lethal intensity.

“You’re disoriented, Clara,” Lucian said, his voice dropping into that low octave that demanded submission.

“The ritual backfired. The silver broke the containment.”

“The ritual didn’t just backfire, you fool!” Clara shrieked, her voice cracking as she struggled to sit up.

She looked between the two of them, her lip curling in a sneer of pure revulsion. “I spent a lifetime studying the threads of the soul so I could help you unpick this mess, and what do I wake up to find? You haven’t just accepted the bond, you’ve fed it. You’ve feasted on it.”

She looked directly at Isabella, her eyes narrowing with a deep, ancient spite. “I see you now, girl. I see what you’ve allowed him to do. You’ve let a King turn you into his drug, and you’ve let the beast turn you into its shore.”

Isabella felt a chill that had nothing to do with her wet clothes. “I didn’t… he was helping me.”

“Helping you?” Clara laughed, a jagged, hysterical sound. “He has fused your life force to his. Look at your neck, wolfless. Look at the mark he gave you.”

Isabella’s hand flew to her throat. The mark felt alive.

“You’ve ruined everything,” Clara whispered, her hatred settling into a cold, hard stone.

“Enough,” Lucian’s voice cut through the air as he stepped away from the coffee table, his height dominating the small, shadowy room.

He walked towards the two women, his bare chest still damp with the water, and stood directly between Clara and Isabella, shielding the girl with his shadow.

“She didn’t ruin anything,” Lucian looked down at Clara, his crimson eyes flashing with a defensive edge.

“If anything was ruined tonight, it was by your hand, Clara. You’re a Master of the Arts, yet you clearly didn’t study the unpicking of a bonded soul as thoroughly as you claimed.”

Clara’s jaw dropped, her white eyes wide with annoyance. “I didn’t study….? I risked my life in the abyss for that girl!”

“And yet you failed to account for the silver glass in your own containment field,” Lucian countered, his glare so intense it seemed to physically push the witch back.

“You blame the girl for a surge of power she cannot control? You blame us for surviving the explosion your ritual triggered? Perhaps the failure lies not in the threads of our souls, but in the incompetence of the weaver.”

Clara recoiled as if he had slapped her. She had been trying to dump the entire weight of the today’s trauma and the “impropriety” of the kiss onto Isabella’s shoulders, but Lucian wasn’t allowing it.

He stood there like a wall of iron, his silent fury making the shadows in the corners of the room cower.

Clara’s hateful glare didn’t falter, but it shifted back to Isabella, raking over her drenched, trembling form with renewed disgust.

She looked at the obsidian water still clinging to Isabella’s tank top, then at the velvet couch that was now ruined with dark, magical stains.

“How touching,” Clara sneered, though she looked rattled. “The King finds his voice to defend his pet. But before you two got ’busy’ celebrating your survival, you might have had the decency to do it somewhere other than my furniture.”

She gestured weakly to the room, her lip curling. “Look at this place. I didn’t think I needed to explain what that water can do, but clearly, I overestimated your intelligence as well as your self-control.”

Clara coughed, a final spray of dark liquid hitting the floor as the water took effect.

“I wanted to save you from this bond, Lucian. But look at you. You’re dripping in the blood of a child, standing in a house of rot, and you’re protecting the very thing that is going to destroy your crown.” Clara rasped while Isabella felt a wave of nausea.

The water was tightening. It felt like a thousand tiny needles were beginning to pull at her pores, anchoring her to the floorboards.

“We all have ten minutes before the salt in the water crystallizes,” Clara whispered, her hatred settling into a weary, bitter exhaustion.

“You might survive,” she added, eyes flicking between them before settling on Lucain.

“But I won’t. And neither will your pet.”

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