Chapter 59: Soul link.

Chapter 59

Isabella didn’t remember the fire going out. She didn’t remember the moment her heavy eyelids finally won the battle against the flickering shadows.

Sleep hadn’t been a rest; it had been a murky, suffocating descent into dreams of dark water and the sound of someone screaming her name from a great distance.

A sharp groan of pure frustration dragged her back to the surface. Isabella’s eyes fluttered open, unfocused and stinging.

The room was bathed in the grey, weak light of pre-dawn, the air chilled to a point that made her breath mist in front of her face.

She didn’t move, her body feeling like it had been weighed down with lead, but her gaze drifted toward the floor.

Clara was still there.

The witch was no longer sitting with the poised grace of the night before. She was on her knees, surrounded by a chaotic sea of books.

The leather-bound books were splayed open in every direction, some face-down with their spines protesting, others stacked in precarious towers.

Clara’s hair, usually pinned in a perfect, severe arrangement, was beginning to fray, dark strands clinging to her damp forehead.

She looked haggard, her fingers stained with the ink of the ancient pages she had been feverishly flipping through for hours.

“It makes no sense,” Clara muttered, her voice a ragged whisper. She slammed a hand down on a page, the sound echoing sharply.

Isabella watched her through hooded eyes, her mind slowly sharpening. She’s been at it all night, Isabella thought. She didn’t sleep at all.

The double-beat in Isabella’s chest was a slow, steady pulse now, but the mark on her neck felt tight, like a collar that had shrunk overnight.

She shifted slightly, the silk of the shirt rustling against the sheets. Clara’s head snapped up. Her eyes were bloodshot, the pure white irises looking dull and frantic.

She didn’t offer a morning greeting. She didn’t ask how Isabella felt. She simply stared at Isabella as if she were a riddle that refused to be solved—or a death sentence that had already been signed.

“You’re awake,” Clara said, voice flat. She didn’t move to get up. She just sat there in the graveyard of books, clutching a piece of yellowed vellum so hard it crinkled.

“Hard not to be,” Isabella rasped, her voice sounding like glass on gravel. “You’re making enough noise to wake the dead.”

Clara shook her head. “The dead are the only ones with the answers, Isabella. And they aren’t talking.”

She gestured wildly at the books around her. “I’ve gone through the First Pacts, the Shadow Rites, even the forbidden werewolf genealogies. Everything says the same thing. A human body cannot sustain a transfusion of this magnitude. You should have gone into cardiac arrest the moment he forced that cup down your throat.”

Isabella’s fingers curled into the duvet. “And yet, here I am. Still breathing. Much to your disappointment.”

Clara’s eyes narrowed, a flicker of her usual venom returning. “Don’t flatter yourself. I don’t want you dead—not because I care for you, but because I’ve seen what happens to a King when his anchor snaps. If you die, this entire fortress becomes a slaughterhouse.”

Isabella didn’t respond. Instead, she threw the heavy duvet aside, her movements stiff and jerky.

The cold air of the room bit at her bare legs, but she ignored it, forcing her trembling limbs to swing over the edge of the mattress. Her feet hit the stone floor with a soft slap.

The world tilted. Her vision flared white for a second as the double-beat in her chest kicked up but she gritted her teeth, burying the urge to vomit.

She wasn’t going to lie there like a patient while Clara sat in the dirt playing with her life. Slowly, painfully, Isabella dragged herself off the bed.

She used the bedpost for leverage, her knuckles white against the dark wood, before taking a shaky, barefooted step toward the sea of books.

She sank to her knees a few feet away from Clara, the movement more of a controlled collapse than a choice.

Clara didn’t even look at her. The witch remained hunched over a massive book, her fingers tracing a line of text with a desperate, manic intensity.

She was muttering under her breath, a string of archaic syllables that sounded like a prayer or a curse.

Isabella ignored her right back. Her gaze drifted over the mess until it landed on a slim, black-bound volume tucked beneath a stack of werewolf genealogies.

She reached out, her thin fingers trembling as she pulled it free. As the cover fell open, Isabella’s eyes widened. This wasn’t a history book.

It was filled with intricate hand-drawn diagrams of celestial alignments, pressed dried herbs, and shimmering incantations written in silver ink.

“Spells,” Isabella whispered, her voice cutting through Clara’s frantic muttering.

She looked up, pinning the witch with a sharp, judgmental stare. “Is your power back? Are you actually doing something useful, or just looking for a way to light a candle?”

Clara’s hand froze on her own book. She finally looked up, her face a mask of exhaustion and raw, bleeding pride. She looked at the spellbook in Isabella’s hands, then back at the girl in the oversized shirt.

“Give me that,” Clara snapped, reaching out to snatch it, but Isabella pulled it back, her grip surprisingly tight despite her frailty.

“Answer me, Clara. Is it back?” Clara’s expression crumbled for a split second, revealing a hollow, terrifying emptiness before the mask of spite slammed back into place.

“No,” she hissed, her voice cracking. “It isn’t.”

She sat back on her heels, gesturing vaguely at the library of failures surrounding her. “I’ve tried every restoration rite in that book. I’ve recited the ancestral calls until my throat bled. I’ve even tried the blood-letting rituals.” She held up her hands, showing the small, angry nicks on her fingertips.

“Nothing. It’s like there’s a wall—an invisible, iron wall between me and the source. Every time I reach for a spark, something… pushes back.”

Isabella looked back down at the silver ink. It seemed to shimmer even in the dull grey morning light.

“Maybe it’s not a wall,” she mused, her internal voice sounding far more certain than she felt. “Maybe the source just doesn’t recognize you anymore.”

Clara flinched as if Isabella had slapped her. “What would a wolfless girl know about the source?”

“I know what it feels like to have something taken away,” Isabella said, her voice dropping to a low, cold hum. “And I know what it feels like to have something forced in. You’re looking for a way to be what you were. I’m just trying to find out what the hell I’m becoming.”

She flipped a page in the spellbook, stopping on a Chapter titled The Resonance of the Soul-Link.

“Wait,” Isabella said, her heart giving a sudden, violent thrum that made the mark on her neck pulse. “Clara, look at this.”

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