Chapter 64: Butterfly

Chapter 64

Isabella’s eyes were blown wide, the pupils swallowing the golden-colored irises until they looked like twin pools of ink.

She was trembling so violently thinking back at the cold red eyes of that man. Lucian’s grip tightened on her, pulling her back hat she wasn’t alone anymore.

Quickly she tried composing herself, she couldn’t let Lucain know that someone saw her, it would be the end of her ears.

“Nothing,” Isabella choked out, her voice thin and high-pitched. She forced her fingers to loosen their grip on his coat, though the chill of those crimson eyes still felt like a blade against her skin.

“I… I just got dizzy. The blood, it—it makes everything so sharp, Lucian. I thought I saw a butterfly. A white one, right against the glass. I just wanted to see it.”

The lie felt pathetic even as it left her lips. A butterfly. In the biting evening air of the North, where even the birds seemed to have fled the encroaching winter.

Lucian’s eyes narrowed, his gaze darting toward the window and then back to her face. He didn’t look convinced.

He looked like a man who had spent centuries cataloging every flavor of deception, and “butterflies” sat at the very bottom of his list.

“A butterfly,” he repeated, his voice dropping into a dangerously flat register. “You risked your life—and the secrecy of this entire wing—to chase a moth?”

“It wasn’t a moth,” she insisted, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm that he could undoubtedly feel through his palms.

“It was… beautiful. I’ve been in this room for three days, Lucian. I just wanted to see something that wasn’t grey stone or charcoal silk.”

Lucian didn’t respond immediately. He stood over her, his presence a suffocating weight that seemed to suck the oxygen from the air.

He studied the flush on her cheeks, the way her gaze darted everywhere but at him. He knew she was lying.

He could feel the spike of her adrenaline that had nothing to do with a butterfly and everything to do with terror.

“You were looking at the courtyard,” he growled, his hands sliding from her waist to her shoulders, anchoring her. “You were looking at the Council. Did one of them see you, Isabella? Did anyone look up?”

“No!” the word jumped out of her too fast, too desperate. “No one looked up. They were just getting into their cars. I told you, I was looking at the butterfly. I gasped because I tripped over the rug. That’s all.”

She held her breath, her eyes locked on his chin, praying that her heart wouldn’t betray her. If he knew that one of those council member had marked her location, he would move her.

He would bury her in the bowels of the earth where the air smelled of damp earth and rot. Lucian’s jaw worked, a muscle jumping in his cheek as he weighed her words.

The bond hummed between them, a confused melody of her panic and his simmering frustration.

“If I find out you are lying,” he whispered, his face leaning down until his cold breath fanned her forehead, “there will be nowhere left to hide you.”

Without another word, he hooked one arm behind her knees and the other behind her back, lifting her from the cold marble floor with an effortless strength.

Isabella let out a small, involuntary sound as her head fell against his shoulder. He didn’t carry her with the tenderness of a lover; he carried her like a piece of salvaged cargo, his strides long and impatient as he crossed back to the bed.

He dropped her onto the mattress, the springs groaning under the sudden impact. “Stay,” he commanded, the word vibrating with the force of his sovereignty. “Don’t move from this spot. I don’t care if a thousand butterflies land on that glass. You are a ghost, Isabella. Start acting like one.”

He turned toward the nightstand, his eyes falling on the empty cup and plate still filled with food.

The tension in his shoulders didn’t ease, but the lethal edge in his voice softened just a fraction.

“Eat your food, Isabella.” He went over and picked the tray with the filled plate. He walked back to the bed with the tray but he didn’t set it in her lap.

Instead, he dropped onto the edge of the mattress, his weight causing the bed to dip significantly, pulling her slight frame toward him.

“You need food to survive, Isabella,” He looked at her with a detached sort of scrutiny, his eyes tracing the hollows of her cheeks and the prominent line of her collarbone.

“My blood can subdue the blight, but it cannot knit flesh back to your bones. You look like a corpse that’s been walking for too many days. If you die of simple starvation before the Awakening, all of this will have been a monumental waste of my time.”

Isabella watched him, stunned into silence. She expected him to shove the tray at her and walk out, locking the door with a final, echoing thud.

Instead, Lucian picked up the spoon. He dipped it into the thick, herb-scented broth, lifting it with a steady hand.

Isabella’s eyes widened, her back pressing further against the headboard. “What… what are you doing?”

“Feeding you,” Lucian answered simply, as if he were discussing a military maneuver. “You just told me you were dizzy. Your hands are shaking so violently you’d likely wear the soup rather than eat it. And I have neither the patience nor the desire to wait for you to find your coordination.”

“I can do it myself,” she whispered, reaching out with a hand that—to her utter betrayal—trembled like a leaf in a gale.

Lucian didn’t even move the spoon. He just watched her, his expression unreadable, until she let her hand drop back onto the silk duvet.

“Open your mouth, Isabella. I am not known for my patience.”

Shocked, she obeyed. The warmth of the broth was a sharp contrast to the cold taste of the blood she had been living on.

It tasted of earth and salt, of something human and grounding. “Don’t think too much of this,” Lucian muttered, his gaze focused entirely on the spoon as he dipped it back into the bowl.

“This means nothing. You are a tool I am currently keeping in working order. Nothing more.”

“A tool,” Isabella repeated around a mouthful of broth, her voice regaining a tiny spark of its old defiance. “Is that why you’re being so… helpful?”

“It is why I am ensuring you don’t collapse before the eighteenth,” he corrected, his voice flat. He leveled another spoonful at her. “If you fail to reach your Awakening, the backlash on my own sovereignty would be… inconvenient. I am simply protecting my investment.”

Isabella swallowed, looking at the sharp planes of his face. He looked so certain, so cold, yet the way he held the spoon was surprisingly steady, careful not to spill a drop on the white linens.

He was lying to her, or perhaps to himself, but the proximity was doing something to the bond.

She could feel the heat radiating off him—the steady, rhythmic thrum of his power that acted as a blanket against the cold chill Cyrus had left in her soul.

“I don’t believe you,” she said softly, watching him as he prepared the next bite. Lucian’s hand stilled for a fraction of a second. His gray eyes snapped up to hers, dark and swirling with an emotion she couldn’t name.

“Believe whatever allows you to sleep, little wolf. But do not mistake necessity for affection. We are tied by a mistake, not by choice.”

He finished the bowl in silence. When he finally set the tray aside, he stood up, the bed rising as his weight left it.

He didn’t look back at her as he moved toward the door. “Sleep,” he commanded. “The dizzy spells will pass once the food settles. And Isabella?”

He paused with his hand on the heavy iron latch, his silhouette framed by the dim light of the hallway.

“If I catch you at that window again, I will have it boarded up. Butterflies be damned.”

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