Chapter 66: Doppelgänger

Chapter 66

Where am I?

Isabella looked back, expecting to see the bed, the wardrobe, the safety of her prison. But there was nothing but a swirling, impenetrable fog that seemed to swallow the world she knew.

It was as if the stone had acted as a bridge, dragging her soul to a place the rest of her body hadn’t caught up to yet.

The mark in her neck gave a sharp, agonizing tug. It wasn’t drawing from Lucian now; it was drawing from the door.

Compelled by a force that felt like a hook in her gut, Isabella reached out. Her hand trembled as she pressed her palm against the dark wood.

The stone in her other hand vibrated with a sudden, violent heat. The door yielded with a heavy, weighted thud, swinging inward into a darkness so absolute it felt like stepping into the mouth of a beast.

Isabella took a step forward, her bare feet crossing the threshold. Inside, the air was stagnant, smelling of old paper, cold ash, and something else—something that made the mark on her neck burn white-hot.

It was a scent of intimacy. “Who’s there?” she whispered, her voice echoing strangely, as if the room were much larger than the darkness suggested.

She took another step, and the light from the stone in her hand flared one last time, illuminating the space for a fraction of a second.

The glow from the cracked stone pulsed again in Isabella’s palm. Each flicker of light pushed back the suffocating shadows, revealing a room that felt both ancient and eerily familiar.

The air was thick with the scent of cedar and rain, but beneath it lay the heavy, sweet perfume of jasmine and old blood.

Isabella’s breath hitched as the light finally touched the center of the room. There was a bed.

It was a massive, four-poster thing, draped in silks that looked like liquid silver. But it wasn’t the furniture that made the air freeze in Isabella’s lungs.

It was the shapes beneath the sheets. Two figures lay entwined, their forms rising and falling in the slow, synchronized rhythm of deep sleep.

Isabella moved closer, her feet making no sound on the stone floor. She felt like a trespasser in her own nightmare.

She raised the stone higher, the light spilling over the bed like an unholy dawn. The first face she saw made her stumble back, the stone nearly slipping from her sweat-slicked hand.

It was her.

Not her twin, not her sister, Selena but her. The same curve of the jaw, the same spray of light freckles across the bridge of the nose, the same tangled mess of white hair spilled across the silk pillow.

The doppelgänger looked peaceful—more peaceful than Isabella had felt since the night she escaped.

Her skin glowed with a health that Isabella hadn’t seen in the mirror for years, a radiant vitality that seemed to hum in the quiet air.

But it was the man beside her that sent a different kind of shiver through Isabella’s soul.

He was lying with his back partially turned, one heavy arm thrown possessively over the Isabella-lookalike’s waist.

His skin was pale, mapped with scars that seemed to shimmer in the light. Isabella leaned in, desperate to see his face, to know whose shadow was currently haunting her vision.

But as the light touched his features, they dissolved. His face was a shifting blur, like a reflection in a disturbed pond.

One moment she thought she saw the sharp, aristocratic line of a man nose; the next, it was a broader, more rugged jawline she didn’t recognize.

The more she stared, the more her head throbbed, the mark in her chest screaming at the sight of him.

Whoever he was, the bond between the two figures was palpable. It was a golden cord of light that tied them together, weaving between their hearts in a way that made Lucian’s mark on her neck feel like a crude shackle.

This wasn’t a nightmare. It felt like a memory of past or maybe a future that hadn’t happened yet.

A sudden, violent boom shattered the stillness of the chamber—a sound like iron striking stone—and the tranquil scene on the sheets fractured into a frantic blur of motion.

Isabella jumped back, her heart leaping into her throat as she saw the two figure awake, they surged upward

The man, his face still a maddening smear of shadows, threw back the heavy silks. Beside him, the Isabella-lookalike scrambled toward the foot of the bed.

They began to dress in garments that belonged to a forgotten era—heavy, dark fabrics cinched with silver buckles, tunics of fine-spun wool, and leather boots that laced high up the calf.

The girl moved with a desperate, practiced urgency, her long white hair whipping around her shoulders like a shroud as she fastened a cloak.

Isabella stood frozen as her doppelgänger rushed toward the door. For a terrifying heartbeat, the girl ran straight at her.

Isabella braced for an impact, her breath catching, but there was no collision. The girl passed through her like a cold draft of mountain air, a sensation that sent a bone-deep shiver crawling down Isabella’s spine.

It was a hollow, echoing feeling, as if she had just been stepped through by a memory. The faceless man was at the girl’s side in a second.

He caught her by the waist, spinning her around for one final, searing moment. He leaned down, and though Isabella still couldn’t decipher his features, the intensity of the kiss they shared was so raw, so filled with a tragic, parting desperation, that it made the mark on Isabella’s neck throb in sympathetic pain.

They broke apart and turned toward the dark door, their silhouettes sharp against the fading light.

“Wait!” Isabella cried out, her voice sounding thin and distant, but the couple ignored her entirely.

It was as if she were nothing more than a ghost, a silent observer standing on the periphery of a time that did not belong to her.

She lunged forward, her fingers reaching for the hem of the girl’s cloak, desperate to follow them into whatever history or future they were fleeing toward.

She needed to see his face. She needed to know why her own face was wearing a smile of such heartbreaking love.

But as the couple crossed the threshold, the heavy timber door slammed shut with a finality that shook the very foundation of the room.

The boom echoed in Isabella’s ears, transforming into a dull thudding. The darkness rushed back in, cold and absolute, swallowing the bed, the silver silks, and the scent of jasmine.

“Isabella!” The name wasn’t a whisper; it was a command that pulled her soul back through the fog with the force of a tidal wave.

Isabella’s eyes snapped open, the transition so jarring she nearly retched. The stagnant air of the memory was gone, replaced instantly by the familiar, sharp scent of ozone and the heavy warmth of the North Wing.

She wasn’t standing in front of a dark door. She was huddled on the floor of the bedroom, her back pressed against the cold wardrobe.

The two halves of the cracked stone lay in her lap, now completely black and devoid of light, looking like pieces of burnt coal.

A heavy, warm weight dropped onto her shoulder, and she jumped so violently her head nearly struck the wood behind her.

“Breathe,” a voice rumbled, low and dangerously close. Isabella’s wide, panicked eyes snapped to the side to see Lucian kneeling beside her, his face just inches from hers.

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