Chapter 81: Blade.

Chapter 81

Caleb tried to mount his horse, but his leg gave way, sending him crashing into the dirt. He let out a roar of frustration, punching the ground as his blood stained the forest floor.

He was the Prince of Death, a commander of thousands, and yet he was being held back by his own broken body while something bad might had happened to his heart that was leagues away.

“Move,” he hissed to himself, dragging his body upward by clutching the horse’s stirrup. “Move, damn you!”

Isabella reached out, her hands hovering over his wounds. She wanted to heal him, to push him, to tell him that every second he wasted was another lash on Bella’s back.

But she could only watch as he finally hauled himself into the saddle, his face white with agony, and turned the horse back toward the capital.

The vision blurred again, the forest dissolving into the suffocating stone of the castle’s deepest bowels.

Isabella was standing in a corridor where the air was thick with the smell of salt, damp earth, and rot.

The dungeons.

She followed the sound of labored, wet breathing until she reached a cell at the very end of the hall.

Inside, Bella lay facedown on a pile of filthy straw. Her back was a ruined landscape of shredded flesh and dried blood—the hundred lashes had left her barely recognizable.

She wasn’t wailing anymore; she didn’t have the strength.

The heavy iron door creaked open, and a sliver of torchlight cut across the cell. Lucian stepped inside. He looked down at the broken girl, his expression one of mild curiosity, as if he were observing a science experiment that hadn’t quite finished yet.

“Three days, Bella,” Lucian said softly, his voice echoing off the damp walls. “Three days until the sun sets on your life. And the best part? Caleb will be here to watch. He’ll see the girl he traded a crown for die as a nameless criminal.”

Bella’s fingers twitched in the straw. “He… will kill you,” she rasped, her voice nothing more than a ghost of a sound.

Lucian laughed, a cold, hollow sound. “Caleb is dead, little bird. Or he will be soon. My men don’t miss. You’re waiting for a savior who is currently rotting in a northern ditch.”

“No..no.”Bella could barely whisper with silent tears. Isabella lunged at Lucain, her scream of rage silent to his ears. “He’s alive! He’s coming for you!”

Lucian knelt beside Bella, his hand hovering inches from her shredded back. “You could have been mine. You could have lived in luxury as my favorite plaything. But you chose a man who couldn’t even protect you from a few guards.”

He stood up, looking toward the small, barred window high above. “Enjoy the silence. It’s the last bit of peace you’ll have before the gala begins.”

As the door slammed shut, the vision began to ripple. She felt a pull in her gut—the memory was ending, but it was saving the most horrific part for last.

The sky outside the high window turned a bruised, unnatural violet. The three days were passing in a heartbeat.

Isabella felt the temperature drop until her breath came out in misty clouds. She heard the sound of trumpets in the distance.

“The execution,” Isabella whispered, her eyes widening as the vision shifted one last time to a courtyard.

The courtyard was a sea of judgmental faces. Lords, ladies, and commoners alike had gathered under the bruised violet sky, their murmurs creating a low, buzzing static that made Isabella’s head throb.

In the center of the yard stood the gallows, the thick hempen rope swaying slightly in the wind like a pendulum of doom.

Bella was dragged toward the platform by two guards. She looked like a ghost already—her skin was a waxy, translucent pale, and the white shift they had dressed her in was already blooming with fresh red stains where her lashed back had reopened.

She could barely keep her feet under her, her head lolling until she saw the King, Selena, and Lucian sitting on the royal dais, watching with the cold detachment of gods.

Suddenly, a surge of adrenaline—the final, desperate spark of a dying flame—ignited in Bella’s eyes.

As one guard reached out to haul her up the wooden steps, she lunged. With a speed born of pure madness, her weak hand snatched the dagger from the guard’s belt.

“Get away from me!” she shrieked, the sound cracking through the courtyard like a lightning bolt.

The crowd gasped, a thousand voices falling into a deafening silence. The guards froze, startled by the ferocity of a girl who should have been too broken to move.

Bella backed away toward the edge of the platform, the blade trembling in her hand. She was crying, the tears carving clean tracks through the grime and blood on her face.

She looked at the dais, her gaze piercing through the finery and the lies. “You want my death?” she shouted, her voice echoing off the stone walls.

“Then look at me! Look at what you’ve done!” She pointed the blade at the visiting King, her father. “Curse you for a father who disowned his own blood!”

She turned the steel toward Selena. “Curse you, sister, for the blackness in your heart!”

Finally, her eyes landed on Lucian, and a look of such visceral loathing crossed her face that even he leaned back.

“And you, Lucian… may your soul rot in the same filth you forced upon me. May this kingdom never know peace. May the sun never shine on these walls again!”

“Bella, no!” Isabella screamed from the sidelines, her hands reaching out into empty air. “Caleb is coming! Just hold on!”

But Bella was tired. She had lost too much blood, too much dignity, and the hope that Caleb was alive had been extinguished by Lucian’s poisonous lies. To her, there was nothing left but the pain.

“It is better to die by my own hand than to give you the satisfaction of watching me hang,” she whispered, her voice suddenly dropping to a haunting, melodic calm.

She brought the sharp edge of the blade to her own throat. The world seemed to slow down. Isabella saw the way Bella’s lips moved, a final, private prayer for the man she loved.

“I’m so sorry, Caleb,” she whispered, a single tear falling. “It’s all my fault. I wish we had a better story… one where it was just us. Just the lovers.”

Her hand trembled as she sliced. A fountain of crimson sprayed across the white wood of the platform.

Bella’s body slumped, falling like a broken doll. At that exact moment, the heavy iron gates of the capital burst open.

The sound of a horse, driven to the point of heart failure, thundered into the courtyard. Caleb, covered in his own blood and grime, his armor shattered, leapt from the saddle before the horse had even stopped.

“BELLA!” he screamed, a sound of such profound agony that it felt like the sky itself might split open.

He sprinted toward the platform, his eyes wide and wild, pushing past guards and nobles alike. He reached the base of the gallows just as Bella’s body rolled off the edge of the wooden stage, falling into the dirt.

Caleb caught her. He fell to his knees, cradling her head against his chest, his hands desperately trying to staunch the wound at her neck.

“No, no, no,” he sobbed, his voice breaking into a thousand pieces. “I’m here. Bella, look at me. I’m here!”

Bella’s golden eyes flickered one last time. She saw him. A tiny, fragile smile touched her blood-stained lips—a look of pure relief that he was alive.

And then, the light vanished. Her head fell back, her body going limp in his arms.

Isabella stood frozen, her own neck burning as if the blade had touched her too. She watched as Caleb’s grief transformed.

He was shaking with sorrow, He looked up at the dais—at his father, at Selena, and at a smiling Lucian.

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