Chapter 88: Suggestion.

Chapter 88

Clara stilled at the door. She had known Lucian long enough to understand what that tone meant. It was not a request. It was a warning.

Still, she hesitated. The room was thick with Isabella’s lingering presence, and beneath it, she could feel something far more unstable — the bond, stretched thin but alive, vibrating with suppressed emotion.

“Lucian,” she said carefully, “if you’re trying to track her through the bond, you shouldn’t push too hard. It’s weakened. Forcing it could—”

“Leave.” The word was quiet. Clara’s lips pressed together. For a brief moment, her restored magic stirred defensively, reacting to the sharp edge in his aura.

Then she turned and stepped out, closing the door behind her. Silence fell. Complete. Lucian inhaled slowly.

Then exhaled.

Again and again until he leaned back slightly, letting his hands rest against his knees, his posture deceptively relaxed.

But inside, he was forcing himself to remember.

To remember his past. Not the wars. Not the endless centuries of conquest and blood and power that had long since blurred together into one continuous memory of survival.

Those moments came easily to him, rising at the slightest pull, sharp and obedient, as if time itself had preserved them for his convenience.

No. Lucian pushed past them. He went deeper. Further back.

To a time when the world had still been smaller. When the weight of a crown had not yet settled permanently onto his shoulders.

When the name Lucian had belonged first to a brother, before it belonged to a sovereign.

Caleb. His brother’s face surfaced first, clear and unchanged by the centuries that had eroded everything else.

The same steady blue eyes. The same quiet strength that had never needed to prove itself. Caleb had never looked at Lucian with fear, even when the rest of the world had begun to.

He had always looked at him as if he saw the man beneath the power.

Lucian’s jaw tightened.

Why? He pushed the memory forward. Then a night came back in fragments.

Table, a table filled with wine and food, seated around was faces he remembered all too well, Caleb, his father, a visiting king and a princess.

Lucian reached for them but the memory collapsed. It didn’t blur, It simply stopped, like a door slamming shut inside his mind.

Lucian’s eyes opened sharply, irritation flashing across his expression before he forced them closed again.

He adjusted his breathing, slowing it deliberately, forcing his mind back into stillness. His fingers curled slowly against his knees.

Time did not erase memories like this. Age did not remove cause while leaving consequence intact.

If he remembered the act but not the reason, then the reason had been taken.

Or sealed. His thoughts sharpened instantly. If the truth behind Caleb’s death had been removed from him…

Then someone had wanted it forgotten. And if the memory had been altered…Then the accusation Isabella had thrown at him might not be built on misunderstanding alone.

Lucian’s eyes opened slowly. The shadows in the room had thickened without him noticing, drawn closer by the shift in his focus.

They gathered along the walls and corners, quiet and attentive, responding instinctively to the change in him.

He leaned forward slightly, his thoughts moving faster now, no longer tangled in rejection or wounded pride.

Because another question pressed in behind the first. If Caleb had died by his hand…

Why had he never returned?

Centuries had passed. There had been no disturbances. No whispers of a surviving prince.

No sightings, no rumors, no disturbances within the realms or among the ancient powers that would have sensed such a presence.

Nothing. And now he appears and Isabella…

That memory came back with painful clarity. The way she had run. Not hesitating. Not confused. Not resisting.

The moment she had touched Caleb, Lucian had reached through the bond instinctively, searching for signs of influence.

Compulsion always left traces. A dulling of independent thought. A softening of emotional resistance. A false calm that did not belong to the person experiencing it.

There had been none. No foreign magic nor manipulation.

Her fear had been real. Her panic had been real. And her decision…Had been entirely her own.

A sudden and violent sharp pain pierced through him as if something inside his skull had snapped under the pressure of his own will.

Lucian’s body went rigid. For a fraction of a second, his vision went completely white.

Then the sensation followed. Warm. Wet. A single drop fell from his nose and struck the back of his hand.

Lucian blinked slowly, his focus lowering to the dark red stain spreading across his skin.

Blood. Another drop followed. Then another. He did not move immediately.

Confusion flickered across his expression — not fear, not alarm, but the sharp, calculating stillness of a man confronted with something that did not make sense.

He did not bleed. Not like this. Not without injury. Not without cause.

Yet the pressure inside his head pulsed again, deep and heavy, as if his mind itself had been forced against something sealed too tightly for it to open.

Lucian lifted his hand slowly and wiped beneath his nose. When he pulled it back, his fingers were smeared crimson.

The shadows around the room stirred uneasily. He rose from the bed, moving toward the small mirror near the dresser.

The sight that met him made his eyes narrow. A thin line of blood traced down from one nostril, stark against his pale skin.

The door behind him opened. Clara stepped inside quickly, her restored magic reacting before her mind could fully process why.

Her gaze landed on him — and froze. “Lucian.”

The word left her in a sharp breath as she crossed the room immediately. “What happened?” Her eyes scanned him for wounds, for signs of attack, for any disturbance in the shadows that might explain it. Finding none only deepened the concern in her expression.

Without waiting for permission, she reached for the nearest sheet from the bed, tearing a clean section free as she moved toward him.

“Hold still,” she said, already lifting the fabric toward his face.

Lucian moved. It was a small shift, barely more than a turn of his head but it was enough to avoid the cloth entirely.

Clara paused mid-motion. “Lucian,” she said again, more firmly. “You’re bleeding.”

“I am aware.” His voice was calm, controlled, but there was an edge beneath it — not anger, not exactly.

Restraint. Clara frowned and stepped closer anyway, raising the sheet again.

This time, Lucian stood and Clara hand stopped.

Neither of them spoke until clara’s eyes narrowed slightly. “…What?”

Lucian’s gaze flicked briefly to the fabric in her hand. The scent had already reached him.

Honey. Jasmine.

And that soft, unmistakable trace of Isabella that had soaked into everything she had touched in this room. If that cloth came any closer to his face, he would inhale it.

And right now, with the bond stretched thin and his control already strained from forcing through sealed memories, the last thing he needed was her scent flooding his senses.

The hunger. The pull. The instinct to follow it. “No,” he said quietly.

Clara looked from the sheet to his face, understanding dawning slowly.

“…Oh.” She lowered the fabric immediately something like sympathy crossing her expression — not for the bleeding, but for the reason behind the refusal.

Lucian turned away from the mirror, wiping the blood himself with the back of his wrist.

The bleeding slowed almost immediately, the unnatural body he carried already correcting the damage.

But the pressure inside his head remained. Clara folded the sheet slowly, setting it aside.

“That wasn’t physical,” she said carefully, her voice shifting into the tone she used when speaking as a witch rather than a companion. “You pushed your mind too hard.”

Lucian did not answer. His eyes had darkened, his thoughts already moving.

“You were forcing a sealed memory,” Clara continued. “Something resisted you. That kind of backlash… it happens when the block isn’t natural.”

Now he looked at her. “Meaning?”

Clara held his gaze. “Meaning someone didn’t just erase your memory, Lucian.”

She hesitated. “They locked it and you forcing it open alone might do more harm than good.”

Lucian reached up once more, checking beneath his nose. The bleeding had stopped completely.

Good. That meant the damage had been resistance. Not weakness.

“So what do you suggest.” Lucain stated quietly, his voice colder now, more steadier.

Clara cleared her throat, “A ritual.”

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