Chapter 97: Nothing

Chapter 97

Lucian’s world was a blur of crimson and cold stone. Every painful thud in his head was a drum of agony against his skull, but the pain was nothing compared to the sudden, icy opening in his bond with Isabella.

She was rejecting him, all her hateful emotions poured into him ten folds. He slumped forward, his forehead pressing against the freezing floor.

Clara was unmoving beside him. A half-sob and half-snarl sound, escaped his blood-stained lips.

“No…” he gasped, his fingers clawing at the stone until his nails cracked. The betrayal tasted like copper and ash.

She was choosing the shadow of a man while the King who had bled out his divinity for her laid in the dust of his own mansion in pain.

But beneath the humiliation and the soul-shredding pain, a different power began to stir.

He wasn’t going to let it end like this. A Sovereign’s life was measured in centuries of patience, but the agony currently radiating through the mate-bond was a violent flame that threatened to extinguish his very core.

Every hateful thought Isabella projected—every ounce of her manipulated disgust—hit him more than anything else, damaging any silver blade wound or ancient battle he had fought.

Beside him, the heavy silence of the room was broken by a sharp, ragged exhale. Clara’s body jolted, her lungs pulling in the stagnant air of the East Wing as she snapped back into consciousness.

Her eyes flew open, darting around the darkened room until they landed on the wreckage of the ritual.

“Lucian?” she croaked as he eyes focused. She saw him, still laying sideways on the floor. Blood leaked not just from his nose, but from the corners of his eyes, staining his pale skin like dark tears.

He looked less like a god and more like a man who had been dragged through the gears of a machine.

Clara scrambled toward him on her hands and knees, her fingers trembling as she reached for his shoulder. “What… what happened? The ritual was too strong, did it—”

“Bella…”

The name was a rasp that barely carried across the stone. Lucian didn’t look at Clara. His gaze was fixed on nothing, his fingers still clawing uselessly at the floor.

“She’s… cutting me out,” Lucian wheezed as a fresh wave of rejection slammed into him. “I can feel her… pushing. Someone is… whispering in her ear.”

“Lucian, you’re bleeding out, your essence is unstable!” Clara stated, trying to steady his shaking frame.

“If the bond breaks while you’re in this state, the backlash will be disastrous. You have to close the connection!”

“No.” Lucian’s hand snapped out, gripping Clara’s wrist with a strength that belied his shattered state.

His eyes, once vibrant and commanding, were now a terrifying abyss of pitch-black void. “I will not… let her go into that darkness alone. If she wants to throw me away, she will have to look me in the eye to do it.”

He didn’t know why she was doing this. He didn’t know what lies Caleb had fed her or what ghosts that had been conjured.

All he knew was the taste of her soul—sour with grief and clouded by a fog that wasn’t hers.

“Clara,” Lucian gasped, blood bubbling at the corner of his mouth again.

“Shush,” Clara hissed, her voice cutting through his frantic rasp with the authority of a high powered witch.

She didn’t pull away from his bloodied grip as she slammed her free palm onto the center of his chest, right over his dead heart. “Be silent, Lucian. If you speak, you’ll lose what little air is left in your lungs.”

She closed her eyes, her murmurs turning into a low-level chant in a tongue that sounded like rushing water.

The air around them began to stir with green and earthy, smell of rain-soaked moss and ancient roots.

“I cannot stop the rejection,” Clara whispered, her brow furrowing as she pulled the agony out of him.

“But I can give you a moment of clarity. I am grounding you, Lucain. Giving your pain back to the earth so you don’t burn from the inside out.”

Lucian felt a sudden, cooling sensation wash through his veins, chasing away the molten lead.

The white-hot scream of the bond didn’t vanish, but it became a dull, manageable throb. Same with the pain in his skull.

Outside the mansion, the heavy oak trees in the garden shuddered, their leaves turning brown and curling in seconds as they absorbed the toxic grief Clara was shunting into them.

Lucian’s head fell back against the stone, his breathing finally evening out. The abyssal black in his eyes settled, returning it’s sharp, lethal crimson.

“Better?” Clara asked, her own face turning a shade paler as she took on the spiritual weight of his stabilization.

“Enough,” Lucian rasped, pushing himself up. He felt a sting of a needle on his neck—a mirrored sensation of what Isabella was feeling.

Lucian remained frozen for a moment, his hand flying to his throat where the sting pricked at his flesh.

The sensation was a sickening reminder that while Isabella was trying to push him into the abyss, she was simultaneously in pain too.

With a grunt of exertion, he forced his fractured body into a seated position, then slowly to his feet.

His legs felt like glass ready to shatter under the weight of his own regal frame, but he stood.

He closed his eyes, tilting his head back to draw in a deep, lung-expanding breath. He wasn’t seeking oxygen; he was seeking her.

He reached out with every sharpened sense he possessed, casting his consciousness into the wind, trying to catch the faintest trace of her scent—that intoxicating mix of jasmine.

He expanded his reach, filtering through the smells of the decaying garden, the metallic tang of his own blood, and the ancient dust of the mansion.

Nothing. That potent smell of her that had invaded us senses was gone. He pushed further, diving into the mate-bond, looking for the warmth of her presence in this world.

But as he searched, it felt as if she had been wiped from the tapestry of the living. There was no trail, no lingering heat, no spiritual footprint.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep