Chapter 7 Secrets of the Nunnery （Part II）
SECRETS OF THE NUNNERY (PART II)
The door shuts behind her and I stand there long after she’s gone, staring at the dying fire, her words echoing in my mind.
Silence rushes in, desperate to drown the noisy insanity of what needs to be done. It’s the kind of silence that feels too thick, too deliberate, like the house itself is holding its breath in sheer terror.
Her scent clings to the walls, to my skin, to the air I breathe. I could track her blindfolded now, follow her heartbeat through stone and shadow.
And yet, for the first time in centuries, I don’t trust myself to.
She’s alive. Real. Warm. In my house.
And already, she’s slipping through my fingers.
Of course, that triggers the deep and savage urge to bind her to me in every imaginable and many deeply unimaginable ways.
But if I’ve learned anything in my three millennia of existence and more importantly in the two and a half centuries I’ve spent wandering the earth searching for my love, it’s that, patience isn’t a virtue, but it is occasionally a necessity.
So I curb the feral need to hunt her down, stop long enough to listen for her heartbeat, settle my own to match it.
Then I pace the length of the study, glass crunching underfoot from the one I shattered before I left in search of her. The fire spits a single coal that dies before it hits the rug. Outside, the bells toll again. Dawn inching closer.
The city waking while I unravel.
While I peel back and bare to light hard but essential questions.
Questions that should shame a lovesick fool…if he wasn’t over three thousand years old and hadn’t endured every treachery and betrayal.
She said she did it to save me. That every scar carved into her flesh was the price of keeping me alive.
The thought sinks its fangs deep, stirs my blood like nothing else.
But…I’ve seen covens of witches use men as pawns, lovers as sacrifices.
I’ve also seen demons wear the faces of the living and the dead.
To my very decayed marrow, I yearn to believe her. But what if the woman sleeping a few rooms away isn’t Elara at all, but something wearing her shape…something the coven sent to finish what they started?
I press my palms against the desk, head bowed. The grain of the wood cracks under my grip.
No. I’d know.
I’d feel it.
And yet...
The jealousy festers beneath my ribs, growing vines through my chest.
Jealousy not of another man—there were no others, not for her or I would’ve smelled them, routed them out and sentenced then to very gruesome deaths.
No, this jealous is of time itself. Of whatever touched her during those lost centuries when I couldn’t.
I imagine her trapped beneath that nunnery, surrounded by whispers and wards, her body preserved, her magic drained. Who watched over her? Who tended her while she slept? Did they touch her? Did they pray over her skin, trace those sigils glowing along her spine?
The thought makes my vision blur red.
I shouldn’t care.
I should be beyond such mortal sicknesses as jealousy. But she was mine before the world took her. And some part of me—the part the centuries couldn’t carve out—still believes she is.
I turn toward the door. I should leave her to rest. Give her time. That’s what a sane man would do.
But I am not a sane man.
My hand is already on the doorknob of her chamber when Jean’s voice echoes softly from the corridor. “Sire?”
I stop. “What?”
“Madame isn’t in her room if she’s the one you’re seeking?”
My jaw clenches tight. “Where is she then?”
“She retired to the solarium. She requested privacy.”
Privacy.
From me.
The word slides through me like a knife.
I shouldn’t follow.
I shouldn’t need to.
And yet I’m already moving.
The halls are dim, lit by the ghost of dawn seeping through stained glass.
The servants have learned not to meet my gaze; they bow, step aside, vanish into doorways. I cross the marble floors in silence, the scent of lilies growing stronger with each turn.
When I reach the solarium, the door is ajar.
She stands near the arched window, bathed in the pale light filtering through the ivy. My shirt slips from one shoulder, baring the faint lines of the sigils beneath her skin. She’s humming something low, familiar—the melody she used to play on the piano, centuries ago.
My throat closes.
For a moment, all I can do is watch her. She looks like a painting come alive: fragile, impossibly beautiful, unholy in her allure.
The sight of her should soothe me. Instead, it feeds the storm.
Because I realize, with something close to horror, that she belongs here too easily.
In my house.
In my world.
Like she never left.
She turns slightly, sensing me. “You don’t knock anymore?”
“Not when I own the door,” I murmur.
Her mouth curves. “You never owned me, Lucien.”
“Because you handed yourself into my possession even before you knew my name.” As I handed myself into yours.
The words come out quiet, dangerous. I step closer, the floor creaking beneath my boots. She doesn’t retreat, but the air between us changes, thickens with awareness and with memory.
“Tell me something,” I say. “When you slept all those years, how often did you dream me?”
Her brow furrows. “Why?”
“Because I dreamed of you,” I say softly. “Every night. Every decade. Every century. I dreamed of you. Of finding you. Of killing you. Of fucking you. Sometimes all three at once.”
She swallows, eyes shining. “Lucien…”
“Was it the same for you?”
She sways on her feet. “Yes. But the killing part was not so much a dream as a nightmare because I feared it would be another cruel compulsion I couldn’t control.”
The confession hits like lightning. I close the distance between us, my hand sliding along her jaw, forcing her to meet my eyes. “Then tell me why you wish to linger, to request for privacy when we have a war to wage.”
Her pulse jumps under my thumb.
“Because I can still feel them,” she whispers. “The coven. The ones who bound me. Their magic may be faded but it’s still potent. And the longer I’m near you, the harder they pull at me.”
“But you said they’re at their weakest,” I counter, my jaw tightening “Because I destroyed two of the seven that kept your prison sealed.”
Her eyes glint with something between gratitude and fear. “Yes. Their deaths weakened the ward, just enough for me to slip through. But it’s only a matter of time before they come for me.”
“Then let them come,” I say, voice low and certain. “Distance isn’t what you need.” I tilt her chin up, force her to meet my gaze. “It’s the opposite. You stay close. To me. My power will smother theirs.”
She shudders, shaking her head. “You don’t understand. It hurts. When I’m near you it feels like they’re clawing inside my chest. They fear you, Lucien. They always have, which makes them even more dangerous.”
“Good. Then we’ll show them just how formidable we can be. I’ve learned a few tricks in two and a half centuries,” I growl.
Her lips part, as if she’s about to argue, then she hesitates. Fear flickers in her eyes before she exhales, voice barely audible. “There’s an incantation. It lessens their hold. Not for long, but it gives me reprieve.”
I remember it then, the way her power used to bloom after she drank from me. The way her spells burned hotter, brighter, alive with my blood thrumming through her veins. My voice drops, dark silk. “You know what else strengthens you, Elara.”
Her gaze catches mine, pupils dilating, color washing high in her cheeks. “Lucien…”
“Don’t deny it. My blood always made your magic sing.” I lean in, close enough that our breaths mingle. “Especially when you took it from my throat. When you drank while you writhed on my cock.”
A tremor passes through her, desire warring with dread. Heat coils between us, the air thick enough to taste.
“Need I also remind you that I haven’t fulfilled my promise,” I murmur against her mouth, “to mark you as mine. To make sure no magic, no god, no witch could ever take you again?”
She looks up at me, torn open by fear and want, and for a heartbeat she’s the same woman who once swore she’d burn the world for us.
“Fuck privacy and fuck fighting this alone. Tell me who to destroy, Elara,” I whisper. “It’s the only way.”
Her eyes flicker with fear, maybe sorrow. “You can’t kill the past, what’s already designed and foretold, Lucien. We tried once remember?”
I lean in, my voice a dark whisper. “Then watch me try and fucking succeed this time.”
For a moment, we stand there, two ruins masquerading as lovers, trapped in the same breath.
Then, quietly, she says, “You haven’t changed.”
“Neither have you. I’m not entirely sure whether to be heartbroken or maddened that you still choose to fight this alone rather than by my side.
” I can’t help smoothing my fingers over her soft skin.
“But you also know me well enough to know that I will triumph over this. Even if, for the sake of our eternity, I need to triumph over you.”
The words sound like a promise and a threat.
Tears fill her eyes but she keeps them locked on me. “My prideful, beautiful vampire.”
I catch the traces of resignation in her voice and I lower my hand, step back before I can do something I’ll regret. The hunger clawing at me isn’t just bloodlust anymore; it’s the ache of over two centuries’ worth of unsaid things, of wanting and hating in the same heartbeat.
She looks away, gathering the shirt tighter around her. “I didn’t come back to fight with you. Or maybe I should say, just to fight with you.”
“Then why else did you come back?”
She hesitates. “To warn you.”
“Of what?”
Her gaze drifts to the ivy-shadowed window, to the bar of sunlight reaching through the curtains. “Escaping Saint Obscura wasn’t the end of my tribulations, Lucien.”
I frown. “What does that mean?”
“When the seal weakened and the doorway opened, something else crossed through with me when I fled.”
The words slither through me like coldest mercury. “Something else?”
She doesn’t answer.