Chapter 18 #2
“Chaos! Disorder! The Life-Wielder is clearly suffering a lapse in control! Your terrorising Grace, I suggest a private space—now!”
Cain’s face was frozen in a mask of cold fury and shock.
He had lost control of his trophy in public.
He shoved me away from my mother, his hand clamping my elbow with punishing force, dragging me toward a secluded archway leading to the private wings.
Silas, equally firm, dragged my mother toward the nearest exit.
We were shoved into a cold, marble hallway, the heavy velvet drapes muffling the sound of the banquet but not the internal chaos. Cain left me immediately, turning his back, his hands planted against the wall, his posture screaming furious control.
I looked at my mother. She was gasping, leaning against the cold stone, her fear of Cain and her shame overwhelming her.
“You pathetic fool!” she hissed, tears of pure rage filling her eyes. “You will cost us everything! I sacrificed everything for you to marry power, and you destroy it with your petty tantrums!”
“You sacrificed nothing for me!” I roared, the built-up pain of a lifetime finally tearing free. “You gave birth to me and saw only a ransom! You never loved me! You never protected me! You taught me that shame was my only birthright and that my only value was in my price tag!”
I took a sharp step toward her, the dark liquor fuelling my courage.
“I have spent my entire life trying to be quiet enough, small enough, acceptable enough for your pathetic demands!
I have apologised for existing for twenty-nine years!
It was never my fault, what you endured with my father. And I am done apologising for it!"
My mother flinched, not from my voice, but from the raw, unfiltered blast of my pain.
“Look at me, Mother!” I whispered, the venom lethal.
“I am now Lady Alistair. I am the property of the Death Heir. And you—you are nothing. You have no more claims on me, no more control over my core, and no more access to my life. I am a slave to a monster, but I am finally free of you! Get out of my sight!”
My mother stared, her face twisted in a silent, annihilated fury. For the first time, she saw a power she couldn't dismiss—the power of someone who had nothing left to lose. She staggered away, collapsing into Silas’s waiting hands as he guided her toward the main exit.
I watched her go, my chest heaving, the venom draining away. I collapsed against the cold, marble wall, sinking to the ground. The dark liquor, the adrenaline, the finality of the words—it all hit me.
I started to cry. But these were not tears of pain or shame. They were raw, desperate, magnificent tears of relief, and I could feel the cold, calculating gaze in Cain's eyes, analysing my mental breakdown.
He moved then. He didn't offer a hand to help me stand. Instead, he crouched before me, his expensive trousers settling onto the marble floor without a second thought, bringing his face level with mine.
"You look like a ruin," he sneered, his voice low and vibrating with disdain. "Weeping on the floor like a common child."
His hand shot out, gripping my chin with bruising force, jerking my face up to his.
It was a punishment, a demand for submission.
But then, he shifted. He unclasped his heavy, black velvet cape—the symbol of his rank and isolation—and threw it over my shaking form, burying me in his scent of cold air and night.
He didn't pull away. He used the rough pad of his thumb to wipe the tears from my cheeks, pressing hard enough to leave a mark, scrubbing away the evidence of my weakness with a violence that felt confusingly like care.
"Hide your face, Ophelia," he commanded, his voice dropping to a rough whisper against my wet skin. "Do not give them the satisfaction of your collapse. If you must break, you do it behind my walls, where only I can taste the salt and consume your pain.”
I huddled under his heavy cape, trembling, shielded from the world by the very monster who held me captive.
The ground suddenly fell away.
Without a word, Cain swept me up into his arms, lifting me as effortlessly as if I were made of hollow bones and air. I gasped, instinctively wrapping my arms around his neck to anchor myself against the hard, unyielding wall of his unfairly attractive chest.
He didn't walk; he stalked through the corridors, up the stairs, the heavy thud of his boots echoing like a war drum.
He held me high and tight against him, shielding me from the prying eyes of the staff, treating me less like a wife and more like a wounded, volatile creature he had retrieved from a trap.
"You reek of liquor,” he growled, not looking down, his jaw set in a line of granite. "You are drunk, Little Aenite. Sloppy."
"I am not drunk and you made me drink in the first place,” I almost slurred, the lie tasting like ash on my tongue. "I am... preserving my sanity, I did fight the dragon. And won.”
He kicked open the doors to my chamber and crossed the room in three long strides.
He didn't drop me; he lowered me onto the mattress, but the movement was sharp, punctuated by frustration. As soon as my back hit the silk, a flash of defiant heat cut through my exhaustion.
"Don't handle me like a sack of potatoes again!” I snapped, lashing out.
My hand flew up, aiming for his chest—a weak, clumsy slap born of humiliation.
He caught my wrist in mid-air.
His grip was instantaneous and iron-clad. He didn't squeeze, but he held me suspended there, his body still bent over mine, trapping me between the mattress and his looming darkness. His stormy eyes locked onto mine, burning with a dangerous, lethal focus.
The air between us crackled, electric and suffocating. I felt the heat of his hand seeping into my skin, branding me.
My breath hitched, a sharp intake of air that sounded too loud in the silent room. I stared at him, my heart hammering against my ribs, waiting for the violence, waiting for the monster.
But he just watched me, his thumb brushing once over my pulse point—a caress that was more terrifying than a blow.
I yanked my hand back as if he had burned me, clutching it to my chest.
Cain straightened slowly, his gaze lingering on me for one second longer—a look of dark, satisfied hunger.
He turned to leave, his heavy boots silent on the silk rug, leaving me alone with the scent of night and the echo of my own heartbeat.
In that silence, I knew I was finally free of my mother’s poison.
But looking into the shadows where Cain had stood, I realised the greatest tragedy wasn't that I was bound to the darkness. It was that I found the darkness beautiful.