Chapter 30
CAIN
The silence in the manor was not peaceful; it was a predator holding its breath.
I stood before the heavy oak doors of Ophelia’s chambers, my hand hovering inches from the iron handle.
The shadows that lived beneath my skin were restless today, coiling around my wrists like agitated vipers.
They sensed it before I did. They tasted the staleness in the air, the lack of that distinct, floral warmth that usually seeped through the wood grain whenever she was near.
I told myself I was simply early. That I was checking on her to ensure she was ready for the evening meal, not because the tether in my chest—that damnable, golden thread she had somehow woven into my dark soul—was pulling taut, vibrating with a frequency that set my teeth on edge.
"Ophelia?"
My voice was low, a rumble meant to warn rather than invite.
Silence.
No rustle of silk. No soft, defiant huff of breath she often gave when I intruded. No patter of that ridiculous creature’s paws.
I pushed the door open.
The room was pristine. Too pristine. The bed was made, the velvet duvet smoothed to an unnatural flatness. The fire in the hearth had burned down to cold, grey ash, suggesting it hadn’t been fed in hours. The wardrobe doors stood slightly ajar, a mockery of domesticity.
I stepped inside, and the world seemed to tilt on its axis.
The scent of her was fading. That was the first thing that hit me—a physical blow to the sternum. The notes of jasmine and rain that usually saturated this space were thinning, dissipating into the drafty air of the corridor.
"Ophelia."
I checked the bathing chamber. Empty. The stone was dry.
I checked the balcony. The doors were unlocked, swinging gently in the biting wind.
And then, the realisation hit me. Not a slow dawn, but a lightning strike.
Gone.
The thought failed to register at first. It bounced around the iron walls of my mind, finding no purchase. She couldn’t be gone. I had wards. I had guards. I was Cain Alistair, the monster of Aeternia, the shadow that swallowed realms. People did not simply vanish from my grasp.
Unless they really wanted to.
The thought turned the blood in my veins into acid. She ran.
The betrayal was immediate and absolute, a jagged knife twisting in my gut. After everything? After the moments where the fear in her eyes had been replaced by something softer? After she had let me touch her?
Rhana appeared to my side, her lip curled in a sneer that mirrored my own internal darkness. She sniffed the empty air, her golden eyes flashing with cynical validation.
"I told you she was flighty," Rhana’s voice was a cold, sharp hiss in my mind. "Aenites have no stomach for the dark. She ran back to her nest the moment you showed your teeth."
Then, the poison of the afternoon seeped in. The hallway confrontation. The scent of Rosette on my clothes.
She had looked at me with such raw, unadulterated disgust. “You reek of her cheap perfume.”
She hadn't run because of the Treaty. She hadn't run because of politics.
She ran because of me. She ran because I had dragged my mistress into this house and shoved the insult in her face. The realisation was a nauseating cocktail of guilt and fury.
"She ran," I whispered, the words tasting like bile.
“Good riddance,” Rhana snapped, pacing the room with agitated, jerky movements. "If she chose to leave, she deserves the cold."
The viscous shadows of my corrupted core erupted.
They didn't just spill from me; they exploded, shattering the windows of the bedroom outward in a shower of glittering dust. I didn't feel the glass. I didn't feel the cold. I felt only a red-hot, blinding inferno of rage.
I stormed out of the room, the door splintering off its hinges as my contamination lashed out, uncontrolled. The corridor blurred as I moved, my stride eating up the distance, every step cracking the stone floor beneath my boots.
She thought she could leave? She thought she could escape me because her pride was wounded?
I would hunt her to the ends of the earth. I would burn every forest, drain every ocean, and when I dragged her back, I would chain her to my side so thoroughly she would forget the meaning of the word door.
I reached the dining hall. The table was set for two. Crystal goblets, silver cutlery, the candlelight flickering innocently against the polished mahogany. It was a domestic scene that mocked the chaotic storm tearing me apart from the inside out.
A roar tore from my throat—a sound so raw and guttural it didn't sound Dyadic. It sounded like a beast dying.
I grabbed the edge of the heavy table, a slab of wood that took four males to move, and I flipped it.
The sound was cataclysmic. Crystal shattered, silver rang out like chimes of war, and the wood groaned and snapped as the table crashed into the far wall, taking some of the wallpaper down with it.
"Cain!"
Friedrik’s voice cut through the haze of red. I didn't stop. I grabbed a chair and smashed it against the stone pillar, the wood turning to splinters in my grip.
"She’s gone!" I bellowed, turning on him. My vision was swimming, the shadows in the room swirling into a vortex around me, darkening the lights, suffocating the air. "She left! She ran!"
Friedrik stood in the archway, his hands raised, his eyes wide with a fear he rarely showed. Behind him, Silas loomed, his face grim, his hand resting on the hilt of his blade as if he contemplated drawing it against me.
"Calm yourself!" Friedrik shouted over the roar of wind my magic was generating. "Think! Where would she go? How would she get past the perimeter?"
"I don't care how!" I snarled, pacing like a caged tiger, kicking through the debris of the dinner that would never be eaten. "She is mine! She belongs here! I will tear this cursed realm apart brick by brick until I find her!"
"You are destroying your own home!" Friedrik stepped forward, brave or stupid. "Look at you! You’re losing control. If she ran, acting like a rabid animal won’t bring her back!"
"I am a rabid animal!" I roared back, the shadows lashing out, knocking a bust of an ancestor off a pedestal. It shattered, the sound echoing the fracture in my sanity. "I wanted to give her everything. I almost gave her... me."
The vulnerability of that last word made me want to vomit. I hated her for making me feel it. I hated her for leaving. I wanted to strangle her; I wanted to fall to my knees and beg the empty air to bring her back to me.
Friedrik watched me, his stony brow furrowed. "Then go get her, you fool. You are the most powerful being in this realm. Why are you standing here tearing apart furniture instead of tearing apart the world?"
I froze. The rage stuttered, hitting a wall of absolute, chilling dread.
"She is my weakness," I whispered, the admission tasting like ash. "Just as it was foretold."
Friedrik scoffed, the sound like grinding stones. "Prophecies are riddles, Cain. Not instructions."
"It wasn't a riddle, Friedrik. It was a promise."
I walked to the window, staring out at the dead lands my lineage had created. "I was only a child when my mother died birthing my sister. Still a child when my father dragged me to her bedside, pointed at her cooling corpse, and told me that love was a parasite."
I gripped the sill with one hand, the stone cracking under my fingers, while my other hand blindly snatched the crystal decanter of brandy from the side table.
I didn't bother with a glass; I took a long, burning swig, letting the alcohol sear the back of my throat, hoping it would drown out the memory of my father's voice.
"He told me then, you ancient fool,” I rasped, slamming the bottle down.
"He told me he had seen it in the stars.
He said a Life Heir would come, and she wouldn't just kill me.
He said she would be the doom of the Alistair line.
That she would act as a mirror to my Void, amplifying the hunger until I consumed everything I touched. "
"Your father was a sadist," Friedrik rumbled, stepping closer. "He wanted you cold. He wanted you weaponised. Why trust the words of a male who hated the world?"
"Because he was right!" I roared, spinning on him. "Look at me! I have known her for a month, and already I am unravelling. I am losing control. The prophecy wasn't a warning, it was a diagnosis. And if I don't bring her back and prevent this from happening... she will be the end of us all."
Silas hadn't moved. He was staring at something in the distance, his head cocked to the side, his eyes unfocused. The bond. He was listening to his familiar.
I didn't care. I was already calculating and assessing. I was already deciding who was going to die to get her.
“Cain…” Silas’s voice was low, cutting under the noise.
"Get out," I hissed, my hands trembling with the need to destroy something else. "Get out before I kill you both."
“My Lord,” Silas said, stepping fully into the room, ignoring the swirling darkness that plucked at his clothes. "Stop."
"I said—"
"Rock found something."
The name of the familiar made me pause, but only for a heartbeat. "I don't care about your rat, Silas."
"He found Poppy."
The name froze the air in my lungs.
Poppy. That little fucking fox. The insufferable creature Ophelia coddled like a child. The creature she slept with, ate with, whispered secrets to when she thought I wasn't listening. Her familiar.
"In the eastern garden," Silas continued, his voice devoid of emotion, factual and cold. "Asleep. Hidden beneath the hydrangea bushes."
I stared at him, the rage stuttering, the momentum of my fury hitting a wall of confusion. "She... left the beast?"
"Wait here," Silas’ tone was a bit commanding for my taste, but I simply nodded.
He turned and vanished into the corridor.
The silence that rushed back into the room was heavy, suffocating. Friedrik looked at me, his chest heaving, his face looking more pale. He didn't speak. He knew better than to interrupt the processing of a predator.