Chapter 35
CAIN
The return to the Alistair estate was a blur of rain and exhausted silence.
We had ridden hard. I had left my own armour behind, dressed only in tunics and leathers—a fighter, not a knight—because speed had been the only metric that mattered.
Rhana paced alongside the horse, her obsidian armour slick with rain and the blood of the males foolish enough to stand between me and the eastern wing of Malathor’s hidden fortress.
I hadn’t killed him. The urge to end Malathor’s existence had been a blinding, white-hot compulsion. But Rhana, my tether to sanity, had shoved her thoughts into my mind, “Death is too quick. Death is a release. Make him a monument.”
So, I had broken him instead. I had dismantled his staff with the Death-Touch and the edge of my blade, playing with the ones who had starved her, before Silas arrived with the iron cage attached to the black carriage.
Malathor was currently rotting in the bowels of my carriage, dragged behind us like offal.
But Ophelia… Ophelia I carried on my saddle, not able to let her out of my sight nor arms.
When we finally breached the wards of my estate, the reception was not ceremonial. It was frantic.
Silas was there before the horse fully stopped, his usual stoicism shattered. And Friedrik… the gargoyle dropped from the roof with a thud that shook the stones.
I slid from the horse, Ophelia in my arms. She was conscious but barely, her eyes tracking the movement of the shadows.
"My Lady!" Silas breathed, stepping forward.
But it was the golden blur that broke her. Poppy, who had been sedated and recovered by Silas, launched herself from the aide’s shoulder.
Ophelia caught her familiar, burying her face in the gold fur. And then, the dam broke. She didn't scream; she just crumpled, sobbing into the fox’s coat.
Friedrik moved then. The massive stone creature wrapped his wings around her in a gesture so tender it looked absurd, shielding her from the rain. Even Silas, who feared my wrath above all else, reached out and squeezed her arm, his face twisted in relief.
They held her. They loved her.
I stood back, watching them. I was the monster who had failed to protect her, and for a moment, I let them offer the warmth I could not generate. Then, necessity took over.
"Enough," I growled, though the command lacked its usual bite. "She is freezing. She needs a warm bath."
The master bath was a cathedral of more marble and rising steam, usually a place of solitary, cold contemplation. Tonight, it smelled of iron, lavender, and the terrifying, metallic scent of my wife’s fear.
I sat Ophelia in the claw-foot tub, the water explicitly heated to a temperature I would usually find scalding, but which was necessary to chase the grave-chill from her bones. The water was milky with healing salts and crushed star-petals, turning the surface into a sheet of opaque pearl.
She was trembling. Not the subtle shiver of cold, but the deep, structural vibration of a building that had been shelled and was waiting to collapse.
I knelt at the edge of the tub behind her, my bare feet touching the damp stone. I had discarded my leathers, my tunic rolled to the elbows, revealing the scars that lined my forearms. I dipped the heavy sea-sponge into the water, the sound loud in the suffocating silence.
"Cain," she whispered, her voice a fractured rasp that grated against my soul.
She didn't look at me. She stared at the water, her arms wrapped protectively around her knees.
"If this is another game... if this is the part where you lull me into safety just to hurt me...
please don't. I don't have anything left for you to break. "
The words were a blade sliding between my ribs. The accusation was fair—I was a monster, after all—but hearing it now, after I had torn the city apart to find her, after I had washed Malathor’s guards' blood from my hands only an hour ago... it burned.
I paused, the water dripping from the sponge back into the tub.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
"There is no game, Ophelia," I said, my voice low, stripped of its usual mockery. I sounded tired. I sounded like a male who had stared into the abyss and found it empty without her. "You are safe. The walls are warded. The shadows are mine. Malathor is... handled."
Handled. A polite word for the massacre I had left behind.
She didn't relax. She flinched as I reached out, and the movement sent a spike of murderous rage through me—not at her, but at the ghosts of the hands that had taught her to fear touch.
I moved slowly, telegraphing my intent as one does with a wounded animal. I pressed the warm sponge to her shoulder, scrubbing gently at a smudge of dirt that marred her pale skin. Beneath the dirt, a multitude of bruises bloomed—violent violet marks shaped like fingers all over her body.
My jaw clenched until my teeth ached. I wanted to resurrect Malathor’s army just to kill them again. I wanted to burn the world down until there was nothing left but ash and silence, just to ensure nothing could ever touch her again.
"Why are you doing this?" she asked, her voice small. She finally looked at me, her green eyes wide, haunted, and rimmed with red. "Where is the staff? Where is everyone?”
I continued to wash her arm, watching the water chase the dirt away, reclaiming the alabaster skin beneath. I could have summoned them. I could have had a legion of handmaidens in here within seconds. I knew she was wondering why I am the one doing this. She had to.
"They are gone," I lied, the falsehood sliding smoothly off my tongue. "The hour is late. I dismissed the staff.”
Liar, my mind hissed. You dismissed them because you are a greedy, possessive creature. You dismissed them because you couldn't bear the thought of anyone else seeing her like this. You wanted to be the one to wash away the filth of their touch. You wanted to be the one to reclaim her.
I moved to her back, my hand brushing against the nape of her neck—the spot I had grabbed so possessively in the Consortium hall only weeks ago. The memory felt like a lifetime ago.
"Lean back," I commanded softly.
She hesitated, then slowly, agonisingly, she surrendered. She leaned back until the back of her head rested against my chest. The wet silk of her hair soaked instantly into my shirt, cooling against my skin.
The weight of her was a revelation. It was a trust she shouldn't have given me, and it terrified me more than any blade or power.
I abandoned the sponge. I used my hands to cup the water, pouring it over her hair, rinsing away the dust and the smell of that room. My fingers, usually instruments of death and cold, moved with a devastating gentleness through the fiery strands.
"You are thinking too loudly," I murmured, feeling the tension radiating from her scalp.
"I feel broken, Cain," she admitted, a tear slipping from her eye to mix with the bathwater. "He... they made me feel small. Useless."
My hands stilled in her hair. I leaned forward, my breath stirring the wet strands near her ear.
"Listen to me," I rasped, the intensity of my voice causing the water to ripple. "You are many things, Ophelia. You are annoying. You are stubborn. You are infuriatingly defiant. But you are not broken."
I ran a thumb over her cheekbone, wiping away a fresh tear.
"I saw the room," I told her, the darkness in my voice bleeding through. "I saw what they did. A lesser creature would have shattered. A lesser creature would have given them everything they wanted. You endured. You held the line."
I resumed washing her hair, the rhythm steady and calm, despite the tempest inside me.
"Malathor was a fool," I continued, my voice dropping to a dark, contemplative rumble. "He thought he could break you by scoring the surface. He didn't understand that you are forged in fire, little ruin. You survived your mother. You survived me. Do you think a parasite like him could undo you?"
She stiffened against me, twisting slightly to look up at my face. Her eyes were pools of tragedy.
"Stop calling me that," she whispered, her voice cracking. "Stop calling me 'ruin.' I am not forged in anything, Cain. I am just... ruined. I have been ruined my entire life by creatures like you."
The sadness in her voice stopped my heart. I looked down at her, seeing the wreckage of the girl who just wanted to be loved, and I realised my mistake.
"You misunderstood,” I said, my voice rough, deeper than the ocean floor. I brushed a wet strand of hair from her forehead. "I do not call you that because you are broken. I call you that because of what you do to me."
Her breath hitched.
"You are my ruin, Ophelia," I confessed, the words terrifyingly honest. "You are the thing that unmade me. Before you, I was absolute. Now? I am just a male terrified that the water is too hot for his wife’s skin."
She stared at me, stunned into silence. She let out a shaky breath, a sound that was half-sob, half-laugh. "You make me sound like a weapon."
"You are," I whispered, pressing a kiss to the wet crown of her head before I could stop myself. It was quick, a theft of intimacy I hadn't earned. "You are the most dangerous thing in this house."
She turned her head back, her cheek pressing against the damp fabric of my shirt over my heart. "I shouldn't have left the castle. I was stupid."
"No," I corrected sharply. "I was arrogant."
The admission tasted like ash. I looked down at her, at the bruises I had failed to prevent.
"I allowed the pests to enter my garden," I muttered, the apology clumsy and foreign in my mouth. "I grew complacent in my power. I assumed my name was shield enough. I was wrong." I tightened my hand slightly in her hair, a reflex of possession. "It will not happen again."
She didn't speak for a long time. She simply sat there, leaning against the monster, letting me wash the blood and the memory of another male’s cruelty from her skin.
For the first time in my existence, the Void within me was silent. It wasn't screaming for pain. It wasn't demanding to be fed. It was simply... watching.