Chapter 6 Fragments Of Truth #2
The collective cringe that passes through the room would be amusing under different circumstances.
Mortimer's dragon fire flares visible around his clenched fists before he wrestles it back under control.
Zeke's frost spreads another inch across his fingers, the temperature around him dropping noticeably.
Damien's crimson eyes narrow with suspicion that mirrors my own internal resistance.
And Cassius—
His shadow tendrils have gone absolutely still.
Not the stillness of relaxation, but the stillness of a predator who has just identified a threat and is calculating exactly how to destroy it.
The darkness around him seems to deepen, becoming something that drinks light rather than merely blocking it.
His silver gaze locks onto Prince Yoshiro with intensity that would make lesser beings flee.
"Why?" Zeke's voice carries the particular edge of someone who has learned never to trust gifts that arrive without obvious price. "Why help us?"
Mortimer echoes the question in the same breath, their words overlapping in a harmony of suspicion: "Why would you do that?"
Prince Yoshiro's response is to giggle—actually giggle, like a child finding adults inexplicably dense—and skip behind Professor Eternalis with the casual confidence of someone entirely unconcerned by the hostile magic filling the room.
Skip.
He skipped.
Again.
What the actual fuck is wrong with this person?
Professor Eternalis doesn't acknowledge his movement, continuing her explanation as if having a mercurial prince using her as a shield is entirely normal behavior.
"Academy wise, you are her teammates," she says, her tone suggesting this should be obvious. "In order to conduct the final year in the academy, you would need to be together. Leaving one behind wouldn't be possible for Year Four rules, except for the only option that's accepted."
The sentence hangs in the air, incomplete and ominous.
We wait.
The chamber's bioluminescence pulses in rhythm with Gwenievere's monitored heartbeat, soft blue-white light washing across our frozen forms in waves that feel almost mocking.
The magical energy threaded through the walls intensifies slightly, responding to the collective tension that saturates the room like blood in water.
It's Zeke who finally whispers what we're all thinking.
"Death."
The word falls into the silence with the weight of gravestones.
The only exception is death.
If Prince Yoshiro hadn't intervened, we would have been left behind—trapped in whatever liminal space the chalice's power created, separated from Gwenievere permanently.
Dead, for all practical purposes, if not in the technical sense.
For a moment, no one speaks.
The reality of how close we came to losing everything settles across the room like ash from a distant fire—suffocating, inescapable, carrying the particular taste of mortality that makes immortal beings uncomfortable.
Professor Eternalis allows the silence to stretch before continuing her explanation.
"As for the soul pulls," she says, "that was a triggered reaction from Prince Yoshiro."
"I knew it," I huff, vindicated despite the circumstances. The bastard had something to do with all of this—I felt it in my bones from the moment I laid eyes on his impossible features.
Damien points an accusatory finger toward where Prince Yoshiro now peers around Professor Eternalis's shoulder with obvious amusement, those shifting eyes glittering with barely contained mirth.
"What the fuck was that?" Damien demands. "And what exactly are you?"
The prince shrugs.
"No."
The single syllable hangs in the air, impossibly casual.
No?
That's it?
Just... no?
We all stare at him, absolutely baffled by the audacity of simply refusing to answer legitimate questions about matters that nearly killed us.
Cassius's shadow tendrils surge forward before he can stop them, dark appendages reaching toward Prince Yoshiro with clear aggressive intent. They strain against some invisible barrier—perhaps the professor's protection, perhaps the prince's own defenses—but the message is clear enough.
Explain yourself or face consequences.
The prince just waves at the shadows like they're curious pets rather than manifestations of void-touched death magic.
Professor Eternalis ignores the display, her voice cutting through the tension with scholarly precision.
"The soul retrieval technique that affected you is actually a bonded skill set," she explains. "Due to the circumstance, it had to be triggered by the blast of magic energy the chalice gave out, triggering it to not only be used on Gwenievere herself, but pulled you all out of your bodies as well."
She pauses, her gaze moving to where Gwenievere floats in her crystalline chamber.
"Her counterpart had to be the one to draw you back."
Counterpart.
The word sends ice down my spine despite the vampire blood keeping my temperature steady.
"The second instance occurred more out of trigger than accidentally," she continues. "Though with how low her blood levels were, it could be why she was so out of it."
My mind races through the implications.
Gwenievere's counterpart—Gabriel, presumably, the twin brother who has shared her consciousness for so long—was responsible for pulling our souls back from whatever abyss the chalice's power sent them to.
The connection between them, the bond of shared existence, somehow extended to include us through our mate bonds with Gwenievere herself.
We were saved by the strength of our connection to her.
Even unconscious, even drained, even separated from her brother for the first time in years—she reached for us.
And something reached back.
Mortimer speaks, his scholarly voice carrying undertones of carefully controlled alarm.
"You're not actually suggesting that Prince Yoshiro is a bond mate or potential partner of Gwenievere, are you?"
The question articulates what we're all dreading.
His dissatisfaction is audible—dragon fire flickering around his words like heat lightning, scales threatening to emerge along his forearms before he wrestles them back beneath human skin.
The room temperature rises several degrees in response to his emotional state, competing with the frost still spreading from Zeke's position.
We could all agree with his horror at the implication.
Another bond mate.
Another man tied to the woman we love, claiming pieces of her heart that we've fought and bled and died to earn.
And not just any man—this smirking, unreadable, impossible stranger who seems to find our suffering entertaining.
Professor Eternalis says nothing.
Her silence is more damning than any confirmation could be.
We all groan—a collective expression of frustration and disbelief that transcends species, magic, and the various complicated histories that define our group.
"Like six men weren't enough," I huff, throwing my hands up in exasperation, "which, by the way—" I pause to point directly at Damien, "—we all still haven't forgotten you're a fucking traitor."
Damien scowls back at me, but doesn't defend himself.
Good.
He knows better than to pretend his choices didn't hurt.
The scars covering his body tell their own story—one we haven't fully heard yet, one that might explain or excuse or complicate everything we thought we understood about his betrayals.
But that's a conversation for another time, when Gwenievere is awake and capable of participating in decisions that affect her heart.
For now, the accusation stands.
Zeke speaks up, his frost-touched voice carrying genuine curiosity beneath the wariness.
"Why is he destined to be her mate? The only reasoning for that is arranged marriages, which only happen between the fae pretty much."
He's not wrong.
Mate bonds—true mate bonds, the kind that connect souls rather than simply bodies—are sacred things. They don't manifest through political convenience or strategic advantage. They appear because the universe itself recognizes a connection that transcends mortal understanding.
Unless someone has manipulated the process.
Unless there are rules at play that we don't understand.
Unless the fae—with their ancient magics and incomprehensible customs—have found ways to engineer connections that should be spontaneous.
I'm not the only one who catches the way Prince Yoshiro smiles at Zeke's question.
The expression sends goosebumps racing across my skin despite the vampire blood that should make me immune to such involuntary reactions. There's something predatory in that smile—something that suggests he knows exactly what we're afraid of and finds our fear delightful.
I want to claw his eyes out.
Slowly.
While he screams.
The violent fantasy provides brief satisfaction before reality reasserts itself.
Cassius rises then, his movement drawing every eye in the room.
The Duskwalker has always commanded attention—his presence carries the particular weight of someone born to darkness, someone who has learned to make shadow his domain rather than his prison.
But there's something different in his bearing now.
Something that suggests the events of the past hours have forged him into something sharper, something more defined.
Second-in-command, I realize.
That's what he's become.
The realization doesn't sting the way it might have in Year One, when my ego demanded primacy in all things, when I believed my blood right and my power alone entitled me to stand at Gwenievere's side.
I've grown since then.
We've all grown.
Cassius has taken the mantle of leadership when Gwenievere cannot—not through force or manipulation, but through simple competence. He makes decisions that serve the group. He thinks beyond his own desires. He protects rather than possesses.
He's giving king vibes, I admit privately, while I feel more like a knight who would never leave her kneeling side.
And oddly enough, as of now, that's enough.