3. The Chamber Of Obsidian
Chapter three
The Chamber Of Obsidian
Scarlett
Scarlett woke to the scent of smoke and leather—and the unsettling silence of elsewhere. No birdsong. No echoing court bells. No Crimson banners fluttering outside her balcony. Just velvet dark, stitched with cold stone and a stillness that felt buried.
She sat up, head aching, wrists free, but felt marked from whatever magic Ace had used to bring her here.
Remnants of ash still smeared across her chest. She could still feel her bond with Maddox and Arley there, unbroken.
Their promises made in blood scrawled across her flesh in sigils meant to last forever.
Yet, it felt so faint and distant, trying to fight its way through.
The air was perfumed with clove, old magic, and something beneath it all—iron and rot.
The room was carved from old mountain stone, but it glowed from silver like a forgotten temple.
Above her head, the ceiling glimmered like a night sky carved by hands that had forgotten warmth.
She lay in the middle of a massive bed, silk-draped, carved in Spade obsidian.
Every corner of the chamber breathed intimacy, but also ruin.
The chamber’s single door creaked open. Ace stepped through the doorway, leaning against the threshold with his arms crossed over his chest. His black shirt was undone at the collar, and the sleeves were rolled up to his elbows.
This was the first time she had ever seen him out of his court attire, and he looked strikingly powerful.
Shadows seemed to carve out his physique, and intricate ink designs wound up his forearms, resembling black smoke and chains that crawled over his muscles like living shackles.
Each line seemed to whisper of untamed power.
A glimpse beneath his loosened shirt revealed something darker: smoke and thorns coiled in a brutal battle scene across his chest, etched into his skin like a memory made flesh.
Tattoos were forbidden in the Heartlands. She had only ever heard stories of them whispered in rebellion or glimpsed markings during her travels to other quadrants—never this close, never inked into flesh like sin made visible.
Seeing him like this, so undone, fatigue dragging at his features, the moonlight betrayed him—made him look soft. Young. Almost safe, but fierce at the same time.
Scarlett didn’t flinch. “Where the fuck did you bring me?”
He didn’t answer. Just watched her—like he wasn’t sure whether to kiss her or throw her to the wolves.
“This palace,” she said, rising from the silken bed, her bare feet cold against the floor, “feels like it hasn’t seen sunlight since the Blood Wars.”
Ace’s grin was sharp. “It hasn’t.”
His smile turned bitter. “And it’s not a palace. It’s… what’s left of one, above the valleys, in the Warden's Reach.”
Scarlett glanced back at the room. The luxury was undeniable—tapestries, candlelight, warmth.
Yet everything was interwoven with ruin: cracks in the stone, vines creeping in through the window slits, and a table warped by water damage, as if it had once been touched by fire and someone had tried to restore it to use.
This wasn't a cage. It was a memory frozen in time, on a mountainside, in the Spade’s dominion.
He gestured to the wall behind her, and it shuddered— then split open with the hiss of ancient gears and sealing glyphs being traced with his shadows.
Scarlett turned slowly, looking at the space.
Inside the revealed alcove sat a single relic: a crown of thorns, surrounded by shadow flames. The crown floated within a crystal prism, which pulsed a dark ash, collecting at the bottom of the prism.
“What is that?” She whispered, stepping closer despite herself.
“The Null Veil,” Ace said. “It was forged during the height of the Blood Wars. Spade steel, cursed with the marrow of fallen Crimson Kings. Surrounded by an eternal flame, it’s frozen in a time loop. Ancient and Sentient.”
Scarlett’s blood chilled. She knew this was the reason her bond to her magic felt weakened once again.
Ace’s voice dropped to a velvet murmur behind her. “The Null Veil was made to silence your bloodline. To weaken the magic of the Deep. Back then, Crimson power had no limits. No mercy. This—” he stepped beside her, “—was their leash.”
Her heart beat faster. “And you kept it?”
“I found it,” he said. “Buried beneath the old courts. Forgotten in wreckage. Someone wanted it forgotten.”
“Why bring it back at all? The last of the bloodline had died with my father, as far as anyone knew. Only Seraphine knew I had power potential; that's why she hid it.”
Ace didn't answer right away. His attention turned to her; he was debating honesty over ease.
“Because I knew who you were,” he said. “And I knew if it ever came down to it… I’d need something strong enough to stop you, without destroying you.”
A beat passed, heavy with everything he wasn’t softening.
“I didn’t dig it up for destiny,” he added, quieter. “I dug it up because I refuse to lose control of the only thing I care about.”
She took a step back, spine brushing an obsidian pillar behind her. “You think using that on me will make me—what? Obedient? Yours?”
“No,” Ace said, quiet now. “I’m not my father.”
“Could’ve fooled me.” Her tone was sharp. Scarlett continued as she turned back to him. “So, what now? I stay tucked away in your broken corner of the kingdom, while Cyrus burns my court to ash?”
Ace pushed off the doorway, crossing the room in slow, deliberate steps. “I didn’t bring you here to keep you silent.”
“Then why?”
“Because I needed you somewhere real. Somewhere mine. Not gilded in duty. Not torn between hounds and riddles. I just need a little time.”
He stopped inches from her. His jaw tensed as he moved to the alcove, fingertips brushing the prism’s cold glass.
“I brought you here because it’s the only place he can’t reach us. Not Maddox. Not Arley. Not even the High Courts know this chamber still breathes in the mountainside. It’s mine, no one knows of it.”
His eyes met hers again—and this time, the mask cracked just enough to show the ache beneath.
“Everything I am is built for war, Scarlett. I was made to destroy, to take. But with you—”
He stepped closer.
“—I wanted something that wasn’t written in blood. I want to watch you bloom, Scarlett.”
She didn’t soften. “So, you took me anyway.”
"I gave you a choice," he said, his voice steady, but laced with frustration. "You had the chance, you just never chose me."
She didn’t deny it. He raised a hand, not touching her—just hovering close, like the ghost of a caress.
“And what,” she whispered, voice biting, “will you do if I try to leave?”
Ace’s mouth twitched. “Then I’ll let you go.” A beat of silence passed. “But you won’t,” he said softly. “Not yet.”
Scarlett’s lips parted—a retort on her tongue—but the words never came. Because he was right, her body didn’t move. Her heart ached, her magic recoiled further, but her eyes?
They searched for him.
Ace stepped closer, closing the rest of the distance between them. Thumb brushing the side of her jaw. “You’ll stay,” he said, voice roughening. “Because part of you wants to know what happens when I stop pretending I don’t want you. When I stop holding back from you.”
Scarlett swallowed hard, eyes dark with warning—and wanted.
“Careful,” she said, breathless. “That sounds like a promise.”
Ace leaned in, mouth brushing the edge of her throat.
“No,” he said. “That’s a fucking threat.”
“I needed you to remember who you are without the crown, before you let it consume you.”
“I haven’t even worn it yet; you know nothing about me!” She exclaimed, pushing at his chest to resist him.
“This reign will kill you.”
Scarlett’s pulse thudded. “What are you talking about? You think this is saving me?”
“No,” he said, too softly. “It’s saving me.”
She laughed—cruel, quiet, disbelieving. “Gods, you’re pathetic, Ace.”
His hands moved fast.
Not to strike. Not to drag.
Just touch—her throat, her jaw, her hair, fingers threading the braid loose, until roses fell in soft petals at her feet.
“Maybe,” he murmured. “Maybe I am. But I still remember the way you looked the first time we met—with fire in your eyes and blood on your lips. You were mine before anyone else ever saw you. Before Maddox. Before Arley. Before the promise of a throne.”
Scarlett didn’t move.
She should have pushed him away harder. Screamed. Turned and walked through that open door just to prove a point.
But she didn’t.
And he saw that.
“I’m not going to force you,” Ace said, fingers still tangled in her hair. “But I am going to make this choice very, very simple.”
She narrowed her gaze. “What choice?”
“You can leave whenever you want,” he said. “But if you do, you walk back into a kingdom that will use you, bend you, worship you until you forget how to say no. You’ll wear the crown, marry the war, and fuck loyalty until your heart forgets how to beat for anything but duty.”
He leaned closer until his mouth brushed the shell of her ear.
“Or you can stay here. With me. And I’ll give you the one thing no one else ever has.”
She shivered. “Which is?”
His voice was pained, breaking apart at the edges. “Freedom to be you. Not a Queen. Not a symbol. Just Scarlett. Freedom to make your own choices.”
She turned her head, meeting his gaze full-on. Her voice was velvet over steel.
“You still don’t get it, do you?”
Ace’s expression flickered.
His eyes darkened.And in that moment, something shifted.Not his obsession. Not his desire. But his fear. Because for the first time, he realized he might never be enough for the girl who was born to rule and ruin.
“I won’t beg,” he said.
Scarlett’s throat tightened. Her voice came out softer than she meant, but edged with steel.
“I never needed you to beg. I never needed to forget who I was,” she whispered.
Her gaze lingered on the battlefield tattoo etched across his skin, alive and burning in the candlelight.
“I needed someone strong enough to love all the bloody, broken, brutal pieces I already am.”
She stepped closer, words sharp as a blade.
“We can’t just hide away here and think the rest of Underland will fall silent, as if there will be no backlash from what you’ve done.
From delaying my claim to the fifth throne.
You’re more delusional than I thought if you think this will end like a fairy tale that mothers whisper to their children. ”
Something dangerous flickered in his expression, a mix of pride and pain. “I won’t ask you to love me just yet. But I’ll wait as long as it takes until you are mine. Willingly. Or not at all.”
Scarlett exhaled slowly, the weight of him pressing against her like heat, suffocating in its inevitability. She turned from him, needing space, needing air, and walked back to the bed.
She didn’t sleep. She didn’t speak. She just curled into the silk sheets and let the silence sink its claws into her. And all the while, Ace stood in the doorway like a sentinel, a shadow fixed on a star he could never quite touch.