The Alpha's Sin

Chapter 8: The Greatest Sin of All

I DID NOT really remember getting out of the bath. The water consumed my every part, body, mind, and soul. So, it made me forget about things—about reality, about the present.

I only remembered the cold—like knives in my blood, like silence so sharp it rang in my ears. My skin was blue beneath the candlelight, but my thoughts were finally still. The heat—unnatural, unspoken—had faded just enough for me to, at last, think again. To remember who I was before I felt his mouth on me.

The girl I was before all of this happened.

Rhosyn, the kind servant, had come back and found me trembling in the tub, lips pale, and eyelids heavy. She did not scold. She only wrapped me in warm clothes, clucking under her breath as if I were a child caught in the rain. She was so gentle with me, despite the scowl on her face like she could not be bothered with this. This old woman had done so much for me more than anyone ever did.

“You will kill yourself that way,” she muttered. “There is pain, and then there is madness. You’re wandering too close to the line, girl. Do not only lay helplessly on the bed. Next time, seek me. Before this sickness is driven out of you, you will have this iced bath every morning and every night, do you understand me?”

I did not argue.

The iced bath was the most amazing thing I ever had in this Keep. It relieved me of any pain, any stress—and it made me feel calm, even when the storm was here only moments ago, kissing the air, announcing his presence to this humble bathroom.

Rhosyn brought me back, but not to my chamber. She led me down the back stairs to the servant’s common room—a world warmed and poorer than my own. And yet, as I saw that the ceilings were lower, the floors uneven—it felt closer to home than the Keep. I smiled to myself. This reminded me of a life before his mouth on me.

The fire burned bright. The air smelled of bread and herbs instead of damp, cold stone.

She set a tray on her cot. Soup. Black bread. Warm milk.

“Eat. You’re going to leak again soon,” she said quietly, eyeing my chest with weary sympathy. “He will feel it, you know.”

I stiffened.

Rhosyn did not elaborate. She only nodded toward the bowl. “Eat,” she demanded with her eyes.

I ate slowly, spoon trembling in my grip. It was the first real food I had kept down in days. The first homemade warm meal, instead of the cold trays delivered to my wing. The fever had starved me. The pain had weakened me.

“It won’t be pretty for the next few days,” she said.

“What is?”

“This sickness. It could be better, it could be worse. It depends on how strong you are.”

“What kind of sickness is this, Rhosyn?” I begged her for an answer. “I didn’t understand you.”

Rhosyn’s face darkened. She found no answers in her mind—meaning, she did not know how to tell me. She nodded at the bowl again. I ate again.

“Am I cursed, Rhosyn?”

“Do you feel cursed?”

“I don’t know what I feel—it’s conflicted. I feel as if I have found a piece of myself that I never knew was missing before, but at the same time, I could not have that piece of me, and it’s killing me slowly, painfully—until death will come for me. That piece—it is the part that I don’t understand. This sickness brought feelings that felt like they had been omitted from my life before. Like I forgot a few of my memories—selected memories—and I hated the fact that I could not remember it. I cannot put my fingers on it, Rhosyn. If that doesn’t make sense, then I don’t know how else to explain this to anyone else.”

Again, she looked at me with that pity.

Odd.

Rhosyn had no right to look at me like that. Was I not actually, the resident of this Manor, and she was a mere servant?

Rhosyn gave me a long, sorrowful look. “You are a strong girl, I can see. You will get through this.”

~ ~ ~

I fell asleep in her cot, wrapped in wool and shadow, to the sound of her softly humming in the next room. Her lullaby was older than the stones of the Manor—my breath, my soul—melancholy, and a little bit wild. It reminded me of wind over graves. Cold—yet warm. Chilling—yet captivating.

And yet—I slept.

For the first time in what felt like years, I slept.

No dreams of fire. No aching between my thighs. No memory of his breath on my skin, his mouth on me.

When I awoke, the Manor was silent.

The fire in the heart had died down, and a sliver of moonlight cut through the slit in the shutters. My body was still sore, but quiet. I sat up, pulled the blanket around me. I should have stayed. But something—something stranger—pulled at me. A thread tugging from the dark of the Manor. Invisible. Icy. And red.

I crept barefoot down the hall, back into the chamber I was assigned in. Past shuttered windows and sleep-drenched walls. Past portraits of the past, staring with painted scorn. I should not have felt safe, walking alone in this terrifying Manor, but I did.

Because a part of me knew that he was watching.

Always.

When I reached my chamber, the door was ajar.

I paused, thinking, but I went in anyway.

The fire was already lit inside. Fresh. Recent. My hand trembled as I pushed the door open fully. My bed had been remade. The sheets smoothed. The pillows fluffed. And in the center of the mattress sat a box. Not just a box—a gift.

Wrapped in deep crimson velvet. A ribbon tied in a bow so perfect it made my breath hitch. I stepped closer, my fingers shaking as I untied it. Inside lay a dress.

A dress.

Blood-red.

Silk.

Sleeveless.

Cinched at the waist and scandalously low at the chest. The fabric shimmered like sin beneath the firelight. I touched it and gasped. It was as soft as a breath, thin as temptation.

Tucked beside it was a note.

I knew it was him.

“Tomorrow night.

Wear this for me.

Dinner at the Moonroom

-I.”

I stared at the words until the letters bled. Dinner? Not a summon, not an order, but an invitation.

As if I were a guest.

As if I were a… woman.

I collapsed into the chair by the hearth, dress clutched in my lap like a lover’s embrace. My skin crawled. My heart stuttered. And yet—there was no fear.

Only heat.

Not the kind from before. Not the sickness. This was slower. Lower. Deeper.

Icarus Duskbane—my guardian, my ruin, my sin—had begun to hunt.

Not with teeth or claws, but with silk, with shadows, with red.

I held the note to my chest.

A part of me screamed at me to run—but where? His presence filled every part of me. His scent haunted my mind when it should not. I carried his mouth on my skin.

He did not want me—for our past, for the taboo, for the forbidden—and now he wanted me dressed like a bride for the slaughter.

Why now?

Why dinner?

Was this a test?

A seduction?

I prayed. To keep some part of myself from melting completely into his hands. Because if I went tomorrow, dressed in red, chest bare, lips parted—I would not leave untouched.

I would not want to.

And that was the greatest sin of all…