The Wolf and The Wilted Rose

Ruthless

The cold marble beneath her hands suddenly felt like freezing iron.

The sound of splashing water faded, replaced entirely by a rush of ringing in her ears. The bathroom walls seemed to cave in, narrowing until the dim candlelight cast long, twisting shadows that stretched into the shape of a suffocating memory.

Blood.

It wasn't wine. It wasn't a sauce reduction on a silver plate. It was a dark, viscous pool spreading across the polished dining room floor, soaking through the hem of her nightgown. Fionia gasped, her knees buckling slightly as she slammed her palms back onto the sink to keep from collapsing.

The phantom weight of her mother’s lifeless body came crashing back into her arms—the terrifying coldness stealing through fabric, the absolute, helpless silence of a room where no one came to save them. Her stepmother’s cruel, triumphant smile standing over them, and her father—the man who had sworn to protect them—turning a blind eye, standing in the doorway with cold indifference because her mother had dared to question his ambition, because she had become a liability to his precious standing in court.

Fionia stared down at her hands. The invisible stain was there again, burning hot and sticky against her skin no matter how hard she scrubbed.

A choked sob tore from her throat, raw and agonizingly sharp. For years, she had buried it. She had locked it behind cold stares, sharp posture, and an unshakeable shield of independence. She had convinced herself that she didn't care, that she was free, that the ghosts of the Nauven estate couldn't reach her here behind the thick stone walls of the Alaric fortress.

But the tears came anyway—hot, heavy, and completely uncontrollable, spilling over her lashes and splashing against the white marble in a steady, rhythmic torture. Her whole body shook, a violent tremor that started deep in her chest and rattled straight down to her fingertips.

She slid down the edge of the sink, pulling her knees up to her chest against the cold bathroom floor, burying her face in her arms as the walls of her tightly controlled world finally cracked wide open.

3 hour later.

The silence of the eastern wing deepened as the night wore on, broken only by the low whistle of the wind scraping against the frost-covered windowpanes.

In his study down the hall, Elvan still sat behind his massive mahogany desk. A stack of unread military dispatches lay forgotten before him, his amber eyes fixed absently on the heavy double doors leading to the corridor. The dark, restless energy in his chest refused to settle. That subtle, terrifying flash of raw trauma he had glimpsed across the dinner table kept replaying in his mind—the sweating palms, the rigid panic, the desperate avoidance of a simple red sauce.

A sharp, unshakeable unease clawed at the back of his throat.

He didn't bother justifying it to himself. With a sudden, impatient scrape of his chair, Elvan stood up, shrugging off his heavy outer coat and striding toward the doors. He had told her no one would bother her, but the suffocating quiet of the estate felt entirely too heavy tonight.

His heavy boots struck the polished hardwood floor of the corridor in slow, measured strides until he stopped directly outside the threshold of her chambers.

"Fionia," he called out, his low, gravelly voice cutting through the dark hallway. There was no answer.

He waited a beat, his jaw tightening as a cold spike of instinct flared in his chest. Without another second of hesitation, his hand closed around the heavy brass handle. He didn't knock. He twisted it, expecting the stubborn click of a locked bolt, but the door—perhaps left unsecured in her hurried, shell-shocked retreat earlier—swung open with a soft, protesting creak.

The bedroom was dark, empty, and chillingly quiet.

"Fionia," Elvan repeated, stepping further into the room, his eyes scanning the shadows. Then, a faint, muffled sound caught his attention from the adjoining bathroom, accompanied by a narrow strip of light spilling across the wooden floor.

He pushed the bathroom door open, and the breath instantly vanished from his lungs.

Fionia lay collapsed against the base of the marble sink, her body curled tightly into herself like a broken doll. Her breathing was shallow and ragged, her skin deathly pale against the dark blue fabric of her dress, and her hands—still stained with the phantom ghost of her nightmares—clutched limply at her skirt.

In two long, frantic strides, Elvan crossed the small room, dropping to his knees beside her. All the crushing arrogance, the tyrannical authority, and the cold mask of the Crown Prince shattered into dust in a fraction of a second.

"Fionia," he breathed, his voice cracking with a raw urgency he had never shown another living soul.

His large, calloused hands slid gently beneath her shoulders and the back of her knees, lifting her effortlessly off the freezing tile floor. She felt impossibly light—too light, like she was holding together entirely by sheer, bleeding willpower. He carried her swiftly out of the stark bathroom, laying her down gently among the plush pillows of her unmade bed.

His fingers hovered over her damp, pale cheek, feeling the feverish heat radiating from her skin. The heavy, suffocating weight of guilt slammed into his chest. He had pushed her too hard, prodded too deep into wounds that had never been allowed to heal, expecting her to be made of steel when she was drowning in an ocean of invisible blood.

"Damn it," Elvan muttered darkly, pulling the thick velvet blanket up over her trembling shoulders.

He didn't leave. He pulled a chair up beside the mattress, his amber gaze burning with a fierce, protective intensity as he reached out to firmly clasp her ice-cold hand between his own, anchoring her against the dark shadows of the night until she finally woke up.