My Dying Screams Went Unheard

Chapter 4 Sunlit Ashes

An encrypted message from my spies arrived before noon.

Cassius had skipped the southern border and taken Victoria to his private island in the Aegean. Years ago, he had promised that island would be ours alone.

I carried my leather-bound journals to the hearth. They held a hundred years of experiments, failed distillations, and records of what each blood draw had cost me.

Some pages still bore stains from the trials I had performed on myself.

Every page had been written to keep the ancient poison in Cassius’s veins under control.

His cure. His life. My cage.

I fed the journals to the fire. Ink vanished under blackened paper, and ash gathered behind the grate.

The Obsidian Heart-Locket waited on my dressing table. Cassius had given it to me as a gift.

One command from him could use its dark magic to draw blood straight from my heart whenever a needle took too long.

I threw it against the stone floor. It broke into a thousand glittering shards.

The clock tower began to chime. Midnight.

A final wave of pain drove me to my knees. My fingers slipped in the locket’s shards as the bond pulled tight inside my chest.

Then it broke.

The pressure that had lived behind my ribs for a century disappeared. For the first time since our bonding, my thoughts ended inside my own head. I stood without feeling Cassius anywhere in them.

Behind the tapestry on the far wall, I pulled a concealed lever.

Ancient stone ground overhead. A section of ceiling slid aside, and the castle’s magic poured an imitation of the brightest noon through the skylight.

Light reached every corner of the room and flashed across the broken locket.

I held my bare arms under it. Warm. Harmless.

I left the chamber door open and walked out.

(Cassius's POV)

Warm wind moved through the palms as I leaned toward Victoria. The Sunstone Amulet rested against her chest. Eve’s amulet, now warming and protecting Victoria.

At last, I had a consort who accepted her place.

My stomach clenched. Iron and rot filled my mouth, and thick black blood splashed across the white sand.

Victoria shrieked.

I reached for the presence that had lived in the back of my mind for a hundred years. Nothing answered.

There was no distance to cross and no quiet mind waiting beyond it. Eve’s side of the link had vanished altogether.

“Eve,” I rasped, staggering to my feet.

“What about her?” Victoria demanded, her voice shrill with jealousy. “Cassius, look at me!”

I left Victoria on the beach and teleported back to the castle.

I materialized directly in her chambers.

Light struck my face and hands. My skin smoked, then blistered. I covered my eyes and stumbled into the wall.

The sun immunity that had set me above every other vampire, the gift I had claimed as my birthright, was gone.

I found the lever by touch and slammed it down. Stone closed over the skylight.

In the returning dark, glass glittered across the floor.

The Obsidian Heart-Locket lay in pieces. Cold white ash filled the hearth. I knelt and sifted through it until a half-burned page caught on my fingers. Eve’s script remained along one edge.

*Subject C. Ancient Lycan Toxin. Daily dosage required to suppress necrosis.*

Black blood ran from my lip onto the page. I read the line again.