Chapter 2

Leaning against the cold stone slab, I gripped my leg and brutally snapped the dislocated bone back into place.

I had barely managed to secure a crude bandage over the wound when the heavy door was violently kicked open.

Valerius stood in the doorway, his imposing frame eclipsing the dim corridor light and casting a suffocating, massive shadow over me.

His crimson eyes glinted menacingly in the dark. In his fist, he gripped a crushed rose.

It was the Blood Pact Rose—the ultimate token of our vow, nurtured entirely with his heart's blood and given to me by his lucid self.

He had once sworn that as long as this rose bloomed, his love for me would never die.

But now, crushed in his brutal grip, its petals were mangled and dying.

"Elara, what the hell did you do to Seraphina?" Before I could blink, he crossed the room, seized me by the throat, and hoisted me off the stone slab.

A violent wave of suffocation ambushed my brain. Forced to tilt my head back, I stared into his handsome face, now twisted with sheer blinding rage. "I... cough... I've been down here in the basement... what could I possibly do to her?"

"Still lying!" Valerius tightened his iron grip and slammed me brutally against the wall. The impact against the unyielding stone bricks instantly tore open my freshly bandaged wounds.

He threw the mangled Blood Pact Rose directly at my face, his voice dripping with bone-chilling venom. "Seraphina simply went to your room to clean up for you. Yet the moment she touched this wretched weed, the half-blood toxins laced on it burned her internal organs! She's upstairs vomiting blood as we speak. Dare to tell me you didn't tamper with it?"

An icy chill raced down my spine, quickly followed by a surge of profound, sickening absurdity.

How could a Blood Pact Rose harbor toxins? It was so painfully obvious. Seraphina had orchestrated this elaborate, self-inflicted martyrdom solely to obliterate my most precious sanctuary.

"You gave that to me..." I whispered, staring down at the crimson petals ground into the filth on the floor. My voice cracked, raw and unrecognizable. "Valerius... there was a time when you would have killed anyone who dared to lay a finger on that rose. But now, for a woman whose mouth is full of nothing but lies, you shattered it with your own hands."

"Shut up! You have no right to speak of the past!" he roared, cutting me off like a provoked, rabid beast. "Seraphina is the sole light of my life! If she hadn't saved me with her blood all those years ago, I would be rotting by now! And you? You're nothing but a half-breed mutt who clawed your way into my bed through despicable means!"

Those words acted as a perfectly aimed stiletto, driving deep through the center of my heart.

So that was it. In the twisted, distorted memories of his rabid persona, the savior who granted him a second chance at life had been completely overwritten by Seraphina.

All of my sacrifices, my shed blood, my agony—reduced to "despicable means" in his eyes.

"Fine. Very well." I closed my eyes, burying the final vestige of pain behind my eyelids. "Since you've already decreed my guilt... what do you want?"

Valerius paused, momentarily caught off guard by the dead, apathetic emptiness in my gaze. In the past, I would have desperately cried, pleaded my case, and fought tooth and nail to awaken his lucid persona.

But now, I couldn't muster a single tear.

However, the rabid mania quickly reasserted its dominance. He issued his command with frigid ruthlessness: "Seraphina requires the Healing Blood to neutralize the toxin. Drain her. Don't stop until she is fully recovered."

He snapped his fingers. A blood thrall immediately wheeled an extraction machine into the room.

The thick needle ruthlessly punctured my vein, the icy bite of consequence sending a violent shiver through my battered frame.

Accompanied by the mechanical hum of the motor, the golden Healing Blood within me was relentlessly siphoned into the waiting pouches.

My complexion drained to an ashen gray. My core temperature plummeted rapidly, and the edges of my vision began to pull into a dark blur.

"Your Highness... if we continue to drain her, she will die," the blood thrall hesitated, nervously eyeing the flashing red hazard light on the monitor.

Valerius's gaze remained absolute, devoid of even a flicker of hesitation. "Keep draining. It's what she owes Seraphina."

A sudden, hysterical urge to laugh bubbled up in my collapsing chest. What the hell was I even holding on to anymore?

For a lucid persona that graced me only intermittently? For empty, ghost-like promises? I had let myself be butchered, broken, and scarred—and worse, I had trapped my innocent younger brother in this nightmare.

It was fine. From this moment on, I would never harbor a single expectation of him again.

As the fourth blood bag swelled to capacity, my tattered consciousness finally gave out, plunging me into complete darkness.

I didn't know how much time had passed when I finally drifted back to consciousness.

Struggling to sit upright, I found the cold basement entirely empty.

The screen of my burner phone illuminated the darkness with a succinct reply: "Understood. East Gate, tomorrow."

It was from Lucas. He owed me a life debt from years ago, having sworn that whenever I needed it, he would provide me safe harbor.