Betti_Lorenzo

The Unbound

Gothic Romance • Spiritual Rebellion • Fantasy Drama

Elena Rosaria was born a witch in chains—branded by the Church, betrayed by her own blood, and forced to survive in the shadows of an empire that hunts her kind. But when her life collides with Viscount Seamus Matteo—a brooding heir with a taste for danger and a heart drawn to her fire—their connection sparks a forbidden passion that defies the Church’s rule.

As war brews between the old faith and a rising resistance, Elena must reckon with a violent past, prophetic visions, and the price of power. Seamus would burn the world to protect her. But it is Niegal Matteo—his exiled uncle and a gifted healer—who may hold the key to not only Elena’s survival, but the fate of magic itself.

In a land of holy inquisitions, blood-bound magic, and saints who are not what they seem, three haunted souls must choose: surrender to the roles they were born into… or become something unbound.

THE UNBOUND

Niegal, by some divine grace or stubborn will, survived.

The healers, led by the Behike herself, were able to mend the worst of the damage. The wound in his side was deep, nearly fatal, but his body responded. He stabilized.

And so he slept. Days without waking. His face soft in the flickering mana-light of the underground sanctum. His breaths slow and deep, like the tide returning after a violent storm.

But what remained was only a shell of the woman she had once been.

The healers had managed to stop the burns from spreading, but not without cost.

Faint scars, like the tracings of lightning, feathered and swirled up her arms and across her collarbone, branching from her fingertips to her elbows in ghost-white arcs. The skin around her eyes had darkened into hardened scar tissue, silvery and tough. More feathered swirls crawled from the corners of her eyes, threading into her scalp, lost beneath her dark curls.

There was no energy left. No magic. No will. Elena had poured out every drop of herself into that storm.

They lay side by side now, hands barely touching.

The Behike brought in elders of the faith, wizened and proud, to discuss the possibility of Elena being vessel for one of the old gods, the ones the Church tried so hard to snuff out.

Guabancex. A Cemi, or divine spirit, of maternal love and hurakans. With both fury and love she could control mighty storms with her arms, her mouth open, enraged and beautiful all at once.

Legend had it she wipes the land clean, rebirth after destruction.

The Behike placed an ancient relic in Elena's hands, crossed over her torso, a pendant of a three spoked spiral made from jet wood and carnelian.

Prayers. Superstitions. Reverent awe.

Because somehow — against every divine and earthly odd — her womb stirred with life.

The healers found it faint at first; a pulse of mana barely there, nestled beneath Elena's ribs.

Some believed it was the child that anchored Elena to this world. Others believed it was love, refusing to let go. A few whispered the child was born of her union with the storms and rain.

All anyone could say for certain… was that she had not died.

Chapter 76: the Unbound and Anchored