Chapter 31; Blood remembers
🎵 Music Suggestions While Reading:
Kyrell's descent: "All I Want" – Kodaline (piano version)
Lucian's unraveling: "Entropy" – Gracie Abrams & James Blake
Mara's turn: "Control" – Halsey (stripped)
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The sky refused to weep.
Kyrell had walked until the earth turned unfamiliar. Until the cold burned and the trees no longer whispered his name.
He could feel it now—the crack in his soul.
Lucian had broken something sacred. Something that couldn't be mended with lips or lies.
The memories came in flashes now—violent, jarring, half-dream and half-nightmare.
Chains.
Fangs.
Lucian's voice in the dark:
> "You were losing yourself. I had no choice."
And yet, there had been a choice. And Lucian had made it.
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Meanwhile, back at the manor…
Lucian stood in the war room, no longer a prince, no longer a councilman.
Just a man with trembling hands.
> "He took the shard," he told Renak, his voice hollow. "I should have burned it."
Renak frowned, arms crossed.
> "What else have you buried, Lucian?"
The silence that followed answered more than words could.
> "We'll find him," Renak said eventually. "Before he finds someone else."
But Lucian knew better.
Kyrell wasn't running.
He was remembering.
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In the woods,
Kyrell collapsed near the ruins of an ancient chapel—stone and moss swallowed by time.
His hands trembled as he stared at them, as if unfamiliar.
The hunger was there again. Not for blood.
But for truth.
A voice came from behind him, quiet, almost gentle.
> "You remember now."
Kyrell turned, expecting Damien.
It was Mara.
She knelt beside him like a lover, but her eyes gleamed with something colder.
> "Do you know what it feels like," she murmured, "to watch him choose someone else—over and over—while you gave him your soul?"
Kyrell didn't answer.
> "He ruined both of us," she whispered.
> "No," Kyrell said quietly. "He saved me. Then ruined me."
Mara's voice cracked.
> "He was supposed to be mine."
For a moment, they sat in the silence of mutual betrayal.
Then Kyrell looked her dead in the eyes.
> "You wanted him. I loved him."
Mara recoiled, as if slapped.
> "And yet he didn't trust you," she hissed.
> "He was afraid of me," Kyrell said. "And now I understand why."
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Lucian, alone in the crypt beneath the manor
He lit every candle he could find, every old spell of summoning and protection.
But it wasn't Kyrell's darkness he feared now.
It was his own.
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Later that night…
Kyrell stood at the riverbank, the very place where Lucian had once found him—broken, half-dead.
Now he stood whole. Remembering everything. And nothing would be the same.
He touched the water.
And whispered,
> "I'll come back when I'm not afraid of what I'll do to you."
Then he vanished into the woods.
And from the shadows, Damien followed—smiling.
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