Velastra stared at her reflection long after the servant had gone to fetch Orion.
The girl in the mirror was flawless. Flawless and false.
Behind the silk robe and pale skin lay a soul chewed thin by war, defeat, cruelty—hers, and others. Her breath fogged the bronze, and she watched it vanish slowly, like the memory of dying.
She touched the glass.
'One life. No more.'
That had been Noctar's final warning. No do-overs. No escape.
If her rebirth will be discovered, she would be hunted—not by kings or soldiers, but by the very being who had given her this second chance. A being who fed on souls who tried to outwit death.
He only makes deals with the doomed, she thought bitterly. And I made mine gladly.
The tales had always said Noctar was a collector of restless spirits of regrets. That every grim reaper had once been someone like her—a desperate soul begging for a second chance, only to stumble again into damnation.
She would not die gently. Not in a palace. Not with someone weeping over her.
Her death would be slow. Eternal. And alone.
She pressed her fingers to her temples.
Her sudden shift in behavior could be reason to doubt her identity.
She is renewed, rebranded and wiser. However, she decided her change would come in whispers, in quiet shifts, in pieces too small to notice until they were undeniable. She would craft her change with campaign, with lies, patience, and the slow bleed of plausible reason.
Thus, she will not cling, nor will she chase. Her cold remains, untouched by urgency, but beneath it—beneath the deliberate stillness—there is longing, patient and aching. She will be slow, steady, as if time itself might bend to her will, as if each measured step might bring her closer to her desire without ever betraying the pact.
The time for shadows, masks, and slow poison in reverse begins.
Velastra rang the servant bell, her expression steel and ice once more.
"Send words to Orion," she said sharp as always. "Three days only."
The servant bowed, smiled, as she knew the truth beneath Velastra's cruelty—a truth even she refused to name. She could carve pain into the prince's flesh, push him to the edge of suffering, but never beyond. Never past the point where breath abandoned him. The servant had seen it—the shift in her eyes when his body faltered, the tremor in her silence that no measured step could disguise. And in those moments, when her fear coiled tight around her, her words to Orion, her private physician, turned into swords at his throat. The servant, the physician—they both understood, even if she would never. If his breath ceased, she would not just shatter—she would cease with him.
---
The halls of the east wing were still.
The torches hissed low in their sconces, casting long, reaching shadows across the corridor as Velastra walked, her black velvet train whispering along the floor like a specter. Every maid, every guard, every pair of eyes scattered before her like frightened crows at her approach.
She had said nothing when she heard he had woken.
She simply rose, dressed in silence, and began the walk toward his chamber.
By the time she arrived, the room was empty.
The maids had been dismissed. The guards sent away. Only one figure remained—him, the chained consort, standing, watering his celestine blooms.
Prince Cael.
His shoulders were narrower than before, his frame thinned by fever and wounds—her wounds. Yet still he knelt. No demand. No hatred.
Only the low incline of his head.
Submission, with the weight of knowledge behind it.
Velastra stared at him, long and wordless. Her eyes, dark as obsidian, held no pity. Only depth, hiding her longing. The same cold, gleaming abyss.
"Stand," she said.
He obeyed. Slow, steady. His movements strained but trained.
"Remove your covers."
A flicker of hesitation. But he did as tell. The silk garment slid from his shoulders and pooled at his feet.
Scars bloomed across his back, trails to his feet, vines on his legs and arms like a cruel painting. Old lashes. Some still healing. Others silvered with time.
Her handiwork.
She stepped closer, fingers tracing the air between them like a blade hovering above skin. Her eyes seem to harm, sharp with unspoken weight, but her hands traced the promise of healing—steady, hoping to undo the hurt she did.
"No more space for new wounds."
Her fingers ghosted down his chest.
"I think," she whispered, "it's time for my lash to be burnt."
Cael looked up. His brows tensed, but his eyes remained steady. No relief. No hope. Just the grim knowledge that more pain is coming.
She reached for the collar at his throat—a simple iron chain, thin but unbreakable. Her hand curled around it, lifted it gently, like she was measuring its weight. Then she leaned forward.
And bit his lower lip.
Hard.
Cael flinched, but did not move away. A soft sound escaped him—half breath, half moan—as blood welled where her teeth had broken skin.
Velastra watched him, expression unreadable. Then, she licked the blood from his mouth, slow, deliberate. Her voice was silk over steel.
"I found this area... bleeds too good."
His eyes widened for just a moment—pain, surprise, something else—before she crushed her lips against his in a bruising, possessive kiss. Deep. Seems punishing but intimate in its violence.
He gasped softly against her mouth.
A sound of pain. But not rejection.
When she finally pulled back, the blood still glistened faintly on both their lips. She stared at him, searching, wondering if his calmness had begun to crack.
But his gaze remained calm.
She hated it.
And something inside her cracked.
She turned her back to him.
"Dress. Orion will arrive soon," she said coldly, voice void of warmth. "You're in no shape for deeper fun yet."
She left without another glance.
Her footsteps echoed like a sentence across the marble.
Behind her, Cael remained still, his fingers ghosting over the raw cut on his lip. The sting was sharp, a lingering echo of her touch—but he did not flinch, did not curse her. He simply held the pain, as if it belonged to him alone.