Chapter 99 – What the Shadows Whispered
Chapter 99 – What the Shadows Whispered
Scarlett
I should’ve run the moment the whispers began.
The wind through the trees carried voices that didn’t belong to the living — fractured murmurs like shattered glass scraping against stone. I crouched low, my hand instinctively covering my stomach. My child stirred, a slow roll under my ribs like he, too, could sense the air had shifted.
We were being watched.
But not by Kael.
And not by Lucien.
This was something else — older, heavier. Like the dark had been waiting.
I moved silently through the underbrush, boots brushing over damp leaves. The veil of the forest was thick here, each tree gnarled and blackened as though burned from the inside out. My breath came shallow, fogging in the chill, though no frost marked the ground. Only the smell of ash.
“The Forest of the Forgotten,” Lucien had called it — once. And warned me never to enter.
So, of course, I had.
I needed answers. Kael’s warnings, Lucien’s half-truths, even the scroll I found buried in the palace ruins — all pointed here.
To where the veil thinned. Where death and prophecy met.
The shadows whispered again.
She carries the flame... she carries the night...
My hand tightened around the hilt of the dagger at my thigh. The blade had been forged from sun-silver, a rare gift from Kael, left beside my bed the morning after he disappeared again. I'd almost thrown it into the river. I was glad now that I hadn’t.
Because I wasn’t alone anymore.
A shape moved up ahead — low, hulking, and wrong.
Its breath was heavy, animalistic, like a predator savoring its kill.
I crouched lower behind a fallen log, heart hammering so loudly I was sure whatever it was could hear it.
And then… silence.
No wind, or rustling even the whispers stilled.
A sudden snap of a twig behind me made me whirl, dagger raised.
But no one was there.
Nothing… except—
A hand shot from the shadows, yanking me backward into the brush. I hit the ground with a grunt, the dagger flying from my grip. I scrambled for it, but a boot pressed down on my wrist, hard.
“Hello, little flame,” the voice rasped. “I’ve waited a long time for you.”
I froze.
The figure before me wasn’t quite a man.
Its eyes glowed like coal, sunken deep in a skeletal face, skin stretched thin and gray like old parchment. Fangs protruded from cracked lips, and veins spidered out across its scalp like black roots.
A vampire, but not like any I’d seen before.
“Who are you?” I breathed.
The creature crouched, fingers trailing the curve of my jaw like a lover. I didn’t flinch. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
“I am the hunger in their blood. I am the first,” he whispered, mouth close to my ear. “And your child is mine.”
No.
My body responded before thought could catch up. I drove my knee into his side, wrenching my arm free. Rolling to the side, I dove for the dagger. My fingers closed around the hilt, and I slashed upward blindly.
A scream tore through the clearing — high and shrill and wrong.
The creature stumbled back, hissing.
The dagger had cut across its chest — and it was smoking.
“You bleed,” I said coldly. “Good.”
Its eyes narrowed, and for a moment, I thought it might lunge again. But instead, it laughed — dry and rattling like bones in a crypt.
“You cannot hide from me,” it crooned. “Not in light. Not in love. Not even with your prince. I will come for him too.”
It melted into the trees, swallowed by shadow.
And just like that, it was gone.
I collapsed to my knees, the adrenaline fading in a rush. My chest heaved. My skin was slick with sweat. And inside me, my child kicked again — sharp, urgent, like a warning.
We had to go.
I staggered up and kept moving through the trees until I found the hidden stone altar Lucien had described weeks ago. Etched into it were words in an ancient tongue, older than vampire or human alike.
Blood born of night. Flame borne of man. When they meet, the world shall burn, then bloom again.
My blood. Kael’s flame. Our child.
A weapon... or a salvation.
“Is this what you wanted me to see?” I whispered into the dark.
But the forest had gone still again.
By the time I made it back to the edge of the woods, the sun was rising — blood-orange across the horizon. My legs shook with every step. I hadn’t slept in nearly a day. The mark on my shoulder — the old vampire brand that Kael once burned into me — was throbbing. It hadn’t done that in weeks.
Not since… the bond started healing.
But now it pulsed like a wound. Alive, and frious.
I reached the cabin just as Lucien burst from the door, sword already half drawn.
“Where the hell were you?” he barked.
I didn’t answer. I just collapsed into him, letting the dagger clatter to the porch.
Lucien caught me, arms locking around my shoulders.
“You’re shaking,” he muttered. “What happened?”
“I saw him,” I said. “The ancient one. The first vampire, I think. He’s coming for the baby.”
Lucien went still. His jaw tightened.
“You’re not safe here anymore,” he said.
“Where is safe?”
He didn’t answer.
Later that night, Lucien lit every ward and rune he knew — old blood magic carved into the trees, herbs burned in tight spirals of smoke. I sat by the window, watching the darkness, holding my belly.
Kael hadn’t come.
He always knew when I was in danger. Somehow, but now?
Now he was silent.
Had the bond truly broken?
Or had he chosen not to answer?
The thought made something inside me twist painfully — guilt, or grief, or both.
Lucien sat down beside me, eyes haunted. “You said he called your baby his.”
I nodded.
Lucien’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Then this isn’t just about prophecy anymore. It’s personal.”
I turned to him, something cold settling in my stomach.
“Why would an ancient vampire take something so personal in a child not his?”
Lucien looked away.
“I don’t know,” he said. But I could tell he was lying.
And then…
A scream split the air.
Not mine.
Not Lucien’s.
Outside.
We ran to the door just as flames burst across the treeline. Not from firewood. Not from torchlight.
This was something else.
A person was burning.
But their mouth didn’t scream in agony.
They laughed.