Chapter 9 THE VOID.

Chapter 9 THE VOID.

Seren’s POV

The heavy thud of the door locking was a physical blow.

I didn’t move. I couldn't. I stood in the center of the room, shivering in a comfort that felt like a lie. 

Draven’s "protection" was just another word for possession. He had saved me from the slab only to lock me in a tower, claiming my soul before I’d even had a chance to scrub the scent of the dungeons off my skin.

Mine. He had said it like it was a fact of nature.

But I wasn't his. Not yet.

I walked to the window. Below, the city was a nightmare. Columns of  fire rose from the Outer Wards—my home. The screams were too distant to hear, but I could feel them in the vibration of the glass.

"You think he's a hero, don't you?"

The voice didn't come from the door. It came from the place near the hearth.

I spun around, grabbing the obsidian dagger from the floor. My heart hammered against my ribs,  "Who's there?"

A man stepped out of the darkness. He was tall, and dressed in the grey robes of a high-ranking scholar, but his skin was the color of curdled milk. His eyes were milky white—blind, yet he looked directly at me.

"I am the Chronicler," he whispered. "And I am here to tell you that the man you are bonded to is the reason those fires are burning."

"The Necromancers did this," I snapped, keeping the blade leveled at his chest. "Aiden did this."

"Aiden is a boy playing with matches," the Chronicler said, his voice like dry leaves skittering on a grave. "Draven is the one who provided the fuel. Twenty-five years ago, the Queen didn't die of natural causes. He killed her, Seren. He killed her because her wolf wouldn't submit to his. He broke the bond, and the Void rushed in to fill the hole."

The air in the room turned ice-cold. "You're lying."

"Am I? Ask yourself why the King’s Blade is made of light that consumes everything it touches. Ask yourself why he’s so desperate to keep you locked away." He stepped closer, the smell of old parchment and decay following him. "He’s not protecting you from the dead. He’s protecting his anchor. If you die, his sanity goes with you. He’s using you to stay human."

His words sounded believable.

Draven didn't love me; he needed me. A way for a monster to keep wearing a man’s skin.

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because the 'Queen' at the gates isn't a ghost. She’s the part of his wife he couldn't kill. And she wants her heart back."

A massive explosion rocked the High Keep. The windows shattered, spraying glass. I dove for cover, the obsidian blade slicing into my palm as I hit the floor.

Through the broken window, I saw it.

The South Gate didn't just fall; it disappeared. 

A figure in tattered white gown walked through the flames and she looked exactly like the woman in the portraits, but her skin was translucent, glowing with a faint, necrotic blue. 

Thousands of shambling forms followed her—the people of the Wards, their eyes vacant, their movements robotic.

My breath hitched. In the front row of the dead, I saw a familiar face.

Thomas. The baker who l saved from the prince’s men. He was dead, his throat torn open, but he was marching toward the palace with a pike in his hand.

"Draven!" I screamed, but he was already gone.

I looked at the door. I could stay here, safe in my  cage, while the man who "owned" me fought a war for his own sanity. Or I could go down there and find out if I was truly a Queen, or just another sacrifice.

I didn't choose the King. I chose the Wards.

I used the obsidian dagger to slice a strip from my  gown, binding my wounded hand. 

The silver-lined brush Draven had used on my hair lay on the vanity; I picked it up. 

I wasn’t strong. I didn't have a King's Blade. But I had a lifetime of surviving men who thought they could keep me in a corner.

I didn't use the door. I used the servant’s passage behind the hearth—the one Draven didn't know I’d discovered while he was busy playing God.

The tunnels were narrow, smelling of damp stone and  rot. I ran, my lungs burning, the darkness pressing in on me. 

The bond with Draven was a pulsing, painful ache in my chest, a tether trying to pull me back to the safety of his arms.

Go back, it whispered. Submit. Be safe.

"Go to hell," I hissed at the voice in my head.

I burst out into the lower courtyards just as the first wave of the dead breached the inner walls. The Black Guard was being overwhelmed. These weren't soldiers they were fighting; they were neighbors. Friends.

"Seren!"

I turned to see Draven. He was a whirlwind of white light in the center of the courtyard, the King’s Blade shearing through the dead with a terrifying efficiency. But he looked ragged. Every time the blade struck a civilian, his gold eyes flickered with a haunting, grey pain.

He saw me, and his face transformed. He was angry.

"I told you to stay inside!" he roared, throwing a blast of  energy that cleared a path toward me.

"You don't get to tell me anything!" I shouted back, stepping over the body of a fallen guard "The Wards are burning, Draven! Your past is killing my future!"

He reached me, his hand catching my arm with a grip that threatened to break bone. "You shouldn't be here. She's looking for you."

"Good," I spat, ripping my arm away. "Because I'm looking for her."

Before he could respond, the air pressure in the courtyard plummeted. The flame-light turned a necrotic purple.

The Dead Queen stepped into the courtyard.

She didn't look at Draven. She looked at me. A slow, terrifying smile spread across her pale lips.

"So," she said, her voice a chorus of a thousand grieving souls. "This is the little spark he’s using to replace me."

Draven stepped in front of me, his sword glowing with a blinding intensity. "Leave her out of this, Elara. This is between us."

"Is it?" Elara tilted her head. "You killed me to keep your crown. Now, I’ll take your crown to keep your heart."

She raised her hand, and the ground beneath us began to liquefy into black sludge.

"Draven, look out!"

But she wasn't aiming for Draven.

The sludge rose up, wrapping around my ankles like iron shackles. I tried to slash at it, but the blade passed through it like smoke. I was being pulled down—into the earth, into the Void.

Draven lunged for me, but a wall of bone and rotting flesh—the resurrected citizens of the Wards threw themselves at him, hundreds of bodies pinning him down.

"Seren!" his voice was a raw, broken scream.

As the cold darkness swallowed my waist, I looked at Elara. 

"You think he loves you?" she whispered, leaning over me as I sank. "He doesn't. He only knows the sound of his own pulse returning to his chest."

She reached out, her cold, translucent fingers touching the mark on my forehead.

"Let's see how much he loves you when you're one of us."