Chapter 12 LOCKED.
Venessa’s POV.
Sleep was no longer an escape. It was a remembrance of everything I had lost.
I woke up at three in the morning, my l nightgown sticking to my skin with sweat.
The room was freezing, but the silver line on my wrist was burning my body hot.
The voice was back.
It didn’t whisper from the corners of my
Mind anymore; it hummed inside my skull, vibrating against my body..
Do you want to see? it asked. Do you want to see what he took from you?
"No," I whispered to the empty room. "I want to forget. I want to be like him."
Liar, the voice cooed.
Suddenly, my vision blurred. I wasn't in my bed anymore. I was standing in the middle of a memory.
I was standing on the edge of a cliff behind the Citadel.
It was the night after our wedding, but the sky was different—beautiful with stars I didn't remember seeing.
Dante was there.
He was disheveled, his eyes glowing.
He had me pinned against the rough stone of a guard tower.
"You are mine," he growled in the memory, his hands tangled in my hair. "The gods didn't give you to me as a replacement, Venessa. They gave you to me as a mercy. And I am a selfish man. I will never let you go."
I felt the heat of his skin.
I felt the way my heart had raced, not with fear, but with desire.
"I'm not Elara," I had whispered back in the dream.
"Elara is not who I want," Dante had rasped, leaning down to press his forehead against mine. “It is you. It is you I have been waiting for all my life.
The memory shattered like glass.
I was back in my dark room, gasping for air.
My chest ached with a physical pain so sharp I had to double over.
He had said those things. He had looked at me like I was the only light in a dark world.
And now, he looked at me like I was a piece of unwanted furniture.
He threw it away, the voice whispered. He broke the bond to save himself. He chose the crown over the girl.
"He did it to save me!" I shouted at the shadows.
Did he? Or did he just want the silence? Look at him now, Venessa. He is peaceful. He is powerful. And you are a ghost.
I spent the next morning in a daze.
I dressed in a gown of deep emerald, the high collar hiding the pulsing silver line on my neck.
I painted my lips a dark red to hide the fact that they were trembling.
I was going to see him.
I wasn't going to ask for help. I was going to remind him that I existed.
I found him in the Library—the public one, filled with sunlight and the scent of old leather.
He was sitting at a massive desk, surrounded by scrolls and maps.
Lord Silas’s seat at the Council was still empty, and the tension in the room was thick.
"Your Majesty," I said, my voice clear and steady.
Dante looked up.
He adjusted his glasses—a new habit I hadn't seen before. He looked like a scholar, a statesman. He looked utterly unreachable.
"Venessa," he called.
He didn't stand up. "I am quite busy. The Northern Pack is questioning the validity of the treaty now that the... 'spiritual' connection has been altered."
Altered. That was how he described our souls being ripped apart. Like a change in the weather.
"I didn't come to talk about treaties," I said, walking to his desk. I leaned over, placing my hands on the wood. "I came to ask you why you’re ignoring me."
Dante sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "I am not ignoring you. I am governing. We are in a transition period. You are safe, you are fed, and you have the run of the castle. What more do you want?"
"I want the man who told me I was everything to me," I whispered.
Dante’s hand froze.
He looked at me, his blue eyes blank and confused.
"I don't know what you’re talking about. I have never been one for poetry, Venessa. You must have been dreaming."
"It wasn't a dream, Dante! You loved me! We went to the Void together! You snapped the mate bond to save us!"
Dante stood up then, his chair scraping loudly against the floor.
The guards at the door shifted, their hands going to their swords.
"Enough," Dante ordered"I remember the events. I remember the Void. I remember the necessity of breaking the connection to close the gate. But the 'love' you speak of... it was a symptom of the curse. It was an obsession forced upon us by a toxic bond. It wasn't real."
The words hit me like a physical blow…It wasn't real.
"It felt real to me," I said, my voice breaking.
"Because you are a mere wold," Dante said, his tone almost pitying. "You are ruled by your emotions. I am a Lycan King. My priority is the stability of my kingdom. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do."
He sat back down and went back to his scrolls. He didn't even wait for me to leave.
I walked out of the library, my vision blurred by tears.
I didn't go back to the East Wing.
I went to the highest balcony in the Citadel, the one that looked out over the peaks.
I stood at the railing, my dress moving in the wind.
"You're right," I whispered to the voice in my head. "He did throw it away. He’s happy without me."
He is a statue, the voice replied. A beautiful, hollow statue. But you... you are still the Key. You still have the fire. Why do you beg for crumbs from a man who has forgotten you?
"Because I love him!" I screamed into the wind.
Then make him remember, the voice suggested. The shadow is a bridge, Venessa. If you can reach the Void, you can reach the parts of him he left behind.
The parts he cut off to stay 'stable.'
I looked down at my wrist. The silver line was glowing so bright it was visible through the velvet of my sleeve.
"How?"
The basin, the voice said. The black water.
It is a mirror. If you go deep enough, you can find the shards of the mate bond. You can bring them back.
"He told me to stay away from it," I said.
He told you to stay away because he is afraid of what you might become. He is afraid of a Queen who doesn't need his permission to exist.
I looked back toward the library. I thought about the way he’d looked at me—like a chore he had already finished.
I thought about the memory of him holding me against the stone.
I couldn't live like this. I couldn't be a "service" to the kingdom. I would rather be a monster with a soul than a Queen with no soul.
I waited until nightfall.
The Citadel was quiet, the only sound the occasional howl of a wolf in the distance.
I didn't use the main hallways. I used the servants' passages, moving through the bowels of the fortress.
I reached the secret library. The door had been blocked with wood, but it didn't matter.
I placed my hand on the wood, and the silver line on my wrist flared.
The wood didn't just break; it decayed, crumbling away until there was a hole large enough for me to crawl through.
I went down the stairs.
The air was different tonight.
It didn't smell like damp earth. It smelled like him.
The scent of rain and bourbon was so thick it made my head spin.
The basin was waiting in the center of the room.
The black water was boiling, bubbles of shadow popping on the surface.
"I’m coming for you, Dante," I whispered.
I didn't hesitate. I climbed onto the edge of the basin and plunged my hands into the water.
The cold shot up my arms, through my heart, and into my brain.
I felt my soul being pulled out through my fingertips.
I didn't fight it. I let go.
I wasn't in the In-Between this time.
I was in a place that looked like a shattered version of the Citadel.
The walls were made of glass, and inside the glass, I saw memories. Thousands of them.
I saw Dante as a child, hiding in the library from his father.
I saw him as a young man, the first time the black veins appeared on his skin.
I saw him the day Elara ran away, his face a mask of relief he couldn't show.
And then, I found the shard.
It was a piece of the mate bond, glowing with a faint, dying gold light. It was trapped behind a wall of thick, black ice.
Inside the ice, I saw a version of Dante. He was sitting on the floor, his head in his hands.
This wasn't the King. This was the part of him that loved me. The part he had sacrificed to close the gate.
"Dante!" I shouted, slamming my hands against the ice.
The version of him looked up. His eyes were the blue I remembered—full of heat and pain and recognition.
"Venessa?" his voice echoed in my mind. "What are you doing here? You have to go back. The ice is too thick.”
"I’m not leaving you here!" I said. I felt the grey power rising in me, cold and hungry.
I didn't care if it consumed me. I didn't care if I turned into nothing.
I slammed my grey-glowing palms against the ice.
"Stop!" the voice in my head screamed. It wasn't the "friend" anymore. It was deeper. Older. "The ice is the seal! If you break it, you open the door again!"
"I don't care!" I screamed.
The ice began to crack. A jagged line of black shadow shot through the glass.
Suddenly, I felt a hand on my shoulder in the real world.
I was ripped out of the vision, my body slamming back into the stone floor of the library. I gasped for air, my lungs burning.
Dante was there.
He was leaning over me, his face contorted into fury.
He had his hand around my wrist, his thumb pressing into the silver line.
"What. Are. You. Doing?" he hissed.
"I was saving you!" I sobbed, trying to pull away. "I saw you in there! The part of you that loves me!"
Dante didn't let go. He leaned in until our noses touched.
For the first time since the Void, his eyes weren't empty. They were full of rage.
"There is no part of me in there, Venessa!" he roared. "The ice isn't a cage for my feelings. It’s a cage for the First King! Every time you try to reach for me, you are chipping away at the only thing keeping that monster in the dark!"
"You're lying!" I screamed. "You’re just afraid to feel!"
Dante wrenched me to my feet, and dragged me toward the stairs, his breathing ragged.
"You are obsessed with a fantasy," he said, his voice cold again. "You are so lonely that you would risk the safety of the entire kingdom just to feel a 'spark' again. You are not a hero, Venessa. You are a liability."
"Then let me go!" I shouted. "If I’m a liability, send me home! Give me back to my father!"
Dante stopped at the top of the stairs and turned to look at me, and for a split second, I saw it. A flash of the old Dante. A flicker of the man who would have died for me.
But then it was gone.
"I can't let you go," he said, "You are the Queen. And you are carrying a trace of the shadow. If I let you leave the Citadel, Silas’s followers will find you. They will use you as a beacon."
"So I'm a prisoner," I said.
"You are a queen," he corrected.
He turned to the guards who had followed him down. "Take her back to the East Wing. Weld the door shut if you have to. She is not to leave her room without my written permission. And someone get me a healer . I want her drugged if she tries to resist."
"Dante, no!"
I fought them, but it was useless.
I was wolf, and they were Lycans.
They dragged me away from the library, away from the basin, and away from the man who had just confirmed my greatest fear.
He didn't just forget me. He chose to lock me away.
I sat on the edge of my bed, listening to the sound of the guards outside my door.
The silver line on my wrist was quiet now. It had retreated, leaving behind a dull, throbbing ache.
I looked at the mirror. I didn't see a Queen. I saw a girl who had tried to play with fire and ended up burning down the only house she had ever called home.
He called you a liability, the voice whispered. It sounded sad now. He looked at you like you were a disease.
"Shut up," I whispered.
You saw him in the ice, Venessa. You saw the part of him that remembers. He is hurting too. He is just better at hiding it.
"I don't care," I said, lying down and pulling the covers over my head. "I don't want to save him anymore."
But I was lying.
Even as the loneliness settled over me like a shroud,
I knew I would go back. I would go back to the ice. I would go back to the shadow.
Because a world where Dante, my mate didn't love me wasn't a world worth living in.
And if I had to become the monster to bring back my mate, then so be it.