Chapter 190 - In The Sanctuary

Chapter 190 - In The Sanctuary
ADELINE
The sanctuary door shut behind me with a heavy iron click. I rushed to it at once, pounding my fists against the wood until they stung. “Let me out! Please!” My voice cracked, but no reply came. Only silence, deep and suffocating.
Exhaustion overtook me, and I slid down against the cold slab in the center of the room, the altar-like stone where my mother often prayed or performed her strange rites. Tears streamed hot down my cheeks, and I buried my face in my hands. Hopeless. Powerless. Trapped.
My shoulders trembled. No one will help me, I thought bitterly. I will be forced to marry him. To leave Lykos. To become… nothing. The thought hollowed me, like a pit forming in my chest.
After what felt like hours, my sobs quieted into hiccups. I rubbed my swollen eyes and stood, pacing the dim sanctuary lit only by the faint glow of sconces. My gaze swept the shelves of my mother’s books or spell books, thick tomes bound in black leather, their spines embossed with strange silver sigils. I had never been allowed to touch them.
I hesitated. Some of my mother’s warnings echoed in my mind: Curiosity is a fire that burns the unworthy.
But tonight… I no longer cared.
I stepped closer, running my finger along the cracked bindings. 
My fingers trembled as I turned the fragile pages of the cracked leather book. The words, inked in strange looping runes, seemed to shimmer faintly beneath the flicker of the sconces. And then, there it was an illustration of a jagged branch-like scar crawling across a man’s face. My heart leapt.
“The black mark…” I whispered, her throat tightening.
I bent closer, reading each line with desperate hunger.
The mark is corruption born of a forbidden ritual… a binding with a Helix Witch. It stains the flesh, threads into the blood, and bends both body and spirit until the host is neither whole nor broken, forever caught in between.
My hand flew to my mouth. A curse… it wasn’t just allergies. It wasn’t just scars. Someone… cursed him. A Helix witch. What’s a Helix witch?
Excitement and fear tangled inside my chest. I flipped further, eyes darting across diagrams of runes carved in circles, names of plants and ores unknown to me.
And then I froze at the heading… 
The Helix Witch.
A full page sprawled with dense writing described them, witches born with a rare bond to nature itself, whose souls were tangled with the very roots of the earth. They can command wind, fire, water, stone and use them as weapons. They can weave life and unmake it. They can sway beasts and humans alike.
My lips parted in awe. “They… can control anything…”
And beneath those words, a single sketched emblem: a spiral coiled with jagged lines.
My blood chilled. Because it was the same spiral etched faintly into my own left wrist, the strange mark I woke up to see, the one she always covered with my sleeve, ribbons and bangles.
My breath came shallow, almost a gasp. “Am I…?” I lifted my wrist into the dim light, the mark seeming to throb faintly in answer.
Am I one of them?
Questions spun in my head. If I was a Helix Witch, then was my kind the reason the hooded prince bore those marks? Was I somehow linked to his suffering? A curse in his blood tied to my very existence?
I snapped the book shut, hugging it tight to my chest as dread and hope warred inside me. “If this is true,” I whispered shakily, “maybe I’m the only one who can help him. Maybe… maybe I was meant to.” I looked at my left wrist, “Maybe with this,” I added.
But before I could read further, the sanctuary door creaked open.
Two maids entered, their faces pale with unease, they never liked stepping into Eloise’s private chamber. They bend to their knees quickly.
“My lady, we have orders…” one murmured. “We must prepare you at once.”
I startled, clutching the book tighter against my skirts, my mind racing. “Prepare me? Already?”
“For the ceremony,” the other said softly. “Your mother says everything is ready. The dress, the carriage… the groom.”
My stomach dropped, the weight of the book pressing into me as if it were my only shield.
They moved toward me, lifting fabrics and jewels from a trunk, ready to drape me in the trappings of a bride.
But I stood rooted, clutching the secret I had uncovered. My tears had dried. My despair had sharpened into a new resolve.
Inside me, one thought pulsed over and over like a heartbeat:
I am not helpless. I am not ordinary. And if I am truly a Helix Witch… then maybe my fate is not my mother’s to decide.