Chapter 100 — What Lurks Beneath

Chapter 100 — What Lurks Beneath
Scarlett

I woke with the taste of iron in my mouth.

Not blood—at least not mine. It was something older, colder. Something that felt like it didn’t belong in any living body. For a second, I thought I was dreaming. Then the ache low in my belly reminded me that reality was far more relentless than fantasy.

My child shifted inside me, not with pain this time—but with warning. As if even in the womb, they could sense it too.

Something was coming.

I sat up slowly in the bed I now called mine, though no place truly felt like home anymore. The fire in the hearth had burned down to flickering embers, and moonlight painted cold silver shadows across the wooden floorboards.

Lucien hadn’t returned last night. That should have comforted me, but it didn’t.

Kael’s absence haunted the edges of my mind even more fiercely. The ghost of his last look lingered behind my eyes—an expression torn between fury and heartbreak, like the storm raging behind control. He hadn’t said a word before vanishing into the night.

But I knew that look. I knew it meant he’d do something reckless.

Something irreversible.

I stood, rubbing slow circles over the curve of my stomach. “You’re safe,” I whispered. “You are. I swear it.”

Even if the promise was made with trembling lips.

Downstairs, the inn was unnaturally quiet. The kind of quiet that didn’t feel earned, like it was pressed there by force, like a lid clamped down over boiling water. The Whispering Town wasn’t supposed to be this silent.

When I opened the back door to the alley, the wind hit me like a slap.

A scent rode it—thick, coppery, wrong.

Death.

I stepped outside.

Three streets down, the butcher’s lantern still swung in the breeze. But beneath it, a dark smear stained the cobblestones. I didn’t need to look closer. I knew what it was.

A warning.

They’d found us again.

I turned back too fast, the world tilting slightly with the motion. My vision sparkled at the edges, like stars pressed too hard against black canvas. When I reached the inn's kitchen door, someone was already waiting for me.

Lucien.

His coat was streaked with mud. His eyes—usually amused, mocking—were hard as stone.

“They breached the perimeter,” he said flatly.

I didn’t ask who “they” were. The bounty hunters, the royal blood enforcers, the rebels—at this point, it didn’t matter. Everyone wanted the same thing: my child. The last remaining piece of prophecy walking this earth, still unborn.

“I’ll kill them,” I said. The words didn’t shake like I thought they would. “If they come near me again, I won’t hesitate.”

Lucien looked at me for a long moment, as if weighing something.

“You say that like it’s supposed to scare me.” He stepped closer, his voice lower. “But it only makes me want to follow you deeper into the fire.”

I rolled my eyes, brushing past him toward the hallway. “Then you’re as insane as Kael.”

He caught my wrist—not hard, but firm. “He’s not the one standing in your shadow anymore.”

I froze.

He let go almost immediately, muttering a curse as he stepped back. “Forget it. We don’t have time for—whatever that was. You need to see this.”

He led me into the cellar.

The innkeeper, a neutral witch named Tessa, met us by the candles already flickering along the underground corridor. “Two bodies,” she said grimly. “No wounds. Eyes burned out. Same as the ones near the border.”

Lucien glanced at me. “Sound familiar?”

I nodded, nausea rising. The same signs we saw when the dark force had touched the rebel coven two weeks ago. It left no trace of itself except hollowed shells—and whispers. Always whispers.

Tessa led us deeper. I held my breath as we entered the storage room where the bodies had been laid.

One glance was enough.

They weren’t just dead. They were emptied—like whatever had claimed them had reached inside their chests and scraped out everything they ever were. Not a drop of blood remained. Only the burn marks where their eyes used to be.

And carved into the stone beside them, in a language older than any I knew, were words that hummed with cursed heat.

Lucien read them aloud under his breath, then stiffened. “Scarlett, we need to leave. Now.”

“What does it say?”

He turned toward me slowly. “It says, ‘The Heir Shall Be Consumed.’”

We didn’t return upstairs. We didn’t have time.

Lucien packed in silence. I gathered what little I’d been able to collect—worn books, healing herbs, and the amulet Kael had left me on that one, cursed night.

We were halfway down the back road when the wind shifted again.

This time, it wasn’t blood I smelled.

It was him.

Kael stepped from the trees like he’d always belonged to them. Cloaked in shadow, eyes silver-bright, a hunter’s calm rage wrapped tight across his frame.

“Don’t run,” he said quietly.

I didn’t.

Lucien, however, was already reaching for his blade. “You’re not taking her.”

Kael’s eyes didn’t leave mine. “I didn’t come to take. I came to warn.”

“Of what?” I asked.

“The same thing you saw in the cellar. The force that leaves no blood behind. It’s not just tracking you anymore, Scarlett. It’s attached itself to the child. Feeding off them.”

My knees went weak. “What does that mean?”

“It means if we don’t stop it—soon—it won’t just take your child.” Kael’s voice broke. “It will become your child.”

Lucien stepped between us. “You expect us to believe you just happened to show up now? How do we know you’re not the one who—”

Kael moved faster than I could track. One second, Lucien was standing tall, defiant—the next, Kael had him pinned against a tree, fangs bared.

“If I wanted her gone, she’d already be gone,” he hissed. “But I won’t let you get her killed through arrogance.”

“Kael,” I said sharply. “Let him go.”

To my surprise, he did.

Lucien staggered back, fury burning in every line of his face.

“I didn’t come to fight you,” Kael said again, this time to me. “I came to ask you something else.”

My heart stuttered.

He stepped closer, every inch of his presence commanding. “Come with me. Not as a prisoner. Not as a bargaining chip. As the woman I love. The mother of the future that still might save all of us.”

“Kael—”

“Think carefully. You leave with him…” He nodded toward Lucien. “And the child may never make it to term. But with me, you’ll be guarded by forces even that thing can’t cross.”

It was everything I’d once wanted. And everything I’d been trying to escape.

“I need time,” I whispered.

Kael’s eyes didn’t soften, but they shimmered. “Then I’ll give you one day. Midnight tomorrow. After that… we’ll all be out of time.”

He turned and disappeared into the dark, the trees swallowing him whole.

I stared after him, my hands shaking.

Lucien stepped up beside me. “You’re not seriously considering it.”

I looked down at my belly.

And then into the woods where Kael had vanished.

“I don’t know what I’m considering anymore.”