Chapter 93 Patterns of Errors
Lila woke gasping for air, her body drenched in sweat despite the cold room. The image from her nightmare clung to her consciousness like cobwebs she couldn't brush away. A man in royal robes, his face obscured, looming over her. The same dream that had haunted her since waking with no memory.
She sat up slowly, expecting the sharp pain from the lash wounds to tear through her back. But there was nothing. No pain. No burning. Just the strange tight feeling of bandages wrapped around her torso.
Lila's eyes widened in confusion. She twisted carefully, testing her range of motion. The wounds should have been agony. She'd received ten brutal lashes just hours ago. Every movement should have been torture.
But she felt fine. Whole. As if the punishment had never happened.
She stood up slowly in the vast dark room, taking in her surroundings properly for the first time. Adrian's private chambers. Luxurious furnishings. A massive bed she'd been sleeping in. The King's bed.
Her sister's husband's bed.
Everything about this felt profoundly wrong. Even with Celeste dead, even with her memories scattered and incomplete, some deep instinct screamed that she shouldn't be here. That being in this room, in this bed, crossed lines she couldn't fully articulate.
The bandages Adrian had wrapped around her felt too intimate, too careful. His hands had touched her bare skin while treating her wounds. The thought made her shiver with discomfort she couldn't explain.
She needed to leave. Return to wherever servants were housed. Put distance between herself and this room that smelled like him.
Lila moved toward the door on silent feet. Her hand had just reached for the handle when another hand shot out and gripped her wrist with iron strength.
Pure survival instinct took over. Lila twisted sharply, using the grip on her wrist as leverage to pull her attacker forward while she pivoted. Her free hand came up in a strike aimed at the throat. Her leg swept out to knock them off balance.
The figure moved with her, incredibly fast. They released her wrist and caught her striking hand mid-swing. Before Lila could react, she found herself spun around and slammed against the wall, both her wrists pinned above her head by one strong hand.
"When did you learn to fight?" Adrian's voice came rough and shocked.
Lila's eyes snapped into focus. The King stood inches away, holding her immobile against the stone wall. He must have entered through the balcony window. She hadn't heard him at all.
Her chest heaved with rapid breathing, adrenaline still flooding her system. "I... I don't know. I just reacted. You grabbed me and I…"
"That wasn't just reaction." Adrian's eyes were sharp, studying her face intently. "Those were trained defensive moves. Combat techniques. Where did you learn them?"
"I didn't!" Lila's voice rose with genuine confusion and fear. "I've never trained to fight. I don't know how I did that. When you grabbed me, fear just took over and my body moved on its own."
Adrian's brows furrowed deeply. His grip on her wrists loosened slightly but didn't release. "You've never shown this kind of speed or skill before. Not in all the years I've known you."
But he didn't know if that was true anymore. His memories of Lila felt distant and unreliable, colored by the strange emptiness where the bond used to be.
He released one of her wrists and reached toward her back, intending to check the bandages. "Let me see if the wounds…"
"No!" Lila's free hand shot out and gripped his wrist firmly, stopping his movement. "Don't touch me."
"Do they still hurt?" Adrian's voice was quieter now, genuinely asking.
"No." Lila's answer came reluctant and confused. "There's no pain at all. Nothing hurts. I don't understand how that's possible."
Adrian frowned. He remembered very clearly ordering those lashes. Ten brutal strikes that had torn through her skin and left her screaming. Wounds like that should take days or even weeks to heal, especially for someone as weak as Lila was supposed to be.
His eyes caught on her other wrist, the one he still held loosely. The scar from the rejection ritual. The knife cut across her palm that had bled when they'd mixed blood under the moon.
That scar remained. Faded but clearly visible.
Adrian's thumb brushed across it almost unconsciously. The moment his skin touched that thin line of scar tissue, something exploded through him. A surge of emotion so powerful it stole his breath. Longing. Need. Recognition. The ghost of a bond that screamed this was his mate, his other half, the person his soul had been searching for.
He jerked his hand back as if burned, stumbling backward and releasing Lila completely.
The feelings vanished instantly. Cut off like a door slamming shut. He looked at Lila and felt nothing again. Just that strange emptiness and simmering anger he'd carried since the ritual.
Lila used his distraction to push past him and run for the door. She yanked it open and fled into the corridor, her bare feet slapping against cold stone.
Adrian stood alone in his chambers, staring at his hand. The hand that had touched her scar and felt everything the ritual was supposed to have destroyed.
His eyes widened with terrible realization. Something was very wrong with what had been done to them.
Adrian moved quickly to his private study, the room within his chambers where he kept his most sensitive research. Since the rejection ritual, he'd been spending every night investigating the plague and the patterns he'd noticed. Things that didn't add up. Coincidences that felt too deliberate.
He pulled out maps marked with locations where the plague had struck. Documents detailing the symptoms and progression. And older records, yellowed with age, describing the plague that had killed his mother.
The same plague. The exact same symptoms and progression. Twenty years apart but identical in every detail.