Chapter 150 Love Trapped
The note I sang was not a sound a human throat should be able to produce.
It was a deep, grinding, subsonic vibration. It sounded like tectonic plates shifting beneath the earth, a heavy, crushing hum that immediately made my own teeth vibrate in my gums.
The physical impact on the Throne Room was instantaneous.
The Emperor flinched violently, taking a staggering step backward. His skeletal hands flew to his ears. The crystal goblet slipped from his fingers, shattering against the polished black marble. The dark blood splattered across the floor, instantly beginning to boil and hiss.
The smell of raw, rotting kelp and sulfur exploded into the air, completely swallowing the scent of the orchids.
Through the blood-bond, Klaus let out a ragged, agonizing scream in my mind. The magic was filtering directly into his chest. The dark, necrotic veins of the curse sitting over his heart flared with a blinding, toxic heat. The rot was activating, filling his veins with the heavy, crushing sludge of the abyssal deep.
Share it! I roared through the tether, refusing to let him carry the agony alone. I threw the mental gates wide open, dragging half of the physical torment back up the connection into my own body.
A searing, white-hot fire erupted in my veins. My spine arched, my hands slamming flat against the velvet cushion. Blood poured freely from both of my nostrils, dripping down my chin to stain the black silk of my dress.
I kept singing.
I pushed the note harder, deeper, turning the hum into a physical shockwave of pure rot.
The polished gold bars of my cage instantly lost their luster. They turned a sickly, tarnished brown, the metal oxidizing and pitting right before my eyes. The dark red velvet cushion beneath me began to wither and disintegrate, turning to dry, grey ash.
"Stop!" the Emperor shrieked, his papery voice cracking in absolute terror. He stumbled backward, tripping over his own heavy velvet robes.
I didn't stop. I poured the raw, unadulterated fury of a broken Queen into the air.
The massive obsidian block in the center of the hall—the executioner's altar where Klaus had kneeled—split perfectly down the middle. The two heavy halves of the black glass fell apart, crashing onto the floor.
The polished black marble beneath the Emperor's feet began to fracture. Deep, jagged spiderwebs of cracked stone raced outward from the gilded cage, tearing the floor of the Throne Room apart. The massive bronze chandeliers above us groaned, the heavy metal chains holding them to the ceiling beginning to rust and warp under the corrosive pressure of the song.
"Guards! Kill her!" the Emperor roared, scrambling backward on his hands and knees, desperate to get away from the expanding circle of rot.
The four elite guards rushed forward from the shadows, raising their heavy halberds.
Before they could take three steps, the magic hit their blackened steel armor. The metal shrieked, rusting instantly. The wooden shafts of their weapons dry-rotted in their hands, splintering into useless dust. The guards collapsed to their knees, clutching their helmets as the subsonic vibration shattered their eardrums.
I felt my heart stutter. My lungs were burning, starved for oxygen, entirely consumed by the magical output. Klaus was barely holding on in the dark, his mind a chaotic storm of pain and forced rot, but he was feeding his immortal strength back up the tether, keeping my human heart beating just long enough to finish the strike.
I snapped my jaw shut.
The subsonic hum cut off instantly.
The silence that rushed back into the Throne Room was deafening.
I slumped forward, catching my weight on my chained, bleeding wrists. I dragged a desperate, ragged gasp of dry air into my lungs. My entire body trembled violently. Thick, dark blood coated my chin and dripped onto the floor of the cage.
I looked up through the tarnished, pitted bars.
The Throne Room was a ruined wasteland. The orchids were dead, turned to black slime in their vases. The marble floor was a shattered, jagged mess. The guards lay writhing and deaf on the ground.
The Emperor was backed against the base of his ivory dais. He was trembling, his blind eyes wide with profound, unadulterated horror. He looked at the shattered execution block, the rusted armor of his guards, and then at me.
He finally understood.
"You are not a filter," the Emperor whispered, his voice shaking uncontrollably. "You are the plague."
I pulled myself up, sitting tall on the pile of grey ash that used to be a velvet cushion. I wiped the blood from my mouth with the back of my iron cuff, a cold, ruthless smile spreading across my face.
"You put me in a cage," I rasped, my voice ruined, bleeding, and absolute. "You chained my Anchor to a rock. You thought you broke the board."
I leaned forward, resting my forehead against the tarnished metal bars, my turquoise eyes burning with the cold, crushing pressure of the deep.
"The game hasn't even started, Emperor," I promised him. "I am going to rot this Citadel until there is nothing left but dust and sea salt. And you are going to watch."