Chapter 16 FIND ME IN YOUR MEMORY.

Chapter 16 FIND ME IN YOUR MEMORY.


Seren’s POV

The man holding me smelled like the end of the world.

His heart was beating loudly, his chest heaving against mine as he carried me out of the ice spire. 

I should have felt safe. I should have felt like the "Salvation" he kept whispering about. But all I felt was the ghost of the needle in my neck.

Every time his skin brushed mine, my body didn't feel comfort—it recoiled.

"I’ve got you, little one. I’m never letting you go again," he rasped, his voice thick with a feeling I couldn’t name.

I didn't answer. I couldn't. My mind was a white room with all the furniture removed. 

I looked over his shoulder at the carnage he had left behind. 

The snow wasn't white; it was a bruised, muddy red. Bodies were strewn across the floor like discarded rags.

He had done this. For me? Or for the thing he thought I was?

"Put me down," I whispered. 

He stiffened, his grip tightening until the iron-burns on my wrists flared with pain. "No. You’re weak and You haven't eaten in days. They starved you."

Hunger. The word triggered a painful memory. 

I saw a silver tray. I saw a bowl of broth that smelled like poison. I remembered the way my stomach had shriveled into a hard, painful knot until I was licking the frost off the walls just to feel something in my throat. 

I remembered the woman in the mask laughing while she held a loft of bread  just out of my reach.

I began to shake. Not from the cold, but from the bone-deep terror of being handled.

"Don't touch me," I gasped, shoving at his chest.

Draven stopped in the middle of the frozen wasteland. The wind howled around us, whipping his dark hair across his face. The gold in his eyes was so bright it was nauseating. 

He looked at me with a  devotion that felt like another kind of trap.

"Seren, it’s me. It’s Draven. Your mate. Your King."

"I don't have a King," I spat, the words coming from a dark, instinctive place. "I have a cell. I have a needle. I have the cold."

I looked at his hands—large, blood-stained, and capable of crushing my skull. "You're just another one of them. You just use kinder words."

He flinched as if I had driven a blade into his heart.  Like I had physically hurt him.

The Alpha King, the man who had just dismantled an army, looked like he was about to fall to his knees in the snow.

"I am nothing like them," he whispered, his voice cracking. "I am the man who would die to keep you warm."

"Then let me go."

"I can't." The possessiveness flared in his eyes again, dark. "You're half of my soul. If I let you go, I am a monster without a cage. I’m taking you home."

Home. 

He meant the palace. 

To him, it was a sanctuary. To me, it was just a larger room to be trapped in.

He began to walk again, his strides long.

He didn't care that I was a shell. He didn't care that I didn't remember the way he had  once looked at me. He only cared that I was his.

It was the ultimate  tragedy: he loved a woman who no longer existed, and I was haunted by a man I couldn't remember loving.

By the time we reached the black carriage waiting at the base of the mountain, the sky was a soft pink mixed with orange.

He slid inside, refusing to put me on the seat. He kept me on his lap, his cloak wrapped around us both, trapping me in his heat.

I stared out the window. I felt the feeling from the itch of the shackles. I felt the cold drip of the Lethe-glass sliding into my veins.

"Eat," he commanded softly, holding a piece of dried meat to my lips.

I turned my head away. The thought of putting anything inside my body made me want to scream.

"Seren. You need your strength."

"Why?" I asked, finally meeting his gaze. "So I can be strong enough to watch you kill more people? So I can be a better trophy for your throne?"

His  jaw set in a line. He dropped the food, his hand coming up to cup the back of my head, forcing me to stay still. He leaned in, his forehead resting against mine.

"You think I’m the villain," he whispered. "Maybe I am. But I’m the only villain who will ever love you this much. You will remember, Seren. I will spend every breath I have left making you remember."

"And if I don't?"

His eyes flashed. "Then I’ll just have to make you fall in love with a monster all over again."

He leaned down and kissed my forehead. It was a gentle gesture, but I felt the weight of the kiss. It was a vow. It was a threat.

I closed my eyes and leaned back against the leather seat, the emptiness in my chest a deep, aching feeling . 

He was a King And I was just a girl who wanted to forget the world existed.