Chapter 350

Chapter 350
Zayn

There was nothing there.

No blood.

No claws.

Nothing.

But I could still feel it.

I could still remember the weight of everything that had happened.

“What did I do?”

My voice cracked.

The dungeon gave me no answer.

I looked toward the bars as though someone might suddenly appear and explain what was going to happen next, but the corridor remained empty.

I was alone.

Completely alone.

And for the first time, I couldn’t hide behind anger or defiance or the belief that I would eventually find some way out.

There was no immediate escape.

There was no argument I could win.

There was no clever plan waiting in the back of my mind.

There was only me, sitting on the floor of a fucking dungeon, trying to understand how I had managed to destroy everything in the span of a few minutes.

I dragged a trembling hand through my hair and let my head fall backward against the wall.

I had fucked up.

There wasn’t another way to describe it.

I had fucked up so badly that I couldn’t even begin to understand what the consequences would be.

My brothers had seen everything.

That thought made my chest tighten again.

Zion had been there.

Zakai had been there.

They had watched me transform.

They had watched me attack Charlotte.

They had watched the guards drag me away.

Maybe they were afraid.

Maybe they were angry.

Maybe they were wondering whether I had known this could happen.

Maybe they were wondering whether I had always been capable of it.

I closed my eyes.

I couldn’t blame them for any of those questions.

If I had been standing where they were, watching someone I loved lose control like that, I wouldn’t know what to think either.

The thought hurt more than I expected.

I had spent so long trying to protect them from what was happening inside this kingdom, trying to keep them away from the things I had learned, trying to make sure they never became targets because of me, and now they had witnessed the worst possible thing they could have seen.

They had watched their brother become a monster.

And there was nothing I could do to change what they had seen.

My father’s reaction was another question entirely.

I couldn’t figure out whether he had been shocked by what happened or whether he had simply been waiting for an opportunity to use it against me.

Maybe he had expected the beast to emerge.

Maybe he hadn’t.

Maybe this entire ceremony had been another test, another way of forcing me into a situation where he could see exactly how much control I had left.

I didn’t know.

That uncertainty frightened me.

I had spent six months learning that my father was capable of almost anything, but tonight had reminded me that I still didn’t understand the limits of what he was willing to do.

I lowered my head again, resting my forehead against my knees while I tried to breathe through the pressure building inside my chest.

The silence seemed to grow heavier around me.

I could still hear the ceremony in my head.

The music.

The priest.

The crowd.

The voices.

The screams.

I pressed my palms against my ears even though I knew it wouldn’t make a difference.

The memories were inside me.

There was nowhere I could go to escape them.

I tried to think about what would happen next, but every possibility seemed worse than the last.

Maybe they would keep me here for days.

Maybe weeks.

Maybe my father would decide that I was too dangerous to ever be allowed outside again.

Maybe the court would demand punishment.

Maybe my brothers would be forbidden from seeing me.

Maybe everyone in the kingdom would hear what happened before sunrise.

And maybe, when they did, the story wouldn’t be that I had lost control.

Maybe the story would simply be that Prince Zayn Duskbane had murdered the woman he was supposed to marry.

The thought made me feel sick.

I had spent six months trying to survive this kingdom without becoming the person they wanted me to become, and somehow I had managed to give them the perfect reason to see me as exactly that.

A weapon.

A monster.

A threat.

I looked down at my hands once more.

My fingers slowly curled into fists.

Then I opened them again.

Nothing happened.

I watched them, almost waiting for the beast to return, almost afraid that if I allowed myself to relax for even a moment, those claws would emerge again and I would lose control all over again.

But nothing happened.

That should have relieved me.

It didn’t.

Because now I knew that control wasn’t something I could take for granted anymore.

I had always believed that the beast was part of me, something I could command if I was disciplined enough, something that could become dangerous but would ultimately remain under my control.

Tonight had destroyed that certainty.

Whatever had happened in that hall had broken something between us.

Or perhaps it had revealed something that had always been there.

I didn’t know which possibility was worse.

I leaned my head back against the wall and stared up toward the ceiling, although all I could see was darkness beyond the weak torchlight filtering through the bars.

My body felt exhausted.

My mind felt worse.

And beneath all of it was a crushing sense of guilt that I couldn’t escape no matter how many times I told myself that I hadn’t been in control.

The beast had done it.

But the beast was mine.

It had been my body.

My hands.

My teeth.

My claws.

My responsibility.

I couldn’t hide behind the fact that I hadn’t wanted it.

I couldn’t undo what had happened simply because I hadn’t chosen it.

Charlotte was still dead.

That was the only fact that mattered.

My throat tightened as I lowered my gaze again.

“I fucked up.”

The words came out barely above a whisper.

I swallowed, but the lump in my throat refused to disappear.

“I fucked up so fucking much.”

My voice cracked on the last word, and for a moment I simply sat there, staring at the floor while the sound of my own breathing echoed faintly around the cell.

I didn’t know what tomorrow would look like.

I didn’t know whether my father would punish me, whether my brothers would ever forgive me, or whether I would ever be allowed to leave this dungeon again.

I didn’t even know whether I could trust myself anymore.

All I knew was that something had changed tonight, something I couldn’t take back no matter how desperately I wanted to, and the worst part was that I couldn’t even tell whether the thing I was most afraid of was what my father might do to me next or what might happen if the beast ever managed to take control again.