Chapter 97 The discussion.
"What have you done?"
The words weren't a question. They were a death sentence. Morrigan stood at the mouth of the cavern, her silver robes swaying in the damp draft, her face a mask of pure, unadulterated horror. She didn't look at the glowing moon rocks or the tranquil water. She looked at Ronan, and then she looked at the red hair spilled across his chest.
Ronan didn’t move. He didn’t even flinch. The lethal, jagged pain that had been carving out his insides for days was gone, replaced by a silence so heavy it felt like lead in his veins. He looked at the old witch, his gaze as cold as the stone beneath him.
"The pain is gone, Morrigan," Ronan said, his voice a low, dangerous rumble that vibrated through the water. "I did what I had to do to survive. Now tell me why you’re standing in my private sanctuary looking like you’ve seen a ghost."
Morrigan didn't answer. She took a step forward, her boots clicking sharply against the rock, her eyes wet with a sudden, frantic grief. She looked at Pandora, who was stirring against Ronan’s side, her lashes fluttering as she moved from sleep to awareness.
"It wasn't your pain," Morrigan whispered, her voice cracking.
Ronan’s jaw tightened. He felt Pandora’s hand slide up his arm, her skin warm and damp, but his focus was pinned on the witch. "Explain. Now."
"The episodes. The fever. The feeling of your bones snapping when you were sitting perfectly still," Morrigan said, her breath coming in ragged hitches. "We found the source. We traced the resonance through the Aether. It didn't originate from your body, Your Majesty. It never did."
Silence stretched between them, thin and brittle. Even the water seemed to stop rippling.
"It belongs to your twin flame mate," Morrigan said.
The world tilted. The grounding stillness Ronan had felt upon waking suddenly felt like a theft and a sickening, physical betrayal. He didn't pull away from Pandora, but he went rigid, his muscles corded like steel cables.
"My twin flame mate," Ronan repeated. The words felt like ash in his mouth.
"You have a mate, your majesty. She is alive," Morrigan cried out, her composure finally breaking. "Somewhere out there, she is being tortured. That fever you always? That was her burning. Those screams you heard in your head? They weren't hallucinations. She was calling for you. She was reaching through the bond, begging for her mate to find her."
Morrigan’s gaze dropped to the water, to the aftermath of the night Ronan had spent trying to drown out the noise.
"And while she was screaming," Morrigan’s voice turned into a serrated blade, "you used the connection to flush her pain away. You used another woman to silence your mate’s cries. You didn't cure the bond, Ronan. You muffled it."
The shift in the room was instantaneous.
It wasn't a movement; it was an atmospheric collapse. The calm was gone. In its place was a vacuum of predatory horror. Ronan looked down at Pandora. She was fully awake now, looking up at him with a soft, sleepy smile that turned into a mask of confusion as she felt the sudden, killing frost radiating from his body.
To her, this was a victory. To Ronan, she suddenly looked like a stranger. Worse, she was the static that had cut his only line to the woman he was born to protect.
"Where is she?" Ronan asked.
His voice didn't sound human. It was a hollow, echoing growl that seemed to come from the stone itself.
"I don't know," Morrigan whispered, tears spilling over. "The connection is fractured. By bringing a third party into the circle, you’ve clouded the trail. You’ve silenced her voice in your head to find your own comfort."
Pandora sat up then, the water cascading down her chest as she realized the shift in the air. She reached out, her fingers trembling as she tried to touch his arm. "Ronan? What is she saying? I was helping you. I saved you from the fever—"
"Get off me," Ronan rasped.
He didn't wait for her to move. He stood up, the water shedding from his powerful frame as he stepped out of the pool. He didn't care about his nakedness. He didn't care about the woman he had just spent the night with. He felt the mark on his soul and for the first time, it was silent.
It wasn't a peaceful silence. It was the silence of a grave.
He had traded her screams for Pandora’s moans. Every time he had pushed into Pandora to forget the pain, he had been turning his back on the girl who was being broken in the dark. He had used his mate's agony as fuel for a distraction.
"Find her," Ronan commanded, his eyes glowing with a terrifying, molten silver light.
"Your Majesty, the trail is cold. The interference—"
"Find her!" he roared, the sound shaking the very foundations of the cavern. Dust drifted down from the ceiling. "Or I will burn this kingdom to the ground until I find the ash of her soul."
He turned his gaze to Pandora, who was still in the water, shivering as the cold of the morning finally hit her. There was no warmth in his eyes. No friendship. No memory of the night before.
"Get out," he said.
"Ronan, please—"
"Get. Out."
Presently.
The memory vanished as the heavy doors of the receiving chamber flung open.
Pandora walked in, her gait a slow, confident strut. She had changed into a gown that left very little to the imagination, the silk clinging to her curves. She reached up, coquettishly stroking her exposed chest as she moved toward him.
"I had no idea you would summon me so soon after my little chat in the hallway with her," she purred, her eyes dancing with triumph. "Missed me already, Ronan?"
Ronan didn't move from the window. He didn't smile. The shadows in the room seemed to bleed toward him, darkening the air around his feet.
"Close the door, Pandora," he said, his voice as cold as the Moon Pool at midnight. "We need to talk about what you told my mate."