Chapter 80 Chapter Twenty Seven
The ribs above us cracked open, and through the widening gap, a figure tumbled in — caught mid-scream, her body twisting as the bone walls reached for her.
Salem.
I saw the flash of her hair, the terror in her eyes. Then the Orchard caught her.
The ground itself rose to meet her fall — not to cushion, but to claim. Veins of bone coiled around her legs, her wrists, her throat, pulling her down with a wet, greedy sound. She struggled, gasping, fighting against the living floor that wanted to devour her.
“Stop it!” I choked, yanking against my chains. “Stop!”
Harrow didn’t. He only watched, his expression almost peaceful. “You brought her here, Lucian. Or rather, she followed you. This is the price of devotion.”
Salem screamed again as the bone twisted around her. Her flashlight rolled away, spinning wild beams across the Orchard until it flickered and died. She looked up once—straight at me.
Her eyes found mine through the shadows.
And she whispered my name.
That whisper shattered something I hadn’t known could still break.
The chains bit deeper, almost mocking. My ribs cracked, my breath turned to blood. But pain wasn’t enough to cage me anymore. I felt it — that same fire Harrow used to forge me — twisting, building, rejecting the hand that made it.
“You can’t save her,” Harrow said, but there was strain in his voice now. “Even if you broke free, the Orchard obeys me.”
I met his eyes, every word tearing raw from my throat. “Then I’ll make it forget you.”
He laughed once. “You can’t.”
“I will.”
The air thickened. The ground heaved. Every bone within reach began to hum with a frequency that hurt to hear. Ezra and Enoch looked up through their own bindings, their faces pale.
“Lucian—” Ezra croaked. “What are you—”
Harrow’s calm resolved into something colder as he stepped forward, a divine punishment tool—the grim covenant gleaming faintly under the flickering light. With a sudden strike, it landed solidly against my temple, a blow quick and merciless.
Stars exploded behind my eyelids. The chains rattled as I sagged, the fire inside me flickering but not dying.
The grim covenant came down again and again, each strike echoing like a death knell across the Orchard. The heavy blows rang against my skull and ribs, relentless and unforgiving.
“Sleep, Lucian,” he murmured through gritted teeth.
Pain exploded behind my eyes, each hit fracturing the fragile fire within me. The chains bit deeper, twisted tighter, but still I fought the darkness clawing at the edges of my vision.
Blood trickled down my temple, my breath ragged and raw, but Harrow’s strikes never ceased.
Finally, with a shudder that shook my very soul, the world slipped away — the cracking of ribs, the wet groan of the Orchard, and Salem’s desperate eyes fading into black.
..........
Harrow’s laughter rang low through the Orchard, sharp and clean as a scalpel.
“Is that all, Vale?” he said, tilting his head. “A few threats, a few broken chains, and then—silence? The great Lucian Vale, undone by sentiment. How wonderfully human.”
I tried to speak, but the air had grown too thick. The magic in my veins, the blood, the chains—everything pulsed in uneven rhythm, faster, weaker, faster again. The ground seemed to breathe with me.
I could feel Harrow crouching beside me, probably smiling. “You always were the most disappointing of my creations.”
He leaned closer, voice dipping to a whisper. “And to think, all it took was a girl to break you.”
The words carved straight through me. A hot, unbearable pressure built behind my eyes. The world spun—first slowly, then all at once.
And then once again—
nothing.
\---
Darkness. Weightless. Endless. At first, I thought it was death.
But death doesn’t echo.
The sound came soft at first, like a breath sliding across the surface of water. Then it spoke, smooth as silk and twice as cold.
“You always make such a spectacle when you fall,” the voice said. “Do you ever tire of collapsing, Lucian?”
I turned—or tried to—but I had no body. No hands, no breath, just the awareness of movement in an infinite black sea.
“Who—”
“Oh, don’t pretend you don’t know me,” the voice purred. “You wear my name in your marrow. Lust. Desire. The sin you’ve spent centuries caging.”
And then he stepped out of the dark—if “he” was even the word. A shape of smoke and glass, molten eyes gleaming from a shifting face that was half mine, half something else.
“You broke your oath,” Lust accused, voice laced with scorn. “You claimed you were in love. You tried to cage me—for her. And now look at you: shackled, bleeding, begging like a mortal fool.”
I could feel the weight of his judgment grinding against the raw edges of my soul.
And yet, I dared to defy him.
“Help me,” I said, voice hoarse but steady. “Help me save her.”
His laughter cracked the void open like thunder.
“Help you save a girl?” Lust’s voice was ice cutting through flame. “The only thing I’ve ever felt for her is what I am. Lust. I don’t love—I consume.”
“You wouldn’t understand,” I said.
He stopped, so close I could feel the heat of him—an echo of fire that wasn’t real. “Understand?” he sneered. “Lucian, I am what you feel for her. Every stolen glance, every ache you dress up as love—it’s all me. Lust wearing a prettier name.”
“That’s a lie,” I bit out. “What I feel isn’t you.”
“Oh, but it is.” Lust’s grin deepened, cruel and knowing. “You just wanted to believe there was more to it than hunger.”
For a moment, silence. My throat worked around words that wouldn’t form. My chest ached, my pride collapsing under the weight of his cruel words.
“Please,” I whispered. “If there’s anything left of me in you… help her.”
Lust tilted his head, eyes gleaming like shards of molten glass. “Begging again, are we?”
“Not for me,” I said. “For her.”
“I refuse.” His voice turned to glass. “You’ve weakened us for her. You’ve made me small. Why should I save what made us fall?”
Rage surged through my broken body, flaring like wildfire, setting nerve and bone alight.
I roared back, voice ragged but fierce:
“Because you wanted her too! Don’t deny it, Lust. That night—after the Chapel of Teeth—when you took over, sat on our throne, and she didn’t run. You saw the way she looked at us. She wasn’t afraid of you. She let you. You touched her, and she didn’t stop you. You felt it—how she yielded, how she trembled. You wanted her.”
The air shuddered, thick with a heat that wasn’t mine. Valen's laughter rolled through the void, low and cruel, shaking the blackness.
“Wanting,” he said, his voice slipping around me like smoke, “is not loving. Desire burns and ends. I am fire, not devotion.”
“Then burn for her,” I snarled. “Burn for her the way I did.”
For a moment, silence hung heavy—then a slow, delighted growl rippled through the dark. The pit trembled. I could almost see him smiling in the void—slow, dark, magnificent.
“So be it but remember this, Lucian Vale,” Valen whispered. “When you rise, you rise as us.”
The laughter stopped. A pause. Then softer, almost to himself—
“I think I like the wild cat.”
The last word curled like a smirk before his essence poured into me—fire, fury, and hunger colliding as the void shattered apart.