Ruin or Salvation

Lucian:

The ballroom drowns itself in velvet and violins, a sound too polished, too sweet for a place as damned as Ashwyck. I stand in the shadows at the back of the hall, mask half hiding my face, drink forgotten in my hand. I don’t dance. I don’t smile. I don’t entertain the curious stares of the sycophants in their gilded masks.

I watch her.

Isadora.

My lost little raven.

My curse. My tether. My undoing. She glides across the floor in crimson, the gown Kai chose for her hugging her body like sin sculpted in silk. The others take their turns with her—Rhett’s possessive growl, Silas’s ghostlike grace, Kai’s playful glimmer—but my eyes never leave her. I don’t need to touch her to feel her. Her pulse thrums in my veins like it belongs to me.

And then—something colder cuts through the heat of obsession.

A voice. Low, guttural, serpentine.

I shift my gaze from her to the far corner of the ballroom, where the crowd thins into shadows. He stands there.

Professor Maldric.

His black robes cut through the sea of bright silks, his lips moving in a chant too faint to hear over the orchestra, but I know. I know the taste of malice when it slithers in the air. His eyes are fixed on her. Unblinking. Consuming.

The crystal glass in my hand shatters before I realize I’ve crushed it. Blood slicks my palm, the scent of it mixing with the iron tang of fury.

Mine. She is mine.

I move before thought can stop me. Across the floor, through the crowd, a predator slicing through oblivious prey. The dancers part for me without realizing why—they just know. Something hungry walks among them.

Maldric doesn’t flinch when I reach him. Doesn’t even break his chant. His gaze is locked on her like he’s tethered too, like he has the right.

“Stop.” My voice is low, lethal.

He doesn’t.

So I do what I do best.

I slam him against the stone wall, the sound cracking through the music. Gasps ripple behind us, but I don’t care. My hand grips his throat, tight enough to silence his words.

“You dare,” I snarl, fangs threatening to bare. “You dare put your foul eyes on her. Speak her name with your rot-stained breath.”

Maldric’s lips twist, his voice rasping around my hold. “She is not yours to keep, boy. She is prophecy. She is doom. And doom belongs to me.”

Rage sears my veins. My fist drives into his gut, hard enough to make him choke. His laugh, broken though it is, only sharpens my fury.

“She burns with power you cannot leash,” he hisses, eyes gleaming like pits. “You think your bloodlust makes you dangerous? You think your claim matters? She will break you. Break all of you.”

I slam him again, harder, stone groaning under the impact. “If you even breathe near her, I’ll tear your tongue from your mouth and make you choke on it.”

The shadows stir at the edges of my vision, restless. The music falters as more eyes turn toward us, the perfect illusion of civility unraveling.

Maldric’s grin is bloodied now, my fist having found his mouth. But he spits red and black, smiling through it. “You feel it, don’t you? Every time she bleeds, every time she dreams—the world shifts. And you—” he laughs, low and guttural, “—you’re already lost.”

I bare my fangs fully now, every shred of control a frayed thread. My hand tightens around his throat until his words rasp to silence. Part of me wants to end it here, to snap his neck, to leave his corpse cooling on the marble for all of Ashwyck to see.

But I can feel her eyes on me.

I don’t have to look—I know when she’s watching. The air thickens, her presence pulling at my rage, tethering it just enough to keep me from slaughter.

I drag Maldric close until my lips brush his ear, voice venom. “If you ever look at her again, I will peel you open vein by vein and savor every scream.”

Then I hurl him to the ground like the filth he is.

Gasps echo, whispers rising in fevered waves. The headmistress’s voice barks orders somewhere in the distance, but I don’t listen. My eyes find Isadora across the floor, wide, shaken, so beautiful it kills me.

Maldric laughs again, a sound crawling up from the pit of his ruined throat. “You’ll learn, boy,” he wheezes. “You’ll all learn. She is ruin wrapped in silk, and ruin cannot be chained.”

I lunge for him, ready to finish it. Only strong hands catch me—Rhett, Silas, Kai—each of them pulling, restraining, hissing for control. The crowd roars around us, the ball unraveling into chaos.

But my eyes stay fixed on Maldric as he slinks back into the shadows, smile splitting his bloodied face.

And deeper still—on her.

Always her.

Because prophecy or doom, ruin or salvation—she will never belong to him.

She already belongs to me.