Chapter 3: They haven't found him

🖱️ Jayden 🖱️

My whole body felt like it was on fire. It wasn’t the kind of fire that licked at skin from the outside. This was worse. This crawled through my veins like something alive, something clawing its way from the inside out, until every drop of blood in my body felt like it had been replaced with molten lava.

My breathing came in short, uneven gasps. I gripped the edge of the car seat so hard my knuckles went white, the cushion biting into my palms as another wave of pain crashed through me and nearly took my knees out from under me.

Blood.

Tiny crimson droplets welled up along my collarbone before sliding down my neck, my arms, dripping in slow, deliberate lines onto my cloths beneath me. I watched them fall almost distantly, the way you watch rain from behind glass. Like it was happening to someone else and my body had decided to betray me and forgotten to send the memo.

It had been happening for months now.

Ever since the mate mark Victor left on my neck, the one that had gone silent and colorless for ten long years suddenly reappeared out of nowhere on my wedding day.

At first it was barely visible. A faint outline beneath my skin, easy to miss unless you were looking for it, and gods knew I looked for it every single morning in the mirror, terrified I'd imagined it the night before. Then it darkened.

Then it started to ache, low and constant, like an old wound that never quite healed. And now… now it burned like it was trying to carve itself straight through my throat.

"Jay… what's going on with you?"

Jane's voice cut through the haze with panic. I hadn't even heard her move closer to me from the back seat. By the time I lifted my head she was already kneeling in front of me, her hands hovering uselessly over my bleeding arms like she didn't know where it was safe to touch, her usually composed face cracked wide open with fear.

"I don't know," I managed through gritted teeth, tasting copper at the back of my throat. "But I know it's has to do with Victor. It's always Victor."

Saying his name still did something to my chest. Even after ten years. Even after the funeral that never had a body to bury, the throne room draped in black, the way I'd stood at the front of a crowd of thousands and thanked a dead man for saving my life while every part of me wanted to lie down on that cold marble floor and stop existing too.

I still remembered his hands.

The way they'd cradled my face the night before he chose death. The way he'd smiled as we made love for the last time, I didn’t even get a chance to say good bye to him or his dead body.

Four months ago, the mark came back and hope came back with it, uninvited and merciless.

Hope. I used to think it was the kindest thing in the world. Now I understood it was the cruelest. Because ever since Jane’s wedding that the mark appeared I woke up to fire beneath my skin instead of a dull, familiar scar, the pain had become part of my daily life… a constant, aching reminder that somewhere in this world, something impossible might have happened. That the universe, for once, might not have taken everything from me after all.

Victor was alive.

At least, that was what the mark wanted me to believe. That was what I let myself believe on the good days, and dreaded on the bad ones, because a mark that burned without an answer wasn't hope.

It was a countdown to disappointment I couldn't stop resetting.

But today was different. Today the pain didn't just ache… it screamed, tearing through muscle and bone like something on the other end was fighting to break free, or fighting to be found, and I didn't know which possibility terrified me more.

Jane was already reaching for her phone before I could tell her not to bother, her fingers shaking as she pressed it to her ear.

"I'm calling Sammy to come meet us at the fairy realm boarder. You can't even stand right now, let alone use your powers."

I wanted to argue. I wanted to tell her I'd be fine, that I'd been fine for four months of this, that I didn't need anyone hovering over me like I was made of glass. But another sharp burst of pain exploded through my neck before I could get the words out, and the car tilted sideways, colors bleeding into each other, and for one long, terrifying second I genuinely thought I was going to faint….

If Victor truly came back… If he was really out there somewhere, alive, breathing, wearing smug face and not knowing my name…

I didn't know if I would laugh or fall apart completely. Maybe both. Maybe there wasn't a difference anymore between the two.

It would mean the universe had finally, finally decided to give something back after taking so relentlessly. First it took my Victor. Then it took the man birthed me and meant so much.

If it meant to hand me my vampire king again after everything… after taking my dada…

I didn't know if my heart was built to survive that kind of mercy.

A familiar scent reached me before I felt the warmth of him.

I didn't need to turn around. I already knew.

Sammy.

The second his arms wrapped around me, pulling me back against his chest, the fire beneath my skin eased not gone, never fully gone these days, but dulled enough that I could breathe again. My ragged gasps slowed. One of his hands moved in steady circles against my back while the other cradled the back of my head, careful of the blood still sliding down my neck.

"You'll be alright," he murmured against my hair, over and over, like a vow he refused to stop making. "I'm here. I love you. You're going to be alright."

I pressed my face into his shoulder and, without warning, felt tears slip down my cheeks. Silent at first. Then not silent at all.

I frowned against his skin. "Why am I crying?"

Sammy rested his forehead against mine, his eyes searching my face like he could read the answer there if he looked hard enough.

"Because you're in pain, baby."

"No." I shook my head weakly, my throat raw. "This isn't just the pain."

I couldn't explain it not in a way that made sense out loud. The tears felt like something older than the burn in my skin. Like grief and hope tangled so tightly together I couldn't separate one from the other anymore and some part of me already knew a truth my mind hadn't caught up to yet.

I lifted my head and looked at him. "Have you found him?"

Sammy's silence answered before his voice ever did and I watched him search for a way to soften words that had no soft version left.

"I've had our people search every kingdom. Every territory. Every hidden settlement across our world for the last four months." He paused, and I felt my stomach drop before he even finished. "They haven't found him."

"Everywhere?" My voice cracked on the word.

"Everywhere."

"And his face? Someone must have seen his face by now, Sammy. He's not exactly a stranger's face to forget."

Sammy lowered his eyes, and that alone told me everything before he spoke. "No one has seen Victor's face. Not once. Not anywhere."

Fresh tears blurred my vision, hot and furious this time instead of quiet.

I hated this. I hated the hope that refused to die no matter how many times it should have. I hated waking up every single morning half-convinced today would be the day someone finally walked through the palace doors with news, and then watching the sun set on nothing. Again. Four months of nothing. Four months of a mark that burned brighter every week while the rest of the world stayed maddeningly, impossibly silent.

How was that even possible?

Victor wasn't an ordinary man. His face had been carved into monuments. His name was spoken in the same breath as legends. He wasn't remembered simply as a king he was remembered as the man who burned himself into ash so someone else could keep living. Children in three kingdoms grew up hearing his story before they learned their own family names. The Dragon Prince who smiled through death itself.

That wasn't a face the world simply lost track of.

So why couldn't anyone find him?

My fingers rose slowly to the mark on my neck, still hot beneath my touch, still pulsing faintly like a second heartbeat that refused to give up.

I closed my eyes and let the question fall into the silence of the room, quiet enough that maybe, somewhere, some impossible part of the universe would finally hear it.

"Where are you, Victor?"