Chapter Thirty-Two: The Ghosts Beneath Our Blood

I thought I’d buried my demons.

Turns out, they were just waiting for me to dig deep enough to meet them face-to-face.

And they wore the same blood as me.

Clara slept beside me in the massive bed, curled so tightly she looked like a shadow folded into human shape. She’d refused to sleep alone after the attack. Lucien had reinforced the estate, Mira doubled security, and Andrei hadn’t left the hallway since.

But none of it felt enough.

Not when something ancient stirred beneath our skin.

The Crown of Thorns.

The phrase echoed in my head like a curse. They weren’t just some rogue cult clinging to Reagan’s ideals. They were something else—something older, something bred into the marrow of every Blackwood heir.

Lucien was at the window, a glass of whiskey untouched in his hand. His eyes didn’t move from the night beyond.

“You should sleep,” I whispered.

He didn’t turn. “I did. Once. And my brother killed someone in that moment.”

I slid out of bed and walked to him. “We’re not safe here, are we?”

“No,” he said softly. “Because we were never meant to survive this.”

By morning, Clara was gone.

My heart dropped.

We tore the estate apart. Guards scrambled. Lucien barked orders. Panic gripped me like a noose around the throat.

But then a voice.

“Ivy?” came her soft tone from the library doorway.

She stood in her pajamas, barefoot, a book in hand.

My knees nearly gave out. “Where the hell were you?”

“I couldn’t sleep,” she whispered. “So I came to read.”

I crossed the room, my voice low but shaking. “You don’t leave your room without telling me. Ever.”

She nodded, guilt painted across her face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Lucien looked at me over her shoulder. His jaw was tight.

“We need to move her,” he said. “This house is no longer neutral.”

That night, I opened the journal again.

My mother’s words were elegant, careful.

“If they find her—if Reagan finds her—it will be the end of both my daughters.”

She had known.

She had known Clara was alive.

She had died keeping that secret.

Tears burned my eyes.

I laid my head against the worn pages and whispered into the dark, “I’ll finish what you started.”

We relocated to the Blackwood family’s hidden manor in the Scottish Highlands. One of Lucien’s late mother’s properties, untouched for years.

Clara stared out at the mist-covered lochs like she could hear voices from them.

“Do you feel it?” she asked.

“What?”

“The ghosts. They live in our blood.”

Three days in, Mira pulled me aside.

“We found something.”

She handed me a photograph, worn at the edges.

It showed a group of children in white uniforms. All of them pale. All with the same mark on their wrist.

A crown of thorns.

Clara was in the photo.

So was Serena.

And someone else.

A boy.

Mira tapped the corner. “This one? That’s Eryx. But younger. Before the surgeries. Before the branding.”

I swallowed hard. “Why do they all look the same?”

Mira didn’t blink. “Because Reagan was cloning bloodlines. Using embryo grafting to manufacture genetic templates.”

I choked. “So Clara isn’t my sister?”

“She is,” Mira said firmly. “Maybe not how you expect. But she’s your sister by trauma. And by choice.”

That night, Clara sat across from me by the fireplace.

“I heard them talk once,” she said. “They said one of us would be The Mother of the New Line.”

I froze. “The what?”

She looked up at me. “They didn’t mean a mother like yours was. They meant a vessel. One they could manipulate. Control. Breed from.”

Lucien stepped in behind me, a dark shadow.

“No one touches you,” he growled. “Not while I breathe.”

But Clara’s lips trembled. “You don’t understand. I think they chose me.”

The fire roared as I paced the library, anger slicing through my bones like glass.

“They turned her into an incubator,” I spat. “A project. They never saw her as a person.”

Lucien’s eyes were fire. “And they still want her. That’s why the attack failed. It wasn’t to kill. It was a retrieval.”

I turned to him. “Then we strike first.”

The plan took root in days.

We traced the cult’s sanctuary to Prague—a centuries-old monastery buried beneath a cathedral. A front for bio-research and secret rituals.

Lucien, Mira, Andrei, Clara, and I boarded a private jet under false names.

Clara sat beside me, silent.

“You okay?” I asked.

She nodded, but her voice was distant. “I don’t want to be the crown.”

“You never were,” I said. “You’re the storm.”

In Prague, the wind howled like it had something to say.

We disguised ourselves and slipped into the cathedral during a private midnight mass. The chants echoed like an ancient curse.

In a chamber below the altar, Mira found the sealed door.

It required blood to open.

Lucien didn’t hesitate. He sliced his palm and pressed it to the crest.

The door groaned open.

Inside were cold operating tables.

Jars of fluid.

Embryos suspended in stasis.

One label read: “Blackwood Generation XIII. Viable.”

Clara turned to me, eyes wild. “That’s… me.”

Lucien stepped forward and found a terminal. “There’s more.”

He pulled up files—recordings. Experiments. Logs of psychological tests.

One screen blinked to life.

Eryx’s face filled it.

“If you’ve come this far, then congratulations. You’ve stepped fully into the grave.”

“This is your inheritance. Not stock. Not company shares. Not power. But flesh. And command over it.”

“You want to destroy me? Then you’ll have to destroy yourself. Because you, Ivy, are not the cure.”

“You’re the next generation.”

I backed away, bile rising in my throat.

“No,” I whispered. “That’s a lie.”

But the room didn’t care.

The truth was in the air. In the blood. In our bones.

We weren’t just heirs.

We were experiments.

Clara grabbed my hand.

“I don’t care what they made me for,” she said, voice steady for once. “I choose you.”

I clutched her tighter. “And I choose you.”

Lucien’s voice was low. “Then let’s burn it down.”

And we did.

Mira rigged the chambers.

Andrei set the charges.

We walked out as the sanctuary exploded behind us—glass, blood, and legacy reduced to ash.

But even as the fire consumed it, I knew…

This wasn’t the end.

This was the beginning of a different war.

The war inside us.