Chapter 27

(Elouera’s POV)

The strong wind coming through the open balcony doors had faded to a soft whistle, but the room was still freezing.

My heart pounded against my bruised ribs. Every beat sent another sharp pain through the dark veins running up my neck. I kept my eyes on Duchess Vespera, my fingers twitching near my empty belt. I expected her to draw her sword. I expected her to call for the guards in the courtyard below.

Instead, the northern duchess simply gave me a long, calculating look, her gold eyes lingering on the black lines beneath my skin. Then, without a single word, she stepped backward out onto the stone balcony, melted into the midnight shadows, and vanished into the fog like a spirit that had never been there at all.

I didn't even have time to let out the breath trapped in my throat.

The heavy oak panel of the servant’s door behind me gave a sharp, splintering groan.

I didn’t look back. I couldn’t move. The strength that had helped me escape the stairs was gone. My body suddenly felt weak and heavy. My knees gave way.

The room started spinning. The dark curtains and high ceiling became blurry. Then I fell onto the Persian rug.

The lock gave way with a sickening, metallic pop.

Slow, measured footsteps crossed the threshold. The smell hit me before I even saw him not blood, not sulfur, but the expensive, cloying scent of dried lavender, crushed cloves, and aged parchment.

Archduke Holden.

He didn't rush. He didn't call for the guards. The soft, rhythmic click of his mechanical cane echoed across the floorboards until he stopped right beside where I lay coiled on the cold rug, shivering so hard my teeth were rattling against each other.

I looked up through a haze of damp, matted hair.

Holden looked down at me, and for a terrifying, heart-stopping second, there was no malice in his eyes. There was no cold triumph. He looked at me with an expression of profound, crushing sorrow, the very same look he used to give me when I was six years old, sitting on a stool in his library, trying to read texts far too complex for my age while my mother lay dying in the east wing.

"Oh, my little bird," Holden murmured, his voice cracking slightly around the edges. "Look at what you've done to yourself."

He dropped his mechanical cane to the floor. It clattered against the wood, a harsh sound in the dead quiet, but he ignored it completely. Slowly, painfully, the Archduke lowered his own crippled frame down onto his knees beside me on the rug.

I tried to pull away. I dragged my elbow back an inch, my throat letting out a pathetically small, choked rasp. "Don't..."

"Hush now," he whispered softly.

He reached out, his long, calloused fingers wrapping gently around my wrist. His touch wasn't harsh. He didn't twist my arm or pin me down. He simply gathered my shaking, freezing hand into his warm, dry palm, his thumb lightly brushing across my blood-stained knuckles where Pip’s life had smudged against my skin.

"I know you're terrified," Holden said, his warm amber-green eyes searching my face with a desperate, heavy fondness. "I know the darkness in your blood feels like a monster eating you from the inside. But you have to understand... everything I have done, every choice I have made in this wretched palace, I made to keep you alive."

"You... you poisoned me," I choked out, a hot tear spilling over my eyelashes, cutting a clean track through the grime and dried ash on my cheek. "You killed Pip... you burnt the cure..."

"Pip was a spy for the Under-Market, child," Holden sighed, gathering me closer, his arm sliding beneath my shoulders to lift my trembling torso off the freezing floor. He pulled me against his chest, cradling me as if I were made of brittle glass. "He would have sold your identity to the highest bidder by sunrise. The rebels would have put your head on a spike at the city gates to prove the Empress's line was weak. Is that what you wanted? To be butchered in a gutter?"

I pressed my face against the heavy velvet of his lapel. The heat radiating from his body was suffocating, intoxicating, and painfully familiar.

It was a lie. My mind knew it was a lie. The rational, calculating Weaver inside me screamed that this man had systematically destroyed my life, that he had fed me a drug designed to hollow out my mind and leave me a mindless puppet on his string.

But my body... my shattered, dying body was so exhausted. My mother had been dead for ten years. My royal bloodline treated me like a broken tool or a target for execution. I had spent half a decade standing entirely alone in the freezing dark, carrying the weight of a secret war on my bleeding shoulders.

I was so desperately, pathetically lonely.

A ragged, shuddering sob ripped itself out of my chest. I didn't push him away. I let my forehead rest against his shoulder, my fingers involuntarily clutching at his coat, clinging to him like a drowning child reaching for a floating piece of timber.

"I'm so tired, Uncle," I wept, the words tearing my raw throat apart, the long-suppressed childhood title slipping past my lips before I could stop it. "It hurts so much."

Holden’s hand rested on the back of my head. His fingers stroked through my damp, tangled hair, rhythmically, soothingly, pulling me tighter into his warm embrace.

"I know, Elouera. I know," he murmured into my hair, his breath warm against my temple. "The world outside these walls is cruel. Your brothers are wolves who would tear you apart for a sliver of power. The Empress sees you as nothing more than an embarrassing stain on her reign. I am the only one who truly loves you. The only one who remembers the little girl who used to hide in my study to escape the snow."

He leaned back just enough to look down into my eyes. His thumbs gently wiped the tears from my cheekbones, his touch agonizingly tender.

"The medicine isn't a sentence, my sweet girl," he whispered, his eyes shining with what looked like genuine devotion. "It is a sanctuary. It will take away the pain. It will quiet the terrifying noise in your head. You won't have to carry the burden of the Weaver anymore. You won't have to fight. You can just... sleep. And I will protect you from the wolves. I promise you, in your mother's memory, no one will ever hurt you again."

I stared up at him, my vision blurred by fresh tears, my heart fracturing into a thousand jagged pieces. For a terrifying, fleeting second, the lie was so beautiful, so tempting, that I wanted to surrender to it. I wanted to close my eyes, swallow whatever he gave me, and let the darkness take away the crushing weight of my life.

Holden smiled, a gentle, triumphant curve of his lips.

He slowly reached into his inner pocket, withdrawing the small, velvet-lined silver box. He opened the latch with a quiet click, revealing the dull, coal-black pill resting in the center.

"Take it for me, Elouera," he murmured softly, pressing the smooth, cold sphere against my trembling lower lip. "Let me save you."

I looked at the pill. I looked at the black veins spidering up his wrist veins I hadn't noticed in the dim light until right now.My breath locked in my throat.The black, web-like lines crawling up Holden's skin beneath his high lace cuffs were identical to the ones on my neck.He wasn't just giving me the Night-bloom.

Holden was taking it, too.