Chapter 7: [Bounded In Fire]

[Raphael's Pov]

[Few Hour's Later]

I was burning.

Not like a fever. Not like a blush. No this was something worse. My skin felt too tight. My blood moved like fire under my flesh. Every breath clawed up my throat and refused to leave. I collapsed onto my bed, drenched in sweat, limbs twitching, heat pulsing from my chest to my fingertips like a second heartbeat louder, wilder, wrong.

I hear the The maids screamed.

Footsteps thundered down the hall.

“Raphael!” Hael burst in, nearly tripping over the rug as he crossed the room. “What’s happening to him?!”

I couldn’t answer. My mouth opened, but only air came. Air and pain. My back arched violently. My hands twisted in the sheets. My nails tore through fabric. Something inside me was cracking. Something ancient and cruel and buried was clawing its way out.

“I—I can’t breathe—” I rasped, but it didn’t sound like my voice.

“Get the physician!” Hael shouted. “Now!”

A blur of white. Shaking hands. Cold fingers pressed against my neck, my chest, my burning skin. The physician had arrived. He looked older. Paler. Smaller than he had just days ago.

“He’s not just fevered,” the royal physician whispered, panic breaking through his usual calm. “He’s... he’s burning from the inside out.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Hael barked, grabbing the man by his shoulder. “He’s the crown prince. Fix it!”

But the physician wasn’t looking at Hael.

He was looking at me.

Specifically.....my neck.

Where the faintest glow shimmered beneath the skin, like golden ink pulsing just beneath the surface. Like runes trying to awaken.

“It’s his bloodline,” the physician said, horror dawning behind his eyes. “It’s reacting.”

“Reacting to what?” Hael demanded.

The physician’s voice dropped to a whisper. “To a bond. A mark.”

“A what?”

His gaze moved lower. To the bruises on my chest. To the still healing bite marks trailing down my shoulder. To the faint red flush still lingering around my throat.

Then his eyes fell to the coat.

Xavier’s coat.

Folded neatly at the foot of my bed, like it had always belonged there.

The physician paled further. “He marked someone.”

Hael froze. “who?”

The answer was obvious.

The silence gave it away.

“Prince Xavier,” the physician said, barely audible.

The name echoed like a curse through the room.

I tried to speak. I needed to scream. To laugh. To question.

But all I managed was a cough. A spray of blood stained the sheets.

My vision blurred. The ceiling tilted. The room spun on its axis.

They kept talking, but their voices faded muffled and distant, as though I were already under water.

I could feel it.

Something inside me was unraveling. A magic deeper than blood, older than the crown, more sacred than war. My body didn’t just want him. It needed him.

Only the one who I marked could stabilize the bond.

And I had damned that man to rot.

The irony was cruel enough to make me want to laugh.

But I couldn’t even cry.

Instead, I convulsed. Heat licked at my lungs. My heart thundered. My mouth opened in a silent scream.

Somewhere between the flashes of light and pain and memory....I remembered his hand on my throat. His lips at my ear. His voice when he swore he’d ruin me.

And I whispered, in my delirium:

“Xavier…”

I didn’t know if it was regret.

I didn’t know if it was a prayer.

But the truth burned as clearly as the fever in my bones:

Only he could save me now.

And I had made sure he hated me enough… to never try.