Lahat ng Kabanata ng Her Enemy, His Curse: Kabanata 51 - Kabanata 60

ArielleThe woman was already waiting when I entered the high chamber.She sat without fear. Without arrogance. Still, and utterly quiet—like a flame just before it consumes something.Her skin was ink-dark, weathered by sun and salt wind. Her eyes were white—not pale, but pearlescent, like they’d been carved from opal. A veil of smoke-colored gauze trailed from her braids, bound in gold cuffs at the tips. Her hands were bare. Her feet, calloused. On her neck, a single brand shaped like a spiral flanked by wings.The same sigil that had appeared in my palm when I touched the scroll.Lucian stood at my side, his posture tense. Fenton waited by the door, arms folded, jaw tight. No one had spoken since the woman had arrived that morning claiming she came with a message for the one who burned the curse.I stepped forward.Her blind eyes turned toward me.“You are Arielle of Flame,” she said, as if reciting something from long ago.I nodded. “And you are?”She smiled faintly. “I have had m

LucianI felt it before I saw it.The soulbrand on my chest flared like a live wire. Not a warning. A recognition.Riven.This thing that looked like a man but smelled like death and rebirth and something… wrong.The air grew thinner as he stepped from the veil—half-shadow, half-ember. As if the Hollow itself had shaped a vessel and filled it with old flame.Arielle didn’t back away.Gods, why wouldn’t she back away?“What do you want?” she asked, steady, even as the wind stirred around her like a cloak.“To deliver a message.”He opened his hand, and from it unfurled a ribbon of fire—slow and elegant, twining in the air like a serpent made of heat and memory. It hovered between us before coalescing into a sigil. Not hers. Arielle’s.Her soulmark, drawn in crimson fire and sealed with ancient blood.My stomach twisted.Riven’s expression softened—not cruel, not threatening. Almost reverent.“She has named you Daughter by Flame. Her heir. Her equal.”Arielle’s voice wavered. “No.”But

ArielleThey said the path to Virel and Vey had been sealed a hundred years ago.That it only opened to those with fire in their blood, and madness in their hearts.They weren’t wrong.By the time I crossed the last standing stone at the mouth of the Veiled Wood, my boots were soaked in frost, my skin kissed raw by wind that whispered names I no longer remembered. The trees didn’t grow—they loomed. Not silent, but watching. Bark gnarled like ribs. Branches hung with ash-blind blossoms that bloomed only when I bled.I didn’t look back.Lucian hadn’t followed.Not out of apathy.Out of respect—or maybe resignation.I’d left him at dawn, while the world was still blue and breathless. He hadn’t asked me to stay. He hadn’t begged.He’d simply placed a small ring of iron and stone into my palm and said, “If you come back changed… make sure it’s still you.”I didn’t know what that meant anymore.The path narrowed as dusk fell.Twilight here didn’t fade.It deepened—turning sky into ink and s

LucianI felt it long before the sky changed.The soulbrand on my chest flared—not like fire.Like absence.As if something had been quietly unhooked from my ribs, peeled away with gentle fingers, and set alight in another world.I doubled over in the training yard, one knee hitting the stone.Fenton was at my side in a blink.“Lucian—?”I held up a hand, breath torn from me like the wind had teeth.“She’s—”I couldn’t speak.Not yet.Because she wasn’t speaking.But she was deciding.And I could feel it.Not words. Not thought. Just the sensation of something ancient moving through her. Something older than love. Older than us.My bond to her had always been raw. Elemental. As if the gods had stitched our names together before we were born. But this?This was different.The thread between us trembled.Not with fear.With transformation.The sky deepened above us, even though it was nearly midday.Clouds stretched thin, veined with red light—like the sky was bleeding from the center o

When I woke, the sky was pearl-gray and bleeding gold through the cracks in the tall stone windows. Lucian was already gone. I didn’t panic. There was no note left behind. No scent trail to follow — no hurried footsteps, no whispered promise of urgency. Only the shape of him pressed into the pillow beside mine, the faint warmth still lingering there. His hand, once curled around mine, was now empty, but the memory of his fingers folding into mine felt like a vow unspoken — a silent oath that neither distance nor darkness could undo. The Keep was quieter than usual. Not quiet in the way of sleep — not the gentle hush of bodies at rest — but a weightier silence, the kind that lives in the spaces before storms and battles, when the walls themselves hold their breath, waiting. I dressed in silence. No attendants hovered to fuss or dress me in armor, no whispered warnings filled the halls. Only the locket Kaelith had returned to me sat heavy against my sternum, its warmth pulsing like