All Chapters of Bound To Ruin: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

The scent of Ruarc still clung to me.It lingered like a bruise I couldn’t see—on my skin, in my shirt, in the air I breathed. Every step toward the kitchen felt heavier, like I was dragging a shadow behind me. Him. His touch. His mouth. His want. And the hollow ache he left in me that hadn’t yet found a name.I didn’t stop moving.Not when my stomach twisted with guilt. Not when the back of my throat burned from unshed tears. Not when my legs felt like they didn’t belong to me anymore. I didn’t stop.I cooked.But not like before.This wasn’t care. This wasn’t survival.This was a declaration.Each motion was sharp. Clean. The knife sliced with surgical precision, the vegetables surrendering beneath its edge without resistance. I stirred broth until it simmered and spat. I seared meat until it hissed. I didn’t taste. I didn’t pause. I didn’t let myself feel anything beyond the ache in my shoulders and the rhythmic clatter of tools and fire.The kitchen didn’t welcome me.It obeyed.T

I didn’t announce my return. I just opened the door.The air that met me was cooler than I remembered. Or maybe I was just warmer now, alive in a way I hadn’t been in days. My limbs ached from disuse, and the pressure behind my eyes hadn’t fully faded—but I was standing. I was moving.That was enough.Calyx was there before I took three steps into the corridor. He didn’t come from the hall or rise from a shadow. He was simply—there. Eyes wide. Breath held. Staring at me like I was a ghost returned from the edge of something holy and ruined."You're back," he breathed, like it hurt to say.I stopped. Only for a second. My eyes met his.I didn’t smile. I didn’t soften."No. I came out of my room."I walked past him. My shoulder brushed the edge of his coat, and he flinched—just slightly, like he wanted to reach for me and couldn’t remember how.His breath caught behind me, but he didn’t follow. I felt the tension of him straining against whatever instinct told him to stay.His gaze foll

I woke to the scent of moss and silver.Not heat. Not blood. Not Ruarc.The air was cool against my fevered skin, tinged with the earthy stillness of old magic and something sharper underneath—like the breath before a storm. My body ached in places too deep to name. Every muscle felt bruised, stretched, hollowed out. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe without flinching.Eirseth sat beside me, cross-legged on the edge of the bed. A basin of water balanced in one hand, a damp cloth in the other. His cloak was gone. His chest bare. Veins of gold shimmered faintly beneath his skin like ancient constellations woven under flesh—as if he wasn’t holding himself together with willpower, but threads of something older than restraint.His eyes were aflame.He didn’t speak. Just dipped the cloth, wrung it out, and brought it low.The first touch startled a whimper from my throat.Gentle. Mechanical. Practiced.He cleaned between my thighs with a slow, almost reverent precision—but it wasn’t kindne

I woke to silence. Not the cold emptiness of the vampire wing, or the tense hush of a hallway waiting for me to misstep. This silence was soft. Complete. The kind that didn’t punish me for existing in it.The blankets were still warm beside me, but Miren was gone. No scent, no sound. Just the moss-threaded furs and a faint indentation where his body had rested. As if he’d never been there at all.But I remembered. I remembered the weight of him in my arms, the stillness that was trust, the way he folded against me like someone finally permitted to stop performing.And still, I woke alone.That thought dug in deeper than I wanted to admit. Why was it that after giving so much of myself—body, breath, soul—I always seemed to wake with nothing but the echo of them? Was it shame? Guilt? Fear? Or did they truly not know how to stay?I lay there for a while, not ready to move. Letting that memory settle into the quiet places inside me. Trying to hold onto the warmth before it could slip away

Time did not pass in the prison the way it did in the world above. Hours bled into hours, days into stillness. There was no sun to mark the sky, no moon to wax or wane. Only the hum of stone, the weight of magic, and the sound of her breath—or lack of it.They kept the vigil for two weeks.At first, no one left the chamber.Ruarc refused to sleep. He kept his hand on her chest, counting the shallow rhythm of her pulse like a prayer. Every beat was a thread he refused to let fray. Don’t leave me. He didn’t say it aloud. Didn’t need to. He lived it—every second. He murmured to her sometimes, low things meant only for her ears—soft apologies, broken promises, memories of the way she laughed when she thought he wasn't listening. He snarled at the others if they came too close. If she dies, I die with her.He'd never meant to need her. Never meant to want something he couldn’t protect. Now all he could do was watch her slip further from reach.Calyx didn’t speak. He sat with his back to th