Betrayed by My Ex, Marked by His Alpha Emperor Brother

Chapter 38

Isolde’s POV

The endless stairs almost killed me before I finally reached our floor.

Every step sent a fresh bolt of agony through my face. Four parallel gashes—deep, ragged, still weeping blood—carved from my left temple down to my jaw. I could feel the torn edges of skin shifting whenever I clenched my teeth.

That bitch. That common, baseborn bitch.

I braced one hand against the stairwell wall. The plaster was crumbling, damp with something I refused to identify. My other hand clutched the remains of my evening gown against my chest. The silk—imported, hand-stitched, worth more than most servants earned in a season—hung in shreds from my shoulders. One sleeve was completely gone. The bodice gaped open where the fabric had ripped when she’d thrown me into that display cabinet.

Glass. There had been so much glass.

I pressed the back of my wrist against my cheek and it came away slick with red. The bleeding hadn’t stopped. It wouldn’t stop. These weren’t scratches. These were trenches gouged into my face by something that should not have been possible.

She was a commoner. A nobody. A discarded foster child with dirty fingernails and cheap shoes. She should have crumpled the moment I grabbed her. Should have whimpered. Should have begged.

Instead, she’d moved like a predator. Fast. Brutal. With a strength that cracked wood and shattered glass.

I leaned against the corridor wall, breathing hard. Blood dripped from my chin onto the threadbare carpet. I didn’t bother wiping it.

The door to our apartment was already open. Not ajar—open. The lock hung from one hinge, the wood around it splintered inward.

My stomach dropped.

I stepped inside.

The place was destroyed.

The secondhand sofa had been gutted, its stuffing strewn across the floor like dirty snow. The bookshelf lay facedown in a pool of broken glass and scattered pages. Every drawer in the kitchen had been yanked out and upended. Plates, cups, utensils—scattered across the tile in a mosaic of cheap ceramic and bent tin.

The curtains had been torn down. One of them was still draped over the overturned dining table like a funeral shroud.

“Mother?”

A figure emerged from the kitchen doorway.

The Baroness de Valois looked like she’d been dragged backward through a storm. Her golden hair—always immaculate, always pinned with precision—hung in tangled ropes around her face. Her cosmetics had run in dark streaks down both cheeks. Her blouse was ripped at the collar. One of her shoes was missing.

“Where have you been?” Her voice was shrill. Cracked at the edges. “Where have you been, Isolde? Do you have any idea—”

She stopped. Her eyes locked onto my face. Onto the four deep, bleeding wounds running from temple to jaw.

“What happened to your—”

“Harold.” I cut her off. “What did Harold do?”

Her mouth opened. Closed. Her hands twisted together at her waist—a nervous habit I’d watched her perform a thousand times before court functions, back when we still had court functions to attend.

“He came,” she said. “With his friends. Big men. Huge. They had iron bars.” Her voice climbed higher. “They said since you failed your task—since the deal fell through—they were taking compensation. They took everything, Isolde. The silver candlesticks, my jewelry box, your father’s pocket watch—”

“How much does he want?”

She flinched. “Fifty thousand gold coins. That was the bride price he paid the Baroness Hargrove as an intermediary deposit. He wants it back. Every coin.”

I almost laughed. Fifty thousand. We barely had a few stray coins between us.

“There’s nothing left,” I said flatly. “He took it all. So it’s done.”

“It is not done!” The Baroness lunged forward, grabbing my arm with surprising strength. Her manicured nails—chipped now, broken—dug into my skin. “Your father is dying, Isolde. Dying. The healing ward sent a courier today. The bill is already past sixty-seven thousand gold coins and climbing. If we don’t pay by Monday, they’ll transfer him to the pauper’s ward. Do you understand what that means? He’ll die in a cot next to beggars and drunks.”

She shook me. Actually shook me, like I was a child caught stealing sweets.

“We need money. Now. Tonight.”

I wrenched my arm free. “And where exactly do you propose we find sixty-seven thousand gold coins tonight, Mother? Shall I check under the sofa cushions? Oh wait—there are no cushions. Harold’s men ripped them apart.”

Her eyes narrowed. Calculating. The tears dried up with suspicious speed.

“The necklace.”

I went still.

“The diamond necklace,” she repeated. “The one Gareth gave you. I know you’re wearing it. I can see the chain under your collar. That piece is worth at least three thousand gold coins.”

My hand moved instinctively to my throat. To the delicate chain resting against my collarbone. The diamonds caught the dim light from the broken overhead fixture—tiny, defiant sparks in the wreckage.

“No.”

“Isolde—”

“I said no.”

“Your father is dying!”

“Then let him die.”

The words came out cold. Clean. I hadn’t planned them, but the moment they left my mouth, I knew I meant every syllable.

The Baroness stared at me. Her lips parted. For a moment, she looked genuinely shocked—as if cruelty from her own bloodline was somehow unexpected.

Then her hand cracked across my face.

The slap landed directly on the wounds. Fresh blood sprayed across my vision. Pain detonated behind my left eye—white, blinding, nauseating. I staggered sideways into the gutted sofa frame.

“You useless trash! You selfish little bitch,” the Baroness hissed. She hit me again. Backhand this time, catching the other cheek. “I raised you. I clothed you. I spent everything to give you a chance at a proper marriage, and this is how you repay me? By hoarding jewelry while your father rots?”

Something inside me snapped.

Not broke. Snapped. The way a chain snaps when the last link gives way.

I caught her wrist on the third swing. Twisted. Drove her backward until her spine hit the corridor wall with a dull thud. My forearm pressed against her collarbone, pinning her there.

“Touch me again,” I whispered, my face inches from hers, “and I’ll make sure you end up in the bed next to him.”

Her eyes went wide. Genuine fear. Not the theatrical kind she used at dinner parties—real, animal terror.

I held her there for a few long seconds. Then I let go.

She slid sideways along the wall, clutching her wrist. She didn’t speak. Didn’t look at me. She stumbled toward the front door, grabbed a coat from the wreckage, and left. The broken door swung uselessly behind her.

Silence.

I wiped blood from my chin with the back of my hand and walked toward the bedroom.

The door was half-open. Warm lamplight spilled through the gap.

I pushed it wide.

Gareth was on the bed.

Naked. Almost entirely naked. His trousers were bunched around his ankles—stained, unwashed, reeking of sweat and something worse. His pale, doughy body was propped against the headboard. In one hand, he held a booklet—cheap illustrations on yellowed paper, the kind of vulgar material sold in back alleys. His other hand was between his legs.

He didn’t even notice me at first. His eyes were glazed. His mouth hung slack. The lamplight caught the sheen of perspiration across his forehead.

My stomach turned so violently I tasted bile.

“Isolde!” He scrambled, yanking at the sheets, the booklet tumbling to the floor. “Sol—I didn’t—I wasn’t—”

I didn’t answer. Didn’t look at him.

I crossed the room to the wardrobe. Opened it. Pulled out my travel bag—the leather one I’d brought from the estate—and began stuffing it with everything of value I could find. A pair of silver earrings. A silk scarf. The small velvet pouch of coins I’d hidden inside a boot.

“What are you doing?” Gareth’s voice climbed with panic. He’d pulled the sheet over himself like a shield. “Sol—babe—where are you going?”

I kept packing.

“You can’t just leave! What am I supposed to tell my brother? What am I supposed to tell Kaelen when he asks where—”

“Tell him whatever you want.” I cinched the bag shut. Slung it over my shoulder. “Tell him you were too busy with your little picture book to notice.”

His face crumpled. Pathetic. Like a child denied a sweet.

“Please, Sol. Please. I need you. I can’t—I can’t do this without you—”

I walked out of the bedroom. Through the ruined living room. Past the broken door and into the stairwell.

His voice followed me down. Growing smaller. More desperate. I didn’t stop. I didn’t look back.

The stable behind the building was barely more than a lean-to. But Gareth’s old carriage was still there—battered, one wheel slightly warped, the horse half-asleep in its stall. Nobody had thought to take this. Too worthless, probably.

I hitched the horse. Climbed up. Took the reins.

The city streets were nearly empty at this hour. Cobblestones gleamed under scattered lantern light. The air was cold, biting against the open wounds on my face.

I drove without direction at first. Just away. Away from the gutted apartment. Away from my mother’s grasping hands. Away from Gareth’s sweating, wretched body.

But as the first rush of adrenaline faded, something else settled into the space it left behind. Something cold and sharp and analytical.

The carriage rattled over a bridge. Lantern light flickered across the window glass, and I caught my own reflection—distorted, bloodied, barely recognizable.

Four wounds. Parallel. Deep enough that I could feel the separation of tissue when I moved my jaw. The kind of damage that came from claws, not fingernails.

I had spent my whole life in noble circles, yet I had never seen anything like it. Commoners were supposed to be weak. Their blood was thin. But what had happened in that room—what she had done to me—operated on an impossible, primal power.

Elara Frostfang had thrown me across a room like I weighed nothing. Had moved faster than my eyes could track. Had hit with a force that splintered furniture and carved flesh to the bone.

My fingers tightened on the reins.

“What exactly are you, Elara Frostfang?” I whispered to the blurred reflection in the carriage window.