Surrendered To The Lord Of Sin

Chapter 95: A weak, controlled vessel

He was gone so suddenly it almost felt like a hallucination, and the atmosphere seemed to lose its tension the moment he disappeared.

Lucrezia let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding as her entire body sagged, too weak to even brace her fall properly. The adrenaline that had been forcing her upright drained away all at once, and pain rushed back in its place.

The cold bit through her torn gown at once, but even that felt almost distant now. Everything did.

"Ah!" Every muscle screamed, locking in place. Her head throbbed, and her chest burned as every breath became a struggle. And beneath it all lingered the memory of that power that felt alive and waiting.

Her eyes dropped once more to her hands.

Even now, faint threads of warmth pulsed beneath her skin. It didn’t seem entirely gone.

The realization sent a cold shiver down her spine. Lucrezia’s chest rose and fell in shallow, uneven breaths as she turned her face toward the evening sky where the clouds had begun to part.

Beyond them, the darkening heavens stretched endlessly above her, bruised in shades of violet and silver, as if the sky itself had been wounded by what had happened here. Blackvale, which once looked ethereal resembled something close to destruction.

For a while, she simply stared, trying to breathe, to gather strength. Perhaps if she stayed a little longer, the pain would fade away, she thought.

She could feel the edges of her eyes blurry, and she blinked, trying to clear them. The silence after chaos always felt wrong. Too still and empty.

A place that was once filled with life, suddenly reduced to doom.

Her fingers twitched weakly against the ice.

She could still feel the ghost of that power beneath her skin, sleeping, something tickled her veins.

Her throat tightened. What had she become?

The thought drifted through her mind, but it didn’t stay. Her chest rose and fell, heavier for a moment, before becoming slower to a point where it felt steadier. The stillness of the night around her pressed close, and for the first time since it all began, her thoughts had room to breathe.

They went to her mother, as they always did.

Mama

. The word moved through her mind like a prayer, and she shut her eyes, letting a line tear glide smoothly at the corner of her eyes.

She could almost see her. Not here—not truly—but in an imagination. It was a warm room washed in candlelight as soft hands smoothed through her hair.

The faint scent of jasmine and old parchment clinging to silk sleeves, and the quiet hum of a lullaby sung beneath her breath. "Lucrezia," she called, her voice painfully soothing to the mind.

Lucrezia’s throat tightened as the imagination shifted, giving way to iron bars and locked doors. To the cruel stone corridors of the palace she had once called home.

Her mother’s face changed in her mind, and this time, it was real. She was beautiful, gentle, but tired. So terribly tired of being a prisoner in her own chambers and a captive under the rule of the man who had broken everything he touched.

Her father.

The thought sent something sharp through her chest. Was she still there now? Still trapped behind those doors? Still waiting? Did he... Did he keep his word the moment he sold her off to the hands of death?

The memory shifted again, darker and more terrifying this time. She could hear the heavy echo of boots against the polished stone of the throne room.

Her father stood at the foot of the dais, his presence swallowing the room whole. Even in memory, he felt immense; cloaked in shadow and authority, his gaze as hard and cutting as steel.

"Listen carefully, Lucrezia," King Vladimir had said with a tone low and commanding, the kind that allowed no room for defiance. "You were not sent there to survive. You were sent there to observe," The first take of his words settled over her like chains when she was summoned on a rainy afternoon.

"Learn how the Sins live. Learn their strengths, their weaknesses, their loyalties," his expression didn’t change as he listed, as though referring to his substitutes and not his blood. "And when the moment presents itself, you will discover the swiftest way to bring them down. Each, and every one of them."

Lucrezia could still remember the way her stomach had dropped, not because she hadn’t understood but because she had.

It was the fact that she had not been sent away as a daughter but as a weapon. A disposable one to the land of Veximoor.

"Do this... and your mother gets to live. And as a bonus, you’ll have a place in Secktom Pack. Your birthright returned to you, as promised this day."

Her lips parted weakly against the cold night air as the memory pressed harder. Her life had always been under the control of her father, and his entire pack. But being born a witch instead of a wolf was a curse, and an extra complication.

A weak, controlled vessel.

And beneath the king’s voice, beneath the fear, another memory rose. It was her mother, hands clasping hers in secret. Her face was smeared in blood and dirt, her eyes drained, too weak to keep open.

Those calloused fingers trembled beneath hers as she whispered, "Whatever he asks of you," Her voice barely more than breath, as she stared into those ocean-blue eyes the night she came to bid her goodbye. That was the only trait she’d acquired from her mother. "... do not let him take your heart as well."

A tear slipped from the corner of Lucrezia’s eye, cold against her temple. The heart she talked about... she could barely feel anything anymore.

The will she’d always carried was drifting as seconds passed by. It was barely coherent now, drifting through the haze of pain and exhaustion.

If she died here... Would her mother ever know? Would she still wait by those iron bars, believing her daughter would one day come back for her?

Lucrezia swallowed hard, blinking against the sudden sting behind her eyes. The ache in her chest deepened until it became difficult to tell where memory ended and pain began. She couldn’t afford to fail.

The evening sky above her blurred, stars smearing into streaks of silver and black.

Voices stirred somewhere nearby; it was distant at first, then closer, but still her mind clung to the memory of jasmine, silk, and sorrow.

A sharp burst of light cracked through the air somewhere to her left, the sound startling her out of her thoughts. Her head turned slightly, slower than she intended, and bright white light flared against the dark.

At first, Lucrezia thought she was hallucinating when figures emerged from it. Her sight was blurry, yet she could picture several of them, their boot struck frozen earth, and power exuding from them like a perfume worn with pride.

She almost laughed, almost, which ended up as a painful cough.

"What in the seven hells happened here?" A sharp and furious voice broke the silence of the night.

Vaeloria.

Even through the haze clouding her thoughts, Lucrezia recognized her instantly. She was tall, commanding, and impossible to ignore, her voice cutting through the ruined fair like steel.

Rheonara was already moving ahead of the others, boots crunching over the frozen debris, her expression hardening the instant her gaze swept over the destruction.

Her eyes drifted from the broken stalls, to the split earth, to the scorched wood, and the remains of creatures dissolving into black wisps, before landing in their direction.

"Gods above," She breathed, hurrying at once, already dropping to her knees at the mortal sprawled half-conscious beside a bleeding Vespera.

Vaeloria came at once.

As Rheonara dropped beside Vespera immediately, hands already glowing faintly as she pressed them near the wound, Vaeloria did so as well.

"She’s lost too much blood!"

The relief at their immediacy made Lucrezia feel dizzy. T-Thank goodness... she thought, a smile barely touching her lips.

The others spread out quickly at once, murmurs and curses breaking through the stillness.

"What did this?"

"This entire place—"

"It looks like a battlefield."

"No," another voice muttered darkly. "Worse."

Lucrezia tried to push herself up, but her arms trembled violently beneath her.

Vaeloria’s gaze snapped toward her. "Don’t move."

The command was sharp enough to root her where she lay. Rheonara’s hands moved swiftly over Vespera, checking the wound, and her jaw tightened. "She needs treatment now."

Vaeloria looked around again, eyes narrowing.

"There were creatures here..."

But suddenly, the words around her began to blur as the voices continued. It came serious, urgent, and sharp at once, but they no longer seemed close. Instead, they drifted in and out of her awareness like distant waves.

"... get her inside..."

"... too much blood loss..."

"... no, the split in the ground is unnatural..."

Lucrezia’s eyes fluttered closed, and this time, she didn’t fight it anymore. Not until she felt the cold beneath her fading.

No—not fading, she sensed. It was... changing. The first thing that reached her was the deep, oddly warm and familiar scent of woodsmoke, and her breath caught softly in her throat.

She did not need to open her eyes fully.

She knew he was here. The scent alone was enough, wrapping around her senses like a memory too vivid to ignore.

And beneath it all, something undeniably darker that felt... distinctly him. Strangely, the moment it reached her, the fear inside her loosened.

Lucrezia’s body eased, and her mind, which had been stretched to breaking, finally softened to the steady warmth that followed, far from the cruel bite of frozen earth against her skin.

She was being lifted.

Her lashes parted weakly. Despite the effort through her blurred vision, she found those hazel eyes, bright with something fierce and tightly restrained.

It would’ve been anger. She would’ve thought it to be anger, but it wasn’t. It was the kind of fury that lived in silence, and that... that did something within her chest.

His face hovered above hers, close enough now that she could make out the deep scars crossing his skin.

O-Oh gods... the mortification of them was enough to give her nightmares. For a moment, Lucrezia forgot the cold, the pain, and the others still speaking around them.

All she saw was him.

From the tension in his jaw, to the storm in his eyes, and something beneath it that almost looked like regret.

Her lips parted slightly. She wanted to speak. To ask why he was here. To ask why seeing him now, of all times, made her feel safer than she should. But the darkness was already closing in.

And the last thing she knew was the warmth of his arms and the scent of woodsmoke clinging to the night before everything gave way.