Chapter 12: The Vow and the Vein

The fragile truce between Caius and I was a tense, silent thing. We moved around each other in the castle like ghosts, the air thick with unspoken words and the echoes of his partial confession. He no longer tried to command me, and I no longer openly defied him. It was an armed peace, punctuated by the constant, humming awareness of the bond—a connection that now felt like a shared wound, tender and raw. The external threat, however, did not respect our delicate stalemate. Lilian and her...