Page 53 of Branded By Shadow
I forced my eyes open. My body was a prison of false peace, but my gaze was my own. I saw him staggering away from me on theplatform, clutching his chest, a man being ripped apart from the inside out.
Shadows exploded from him in a maddened rush. It was the same darkness from the claiming, but this time it was wild. No, absolutely feral. The iron will that had held the void at bay was gone, leaving behind a raw, mindless eruption of a soul that had lost its center.
“What did you do?” I shrieked, forcing the words past my numb lips. “Helena, what did you do to him?”
She leaned closer, her voice a calm poison in my ear, devoid of all its previous warmth. “I’m sorry, dear one. But some things are just more important than others.”
The words didn’t register as a betrayal at first. They were just sounds, meaningless against the backdrop of Damon’s agony and the numbness that was being pumped into my veins.
Then, amidst the chaos, another sound broke through the fog of my paralysis. Footsteps. Heavy, deliberate, and utterly unhurried.
Alexander Stormwright emerged from the House Zeus seating area, stepping into the circle of calm where I lay frozen. He wasn’t rushing. He wasn’t alarmed. He was simply arriving.
His face was not a mask of victory. It was the cool, dispassionate face of an architect inspecting a completed project. He stoppedbeside Helena, his gaze sweeping with a flicker of distaste over Damon’s writhing, feral form.
“Thank you, Helena,” he said, his voice smooth and proprietary. “It’s done?”
“The bond is severed,” she confirmed, her tone as clinical as his. “She belongs to him no longer.”
The clinical nature of their exchange, the sheer businesslike finality of it, sent a fresh wave of nausea through me. This wasn’t a crime of passion. It was a transaction. A premeditated execution of something I hadn’t even had a chance to name. “You… All this time. Even this… Because of you.”
Alexander’s storm-gray eyes finally met mine. “I wouldn’t say that. Plan A was for you to come to us willingly, Dr. Ellis. When that failed, we had no choice but to improvise.” His lips twisted into a smile that, for once, held no warmth. “But make no mistake. This is not because of me. It is still because of you.”
Was it? What was I thinking? Of course it was. Alexander had targeted Theo because of my work. Damon was an impossibly powerful leader of an Olympian House, but that didn’t make him immune to Alexander’s plotting. If anything, the opposite was the case.
As if echoing my thoughts, Damon released another agonized cry. Helena squeezed my shoulder. Her face crumpled slightly, but her abilities never wavered. “I’m sorry, Cora. I wish there had been another way.”
“There’s always another way! Helena, what could possibly be worth this?”
She didn’t answer. Around us, Damon’s shadow abilities were consuming the amphitheater. His protective instincts turned his love for me into a weapon against himself.
Darkness poured from him like blood from a mortal wound. The complete loss of our bond had stripped away his ability to control his volatile powers. Every shadow in the area answered his desperate need to protect me from a threat he couldn’t fight.
Alexander turned away, raising his voice to the watching, terrified Council members. “The Alpha of House Hades has lost control! His power is a danger to us all! We must contain him.”
My hands started shaking first, then my whole body. The artificial peace Helena had wrapped around my soul was a thin blanket over a gaping wound, and the horror was beginning to bleed through.
I tasted bile on my tongue. She had weaponized his trust against us both. She had used my hope as her scalpel. The cruelest part was knowing she genuinely believed she was doing the right thing. I watched the woman who had destroyed my life play the role of my savior, and I understood. Whatever promise she’d made to Alexander, it mattered more than my happiness, more than Damon’s sanity, more than the fragile, beautiful thing we had just built.
From my prison of false peace, I watched the world move. Marcus Dred stepped forward, a wide, predatory grin spreading across his face. “About time someone put this dog on a leash.”
The two House Artemis guards drew their silver bows, arrows of humming light aimed at the heart of the storm. “On the Council’s authority, stand down, Blackwood!”
They were going to tear him apart. And I could only watch, trapped in a lie of perfect, unnatural calm as the cage closed.
I had nothing left. No bond, no trust, no hope. Just the crushing weight of complete betrayal and the terrible knowledge that I was utterly powerless to stop any of it.
21
Consumed
Damon
“Your flesh is a feast, Damon Blackwood.”
Cassandra laughed. It was the same warm, tinkling chuckle I’d heard a hundred times over a shared bottle of wine, the sound of a friendship forged in the quiet hours after duty.
The blessing of House Hestia still seemed to linger on the edges of every syllable, a promise of comfort and hearth-fire. But it was all a lie.
