Page 10 of The Vespertine Treaty
I didn't want the female. I didn't need a Life Touch Heir. My needs were far more insidious. I needed a silence that would consume the terror that had haunted me since childhood—the Progenitor’s Curse.
This was the deepest, most lethal secret of the Alistair line: a blood prophecy caught by my mother in her final moments, foretelling the destruction of the Death Heir. It claimed I would fall not to war or magic, but to the very weakness my father had spent my life beating out of me—the love of a Life-gifted Dyad.
I stepped through the doorway, leaving Silas alone in the cold room. The surrounding air dropped by ten degrees, the magical gravity of my power settling into place. I strode toward the waiting carriage, departing for the Consortium Hall, my body a weapon, my core screaming with borrowed sorrow.
My only mission was to ensure that Ophelia Ashworth was irrevocably broken before she ever had the chance to touch the rot where my heart used to be.
CHAPTER 5
OPHELIA
Ipressed my hands, hidden by simple leather gloves, tightly into my lap. I was a raw nerve, absorbing the emotional residue of a world that had written me off, a world that now waited to see my final downfall.
As the guards opened the carriage door, the final barrier between me and my fate, a hand shot out from the shadows of a nearby alcove, gripping my arm with a desperate, familiar warmth.
“Ophelia,” Caspian’s low, frantic voice whispered. His golden aura was flickering, a chaotic storm of fear, love, and reckless defiance. The guards, their faces obscured by deep hoods, froze, trained to ignore any disruption from a High House heir.
Caspian pulled me fully into the shadows, his eyes wide with a heartbreaking desperation. "Don't go in there, Lia, please. They'll hand you over, and I will lose you. Whoever they’ve chosen… it’s a sentence, not a marriage. Just… run with me. Now. We can still save the life we talked about—the one free of the blighted name."
His words were the future I had always dreamed of, a desperate, golden light that was almost blinding. I saw it dissolving in front of my eyes.
I shook my head, a single, agonising motion. A sob choked in my throat. I felt the immense, terrifying weight of his House Valerius—the Light, the supreme good. For him to renounce that was inviting the Consortium’s wrath and absolute annihilation. His father would never stand for it.
“I can’t,” I choked out, my voice a raw whisper. “I can’t. They won't just dissolve my family’s core, Caspian. They will annihilate your bloodline for treason. I can’t be the reason the Valerius name, the Light itself, falls to ruin. The realm demands balance; we knew this could happen.”
I touched his cheek, and I could feel my own heart breaking into fine, sharp pieces while staring into his honey eyes.
His face fell, the desperate light in his beautiful eyes dimming. His grand, defiant plan was just a foolish dream in a world that valued cold, brutal law above all else.
He released my gloved hand slowly, his touch lingering for a final, aching moment. He stepped back into the deepest shadow, a king of light disappearing into the dark. “I’ll be watching you inside. Praying the this union fails. I'll always love you, Ophelia,” he said, his voice a broken promise.
The guards resumed their precise, ritualistic movements, leading me through the Consortium Hall’s labyrinthine corridors. The limestone drank the dim light filtering in from the high windows, and the entire structure felt like a magnificent, echoing cage.
As we reached the centre of the hall, the colossal, tiered seating fanned out before me, packed with onlookers, exactly as it was shown on my maps. I felt the collective anxiety of the Aenites, the grim resignation of the Cenites, the cold, dispassionate curiosity of the Consortium members.
Then, my gaze snagged on a figure in the front row of the Aenite delegation, and my stomach lurched violently. Lady Cecilia Ashworth. My mother sat with the posture of a queen, her eyes gleaming with a sickening, triumphant pride. She didn't look like a parent losing a child; she looked like a gambler who had just won the pot. Her smile was small, sharp, and satisfied. She was witnessing my erasure not with horror, but with the greedy validation of a woman who had successfully traded her daughter's life for a scrap of political relevance. The sight of her happiness made bile rise in my throat.
The Aenite Head of the Consortium, Consul Althea, stepped forward, her amethyst owl familiar landing with confidence on her shoulder. Her voice, amplified by magic, was a cold, ringing pronouncement.Where was my betrothed?
“Dyads of Aeternia, we gather today to uphold the sacred rite of the Vespertine Treaty... We hereby decree the pairing of Ophelia Josephine Ashworth, the last heir of the Life-Touch line, with..."
The Consul paused for effect. Vesper, her familiar, shook its feathers, but before she could speak the name, a new presence pierced the cacophony.
It was an absence. A physical, chilling Void that entered the far end of the hall, sucking the noise—and the very air—from the crowd.
Battered by a lifetime of others' pain, I felt a profound, dangerous sense of peace. I took an involuntary step forward, drawn to it like a moth to a flame. For a terrifying second, I simply wanted to surrender my Empathy, to stop feeling the world's endless sorrow.
The Consul’s voice snapped the silence like a whip:
“...Cain Alistair, the Prince of Death, our esteemed Pain-Eater, and wielder of the Death-Touch.”
A collective, terrified gasp hit my Empathy with the force of a hammer blow.
"What is that? Ophelia, the air is dying! It's a grave—he's a walking grave!"Poppy's mental voice, for the first time in our lives, was a high-pitched, panicked shriek of sheer terror.
The alarm broke the spell. The alluring peace vanished, replaced by a cold dread that made every hair on my body stand on end. I realised the Void was a massive, consuming presence, a black hole in the middle of a galaxy of feeling.
I looked up, and for the first time, I saw him. The male who was about to become my fate.
