Page 117 of The Vespertine Treaty
“Did you speak?”her voice slid into my mind, laced with suspicion.
I froze. I hadn't realised I'd spoken aloud. The scream of the spider was still ringing in my ears, but the room was dead silent.
"Just reading," I lied, my voice tight. "Go back to sleep, Rhana."
Rhana stared at me for a long moment. She sniffed the air, sensing the spike in my cortisol, the erratic beat of my heart. She knew something was wrong. She had always known. But Cain Alistair was a creature of wrongness; she had simply grown accustomed to the scent of my decay.
“Rest your mind, Cain,”she warned softly, lowering her head back to her paws.“The cracks are showing.”
I didn't answer her. I couldn't.
I looked down at the book in my lap. The leather cover was pulsing, breathing like a lung.
I pushed it away, sickened.
I looked at Ophelia. She was sleeping soundly, her face turned toward me, her hand resting on the pillow between us. She looked peaceful. I had stolen that peace for her, and in doing so, I had damned myself a little further.
I wanted to reach out. My hand twitched, longing to touch the curve of her shoulder, to anchor myself in the reality of her solid, warm form. I needed to know she was real. I needed to know I wasn't hallucinating her too.
But I pulled my hand back, curling it into a fist against my chest.
If I touched her again, I wouldn't stop. I would drain her dry.
"I'm sorry," I whispered to the shadows, hoping the spiders couldn't hear me.
I waved my hand, sending a tendril of shadow to snuff the candles, plunging the room into absolute darkness, and waited for the nightmares to come and claim what was left of me.
CHAPTER 39
OPHELIA
The oppressive silence of Cain's private quarters was broken only by the cold, rhythmic flow of his breathing and the frantic pulse of my own heart. I lay rigid under the cold sheets, desperately trying to cling to the emotional shell he had forced upon me. His magical pulse of Void stillness had successfully dampened my immediate fear, but my Empathy was fighting the numbness, seeking a path through the enforced silence like water seeking a crack in a dam.
I watched the dark, still silhouette of Cain across the vast bed. He lay on the far side, motionless against the pristine white silk sheets—an agonising irony. In sleep, the cruel tension left his haunting features, leaving him breathtakingly beautiful. His jaw, usually a rigid line of contempt, was softened. His dark, perfect hair was artfully disordered against the high black headboard. He looked like a true fallen prince, a silent angel laid to rest in a tomb of his own making. I could feel the chaotic energy raging beneath his composure, but outwardly, he was a masterpiece of tragic, silent perfection.
“He's terrified”, Poppy’s tiny voice was a faint whisper in my mind, escaping the imposed silence.“Not of you. Of himself.”
I closed my eyes, consciously pushing a small, quiet tendril of my Empathy toward the immense chaos of his core. It was a terrifying risk—touching the raw engine of the Pain-Eater—but I needed to understand the rhythm of his collapse.
It happened minutes later.
It began not with a sound, but with a horrifying, magical rupture. A sharp, violent magical seizure tore through Cain's body, his muscles locking in spasm. The Void's stillness shattered, and I was instantly slammed with the unfiltered torrent of his nightmare.
I was plunged headlong into a memory that wasn't mine: a nauseating, claustrophobic sensory experience that compressed reality. I was suddenly small, confined by a vast, suffocating cold. The primary emotion was shame—a six-year-old child's shame, mixed with the chilling scent of damp earth and polished leather.
The air was thick with the scent of fear and the cloying jasmine perfume of his mother. I was standing as six-year-old Cain, weeping silently, as my father, Lord Alistair, towered over me, enraged by a single, childish error in my magical recitation.
The memory shifted, sharp and high-definition. My mother, Lady Brianne, intervened, a rare, terrifying defence. She rushed between us, her body thin and fragile in her silk dressing gown. “Colson, no! He is only a little boy! You cannot use the touch on him for a mistake!" she pleaded, tears streaming down her face.
Lord Alistair merely looked at her, his eyes cold, his smile monstrous. "The boy must learn the consequence of imperfection, Brianne. And he must learn that his mistakes cost those he loves most dearly."
He shoved me aside with a casual cruelty that sent me sprawling across the floor, and his hand—the killing hand—gripped my mother's bare forearm. The air shrieked with magic. I felt the agonising, searing pain tear through her core, pulling the vibrant, shimmering light from her body. It wasn't the Death-Touch, but a controlled, excruciating withdrawal of life energy, designed only to torment.
I collapsed, screaming silently, unable to move, tasting her absolute agony as if it were my own—the fiery, crystalline shards of her love burning into my young core. The physical pain was hers, but the crushing, suffocating guilt—the realisation that I caused her suffering—was mine alone.
My soul screamed in resonance. I watched the boy—Cain—crumple, and I saw myself. I saw every moment I had stayed silent while my parents sold pieces of my life away. We were the same. We were both children forged in the fires of our parents' greed and cruelty. At least he had a mother who had loved him enough to bleed for him.
His mother crumpled, her face pale, her beautiful eyes locked on the little boy’s eyes, silent tears falling. "Don't look, Cain," she managed, her voice a raw, final whisper. "Don't look."
