“The black Rolls-Royce Phantom glided through the iron gates of Grandcrest Academy under the cover of the midnight rain.”
Inside the leather-scented interior, the silence was suffocating, heavy with a dark, electric heat that had nothing to do with the storm outside.
Scarlett sat pressed against the passenger door, her silver-ruby eyes glaring out at the dark campus buildings.
Her body was exhausted, but her posture was rigid, like a wild jaguar cornered in a trap.
Beside her, Valerius drove with one hand, his fingers gripping the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles bled white.
Despite his cracked ribs, his posture remained perfectly regal.
His white shirt was ruined, stained with dried crimson patches—a brutal mix of his uncle’s blood and her own.
Every few seconds, his gaze shifted to her through the rearview mirror, tracking the heavy, uneven rise and fall of her chest, lingering on the damp fabric clinging to her skin.
“You are planning how to kill me again,” Valerius murmured, his voice smooth like silk, cutting through the low purr of the engine.
“I can hear the rhythm of your heartbeat, Scarlett.
It spikes every time you look at the silver blade hidden in my dashboard.”
“Then you should have left me in that mud,” Scarlett spat, turning her head to glare straight into his pitch-black eyes.
“Because the moment you let your guard down, I will drive that blade straight through your throat.
I am not your doll, Valerius.
You cannot lock me in a room and expect me to bow.”
Valerius suddenly slammed on the brakes, bringing the car to a screeching halt in the deserted VIP parking lot of the academy’s private wing.
Before the tires could even stop smoking, his hand shot out.
His cold, long fingers locked bruisingly around her jaw, forcing her mouth slightly open.
He lunged across the console, his massive, powerful frame completely pinning her into the leather seat.
The proximity was suffocating.
His chest pressed hard against hers, making her painfully aware of the raw strength crushing her down.
His thumb slid up, rough and demanding, pressing directly over her swollen, deeply bitten lower lip.
He deliberately smeared the faint trace of blood lingering there, drawing a sharp, breathless gasp from her throat.
“Bow?
No, my love.
I don’t want you to bow,” Valerius whispered, his voice dropping to a gravelly, intimate frequency.
His breath was hot against her mouth, tasting faintly of the metallic tang of the blood they had exchanged inside the dome.
His gaze dropped to her lips, his absolute fixation stripping away his cold, royal mask.
He tilted her face at a punishing angle, his dark aura flooding the tight space until the car windows fogged up from the heat of their breathing.
“I want you to fight me.
I want your hatred to burn me alive,” he growled low, his lips brushing hers with a slow, agonizing friction before his fangs lightly grazed the sensitive pulse point of her jawline.
He left a wet, scorching trail against her cold skin that made an involuntary shiver run straight down her spine.
“But understand this, Scarlett…
your beautiful wrath belongs entirely to me.
If I cannot have you, no one in this world can.
I will tear the universe down to ashes before I let another man touch your skin.”
Scarlett didn’t flinch, though her breath was shallow and hitched in her chest.
Her nails dug directly into the open, bleeding wound on his shoulder, tearing the flesh until fresh, dark pureblood energy coated her fingers.
She leaned up, pressing her lips almost against his, her gaze steady and lethal.
“Then start burning the universe, King,” she hissed right into his mouth, deliberately breathing in his scent.
“Because I will never give you my warmth.”
A heavy knock on the tinted driver-side window abruptly shattered the suffocating tension.
Valerius slowly pulled back, his eyes still dark and unreadable.
His thumb wiped a fresh drop of blood from Scarlett’s lip, his touch lingering for a heartbeat too long before he lowered the glass.
Standing in the pouring rain was a tall, broad-shouldered man dressed in a sharp military-style trench coat.
He had short, silver-cropped hair and sharp amber eyes that scanned the interior with calculating precision.
It was Dante, the supreme commander of Valerius’s private shadow forces and his only trusted second-in-command.
“The High Council is in a frenzy, My Lord,” Dante reported, his voice deep and completely devoid of emotion.
His gaze shifted for a split second to Scarlett, noting her torn clothes, her glowing wrist scar, and the possessive, bruising grip Valerius still held on her waist.
“Julianus Thorne has been safely isolated in the underground cells, but the news of your…
rebellion…
has already reached the capital.
They are sending auditors to Grandcrest by morning.”
Valerius stepped out of the car, his elegant royal mask instantly snapping back into place as the cold rain hit him.
“Let them send their armies, Dante.
Grandcrest answers only to me.” He paused, his gaze hardening as he looked toward the dark horizon.
“Mobilize the eastern wards.
Freeze all Council communications across the sector.
If the capital wants a war over my territory, they can have one.”
Dante walked around to the passenger side, opening the door for Scarlett.
As she stepped out into the cold rain, her legs trembled slightly from mana exhaustion.
Instantly, Dante reached out a gloved arm to steady her by the elbow.
CRACK!
Before Dante’s fingers could even brush Scarlett’s sleeve, a violent, invisible shockwave of telekinetic force slammed into his chest.
The asphalt beneath them split, forcing the elite commander to slide five feet back into the darkness.
Valerius stood by the hood of the car, his veins pulsing visibly against his pale neck.
The air around them plummeted below freezing, turning the falling rain into sharp spikes of sleet.
“Do not touch her, Dante,” Valerius warned, his voice dangerously quiet, vibrating with a silent, volatile malice.
“No one touches what is mine.
Not even you.”
Dante straightened his coat, his amber eyes narrowing slightly as he looked at his master.
Scarlett noticed that Dante’s expression never changed.
Not fear.
Not surprise.
His features remained like cold stone, as if he had already begun calculating the fatal consequences of his master’s dark obsession.
“I forgot how protective you are of your new…
anomaly.”
Scarlett watched the interaction, her mind working rapidly through the haze of her exhaustion.
She looked at Dante—this calculating new commander—and then at Valerius’s unstable, territorial reaction.
His obsession is his sickness, she realized, a cold, ruthless thought forming in her head as the rain drenched her.
Every commander fears a weakness in battle.
Every empire collapses because of one blind spot.
Valerius has just shown me his.
And I will use it to tear his empire apart from the inside.
Valerius walked over, his arm wrapping around Scarlett’s waist from behind with a sudden, locking force.
He pulled her flush against his cold chest, his hand resting dangerously low on her hip as he glared at Dante.
“Prepare the presidential suite in the Onyx Pavilion.
From tonight, she stays with me.
If she takes one step outside my sight, your head will roll.”
“Understood,” Dante replied, stepping back until his silhouette dissolved into the shadows of the rain.
As Valerius dragged her toward the towering, gothic dark pavilion of the academy, Scarlett said nothing.
But right as they crossed the marble threshold, her shattered neural block suddenly glitched one more time.
A voice—ancient, cold, and sounding exactly like her own—echoed clearly inside her mind, speaking in a dead, forgotten language from three hundred years ago:
“The shadow thinks it owns the moon…
but the moon only commands the tide to drown it.”
Scarlett froze in her tracks, her heart hammering violently against her ribs.
Valerius stopped too, his telepathy instantly picking up the bizarre, ancient vocal echo vibrating inside her thoughts.
He violently spun her around to face him, his face turning completely pale as he stared into her eyes.
“What…
what did you just say in your mind?” Valerius whispered, a rare, genuine flash of existential dread breaking through his features.
Scarlett stared back at him, her silver eyes glowing in the dark, dim hallway of the pavilion.
A slow, mocking smile touched her lips.
“I didn’t say anything, Valerius.
But it looks like your prison is already haunted.”
The golden cage has officially locked shut inside the Onyx Pavilion!
Valerius’s dark, possessive declaration—”If I can’t have you, no one can”—has set a dangerous new precedent.
But with the High Council threatening war, Dante secretly calculating his master’s fatal blind spot, and a sinister 300-year-old voice waking up inside Scarlett’s thoughts, the power dynamic of Grandcrest Academy is about to shatter!
Question for the readers: Whose ancient voice echoed inside Scarlett’s thoughts?
Valerius showed a flash of real fear for the first time—what political or historical secret is he hiding about her true origin?
The dark romance friction is reaching a boiling point!