Outside, a violent crack of thunder split the heavens, illumination flaring through the cracked glass.
Inside the presidential suite, Scarlett felt colder than the storm itself.
Suddenly, a massive shockwave from the courtyard rattled the entire Onyx Pavilion.
The floorboards beneath the mahogany bed vibrated sharply, making the heavy glass mirrors across the walls ring like tuning forks.
Instinctively, Scarlett tried to turn her head toward the sound, her silver-ruby eyes flicking toward the sealed bedroom doors, wondering if the walls would hold.
Valerius did not like that.
He didn’t want her attention anywhere else.
His eyes darkened into absolute, endless pitch, swallowing the dim violet light of the crystal lamps.
He released her wrist, but before Scarlett could even pull her hand back, his large, cold palm moved up, wrapping firmly around her slender neck.
He didn’t choke her, but the grip was a lethal, inescapable trap.
With a slow, deliberate tilt of his hand, he forced her face back up, breaking her gaze from the door and making her look straight into his glowing, obsessive gaze.
”Eyes on me,” Valerius commanded, his gravelly voice dropping to a dangerous whisper that sent a sharp shiver straight down her spine.
His thumb gently stroked the rapid pulse beating frantically against his palm.
“Look nowhere else.
You are my woman.
Let them die outside.
Let the sky fall.
You do not look away from me.”
Scarlett’s breath hitched, her lungs burning for air.
She stared up at the pureblood king, a suffocating realization washing over her.
He ruled kingdoms, destroyed rebellions, and commanded fear itself.
Yet before Scarlett, all that power meant nothing.
The only thing he could never control was her heart—and that had become his greatest weakness.
”You are insane,” she rasped, her voice trembling slightly against his palm, though her eyes still spat venom.
Valerius simply tilted his head, his fangs catching the dim violet light.
“I am whatever you made me, Scarlett.
And I will burn Grandcrest to the ground before I let anyone else look at you.”
Down in the courtyard, the storm was turning into a slaughterhouse.
Raindrops didn’t even touch the gravel anymore; they evaporated into thick, boiling steam the moment they came within a three-meter radius of the clash of steel.
Ethan skidded backward, the soles of his tactical combat boots carving two deep, jagged trenches into the wet stone of the courtyard.
His enforcer jacket was cleanly torn at the shoulder, a thin, bright line of crimson blood dripping down his pale arm.
Standing ten feet away, unmoving in the downpour, was the High Executioner.
This was Lord Kaelen.
For over two centuries, Kaelen had been the High Council’s living guillotine—a silent, emotionless weapon used to erase entire rebel bloodlines from history.
Kaelen fought with pure, gravitational dread.
Every single swing of his colossal broadsword carried the physical weight of a falling meteor, crushing the air out of the courtyard until the grass near his boots withered into black ash.
”You are remarkably fast, Chief Enforcer,” Kaelen stated smoothly, his posture completely straight under his silver-plated armor.
His voice held only the cold, mechanical certainty of a judge reading a death sentence.
“But speed is merely a delay.
It cannot outrun judgment.”
Kaelen raised his armored left hand, his fingers spreading wide.
The falling rain around him suddenly locked in place, freezing instantly into thousands of suspended, razor-sharp needles of crystalline ice.
With a sharp flick of his wrist, the hundreds of icy daggers shot forward, tearing through the heavy air straight toward Ethan like a storm of steel.
Ethan didn’t blink.
He spun his enforcer blade in a blinding, defensive arc.
The metal sang a deadly, high-pitched song as ice shattered against steel, sending millions of frozen shards flying into the darkness.
”Dante!” Ethan shouted over the deafening roar of the wind.
“The left flank!
They aren’t trying to fight me!”
But his warning was a second too late.
While Kaelen kept the Chief Enforcer completely pinned down, the remaining eleven silver guards completely bypassed the courtyard battle.
They charged straight through the jagged iron spikes Lyra had summoned from the earth.
Two of them lifted their heavy sound-cannon shields, unleashing a localized sonic blast that completely vaporized the massive stone entrance pillars of the pavilion into fine dust.
”They broke through the spikes!” Lyra yelled inside the main hall.
Her holographic screens flashed a blinding, critical red as data streams glitched out across the monitors.
She threw her master pad to the floor and drew her own twin energy-daggers, the blue plasma blades crackling to life.
“Julian, the barrier is gone!”
Julian frantically smashed his fingers across the mechanical keyboard, attempting to reroute power to the internal security grids.
“They are inside the Pavilion!
Ethan, the inner hallway is compromised!
I’m trying to drop the titanium blast doors, but their sound blast fried the local relays!”
The heavy oak doors of the entrance hall exploded inward, raining sharp fragments onto the polished marble floor.
Through the smoke, the silver guards stormed in, their heavy boots stepping rhythmically onto the marble.
They didn’t even look at Lyra or Julian.
Their visors locked instantly onto the grand, sweeping staircase leading straight to the top floor.
Leading straight to the presidential suite where Scarlett was trapped.
Inside the entrance hall, the air grew thick with the scent of ozone as the silver guards raised their weapons, their movements perfectly synchronized like a single machine.
”Step aside, Lady Lyra,” the lead guard commanded, his spear tip pointing directly at her chest.
“Harboring an unregistered flatline is treason against the Capital.
Anyone who stands in our way will be executed on sight.”
Lyra let out a cold, mocking laugh, her twin plasma daggers humming loudly as she took a low combat stance right at the base of the stairs. This chapter is updated first at novelping.com.
“If you want to go up these stairs, you’ll have to leave your limbs down here first.”
Three guards lunged forward at once, their spears thrusting with lethal precision.
Lyra deflected the first strike with her left dagger, her body spinning gracefully to the side as she sliced through the fuel line of the second guard’s armor.
Sparks flew as white-hot hydraulic fluid sprayed across the marble.
But the third guard managed to smash the butt of his spear against her shoulder, forcing her back against the banister with a painful groan.
”Lyra!” Julian shouted.
He pulled a compact, high-frequency sonic disruptor from beneath his desk, pulling the trigger to unleash an invisible wave of sound that made the guards’ visors crack, forcing them to stagger backward.
“I can’t hold their frequencies for long!
My terminal is losing power!”
But despite their efforts, four of the silver guards used the distraction to break away from the main fight.
They moved with terrifying speed, sprinting up the grand staircase.
Their eyes were fixed solely on the heavy, dark double doors at the very end of the upper corridor.
Upstairs, the noise of the battle below was getting louder, the sound of clashing blades and exploding mana echoing clearly through the floorboards.
Inside the bedroom, Valerius hadn’t moved an inch.
His hand remained wrapped securely around Scarlett’s neck.
He felt the exact moment the guards’ external mana scraped against his personal boundary lines, yet his expression remained completely detached.
”They are right outside the door, Valerius,” Scarlett whispered, her voice a ragged, breathless sound against his palm.
A small, desperate spark of hope flared in her chest.
Valerius noticed the tiny change in her eyes—the sudden, hopeful glint in her silver-ruby depths.
A dangerous, cold fury flared deep within his chest.
He shifted his weight, his free hand moving down to pin her left wrist flat against the velvet sheet, his thumb pressing deliberately over the faint, star-shaped scar on the back of her hand.
The moment his skin touched the mark, a strange, static-like sting rippled between them, but his grip remained absolute.
”You think anyone in this world can take you out of this room?” Valerius growled, his voice dropping to a low, heavy frequency that caused the glass paneling of the balcony to violently crack from corner to corner.
His fangs brushed lightly against the sensitive skin of her neck, right over her thudding pulse.
“I will shred the laws of gravity and bleed this empire dry before I let another hand touch what is mine, Scarlett.”
Right at that second, the heavy double doors of the presidential suite exploded inward with a deafening crash, splintering into a thousand pieces of dark wood as the four silver guards breached the room.
Oh my god, the adrenaline is insane!
Kaelen is proving to be an absolute monster, keeping Ethan completely occupied while his guards breach the Pavilion!
But that new bedroom line from Valerius?
Chills!
He is literally ready to tear down the laws of physics and bleed the empire dry just to hold onto her.
Now that the guards have blown the doors off their hinges, things are about to get real bloody.
Will Valerius wipe them out without even letting go of Scarlett?