Rav looked at the lady before him with silent tears on her cheeks, dark bruises on her face that made her look so unhealthily pale and small as she sat on the stair step with a lost expression. After everything he had told her, it was like she was trying to digest it all and co to terms with the dreadful fact that the duke was lost forever. It was sothing even he couldn’t seem to believe, as his lordship had been a man who wouldn’t easily fall prey to the rogues—those senseless beings.
Despite being very powerful the duke had a weakness hidden from anyone of his enemies, it was that corruption inside of him.
Not once had Rav thought the corruption would bring the duke down, and certainly not once had Rav thought the duke would care for soone enough to go head first into a battle of rogues, beco vulnerable enough to be bitten into awakening his dormant corruption.
Had the king not sent Gaggers after him, all this wouldn’t have happened, as the rogues were easily killed. And in the duke’s hands their heads could be snapped in two like re chickens.
Rav certainly couldn’t understand what exactly had happened during that hunt. What was it that caused his lordship to get bitten by rogues when he could have perfectly well fought them off?
Though Rav had these questions, he knew this wasn’t the mont to find the answers. But the truth remained that his lordship...
Rohan’s fate had been sealed. The corruption would destroy him.
No matter how much he thought about it, Rav couldn’t accept this truth, what made it even more difficult was the knowledge that there was absolutely nothing they could do to help Rohan now. It was hard for him as well, but he hoped the lady would think of her safety next and listen to him. He needed to take her away from here. Because if his lordship were here, this is what he would have wanted.
Though the king might not kill her, as he had finally gotten rid of the man he wanted, there was no mistaking she would be given to the slave house as one of the won to reproduce more humans the vampires sell out to the elites for blood. She was not safe here without the duke, Rav thought to himself as he gave her ti to take in everything.
He had known what his lordship had gone through right from when he was born, as Rav was good at gathering information and had used his skills to do that when he was first brought into the castle and saw how they had sent the prince to that dungeon.
Nobody should go through the neglect he went through in the hands of the king and queen. And though now he couldn’t do anything to help his master, he could do sothing by protecting the lady with his life and sending her away to the safety of the manor his lordship had bought in her na in another kingdom far away from Nightbrook and Aragonia.
No one would find her there. She would be safe far away from here, and he would make certain of it.
His lordship had made sure everything was put in it, as if he knew a day like this would co, and now what Rav could do was to take the lady there.
"I want to be alone," Belle muttered softly as she got up to her feet.
"My lady," Rav called as she began to turn away from him. "Get your things ready, we will leave in an hour."
Belle’s throat clenched with emotions, and without replying or looking at Rav, she made her way back towards her chamber.
She walked like she was in a trance state, not knowing or looking at where she was going, and only walking. She entered her chamber in an unconscious movent and automatically closed the door behind her and bolted the lock to keep anyone who might co in to disturb her out.
Pressing her back against the smooth mahogany door, she looked around the chamber with tear-filled vision, unable to believe that Rohan had spent many lonely years in this sa chamber. He had been neglected from the mont he was born into the world and left to die.
And to think that she thought she had it worst since childhood. His childhood sounded like the horror stories told to kids in Aragonia. She could not image anyone in his shoes. Her Rohan...
Looking around it with quivering lips, she slid down to the floor and then buried her head between her knees and began to cry.
"I am so sorry..." she sobbed brokenly. "If I hadn’t reacted the way I did, you wouldn’t have been bitten by those monsters. You let your guard down because of my reaction."
The look in his eyes at that mont now beca a constant in her head, eating at her heart agonizingly.
She cried as she clutched her hand against the necklace around her neck, which he had given her, and she had held dear to her heart that she couldn’t afford to take it off even for a second.
When had he grown to an so much to her?
It felt as if he’d reached into her and touched a part of her soul, beca one with it, and now he was hers in a way she’d never considered anyone hers before, and that look in his eyes then...she knew he’d considered her his as well.
Now she knew why he looked that way. He’d seen in her eyes the sa thing he once saw In his mother’s. She’d looked at him with fear...
She pald her face as a painful sob clenched her throat.
She might have wanted to bla it on the rogues to feel better, but she knew well enough that had she not stepped away from him in fear, he wouldn’t have let his guard down even for a mont as he fought the rogues. If she could turn back ti...
Belle shut her eyes bitterly as she realized that even if ti were to turn back, she wouldn’t be able to change her reaction because any person in her place would have reacted like that. She could only change her reaction if she turned back ti with these mories.
"I am so sorry..." She tightened her fingers around the cold diamond and cried her heart out. It did not bother her that Rohan was half demon and vampire as much as it worried her that he was lost to her because of her one second of mistake.
Belle cried until there were no more tears in her, and she beca so numb she couldn’t feel anything. Her head beca heavy and like it was swollen from the inside, and her nose had stuffed that she couldn’t breathe through them but through her mouth.
Like a broken soul, she got up from the floor and dragged her heavy feet to her bed, refusing to let herself look at the space where Rohan had lain that day when he made love to her, and whenever he kissed and did things to her. Her heart clenched at the mory, and she clutched her trembling hand to her chest as she gasped for breath through the emotions.
He always laid on the right side of the bed, and she sat on the left side now, her back to the space on the right. She couldn’t look or she might break down completely.
He had laid there the first day she had seen his back. He had looked so handso and unreal she hadn’t been able to look away from his srizing face.
Any little thought of him seed to consu her with emotions so intense she felt like she would drown in them. To be able to think straight, she welcod the numbness and blocked her mind of all thought that might break down the dam again.
She was still thinking of how to avoid leaving Nightbrook without her husband, and was also considering going back to the forest to find him and chain him and drag him with her wherever Rav planned to take her in order to keep him next to her, when she caught the sight of a shadow in front of her.
She barely even jumped when the shadow suddenly appeared, and looking towards it, she found Kuhn standing next to the fireplace, watching her with an intensity in his eyes within his hooded head.
Staring at him, she realized he was the answer to her current problem on how to find her husband.
She got up to her feet and walked to him.
"Kuhn, I need your help. We need to go and find Rohan," she told the creature as she pulled its wooden hand, but Kuhn pulled his hand back and stepped away from her, shaking his head like he was telling her no.
Belle frowned, "You will not help ?" she asked.
Kuhn shook his head side by side.
"Then let’s go and find him," she said, reaching out to hold his hand again, but the creature took another step away from her.
"What the hell is wrong with you? We can’t waste ti, every second counts, I need to find him!" she exclaid in anguish, tears of frustration streaming down her cheeks yet again despite her effort to stop the tears.
"Can’t you understand ? Can’t you see that I am in pain? My heart is squeezing painfully within whenever I think about my future without him. Sothing is dying inside , Kuhn. Help , please. I need to feel alive again, and I don’t believe I can feel it without him... he’s... he’s everything to , my ho, my family, my husband. Help ..."
She looked at the creature with an agonizing expression. "Please..."
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