-, undeniably so, and that was clear to anyone with eyes. Cassius stood alone, facing three figures whose power was far beyond anything mortal or vampire. But it wasn’t their strength that concerned him. He’d faced brute force before and left it in pieces.
No, what unsettled him was that putrid scent he could sll coming from them.
That sharp, filthy tang beneath their smile and blood. The unmistakable sting of human’s blood who had been killed rcilessly. With his heightened senses, he could sll dozen of vials with that said potion clinging to them tucked away in sleeves, boots, the lining of their coats. The sa kind of potion that had been injected into Arabella. And every inch of their bodies reeked of it.
They weren’t here to fight him, they were prepared to use him as one of their controlled puppets and the best way for them to use him was by injecting their potion.
The gear in Cassius’s rang as he saw Danielle, the woman giggling, "You should just give up, Your highness. If you leave Bella to our hands, you could at least avoid death tonight."
"Bella," Cassius repeated, "You all seem to talk about her so familiarly."
"Of course we are more familiar with her than you," she laughed at his words and pulled from underneath her hood the sickle she had hidden on her back. "After all, we are one of a kind."
A frown deepened between Cassius’s brows. One of a kind. So it was true then, Arabella wasn’t a normal human. The signs had always been there, hadn’t they? That day when she drowned, she should have died. Her body had gone cold, still. Her heart had stopped. But she lived and no human could have escaped death like that. Not without sothing unnatural flowing in their veins, just like him who could still move despite having no heart in his body.
They were products of sothing unnatural, a product of taboo and he knew precisely how it feels to be sothing that shouldn’t be there.
His aunt’s voice echoed inside his head like a warning, "You’ve made a mistake, Cassius. She isn’t what you think."
And maybe she wasn’t.
Under normal circumstances, this would’ve been the mont he turned his back. He should have let the doubts consu him and sever the connection between them for good. If it had been anyone else, anyone but her, he might’ve killed her on the spot for the lies, for hiding sothing this dangerous beneath the softness of her skin.
But he didn’t. He couldn’t.
Because he knew it rationally and deep in the bone that these sorcerers weren’t here just to expose her. They were here to claim her. To rip her away before she even had the chance to understand the power she carried inside her own blood.
Only Morpheus knew exactly what she was and what she could beco. And that was why he injected her, not to kill her, but to activate sothing.
Cassius’s jaw tensed. The puzzles fitting in his head as though it belonged there naturally.
They had co not because Arabella was weak. But because she was ant to be stronger than all of them. These sorcerers had ca here to take her away precisely because she didn’t know what power is in her. After all controlling a blind person is much easier than controlling soone who had beca aware of what they are and the power they possess which could instead turn against them.
Morpheus wanted to mold Arabella as he wishes while she never knew who she was or what her mother had hid from her which maybe rooted in her birthright.
"So quiet?" Danielle let out a cackle as in the next second her body had disappeared from in front of him, appearing beside him as she had crawled on all four across the wall, on her hand was the sickle that she had tried to use to slice his neck.
Cassius’s crimson eyes snapped over his right, noticing the woman’s sickle and with ease he dodged the attack. He pulled his hands forward, ready to Take Danielle’s head by her hair when he saw a dangerous silver gleam and turned to see that there was another hand coming out from Danielle’s waist, holding the syringe that was ready to stab his stretched out hand.
Cautiously, Cassius pulled away instead and he took a look to his arm, gritting his teeth as the basent was much too small of a location for him to take care of these filthy creatures.
"Quick," said Danielle who had moved from the walls to standing with two legs again. Under the bright light, now they could all see the six hands attached over her body, looking simply too disgusting to see. "You move so quickly, as expected of soone who grew up in the battlefield I suppose? You have keen instinct."
"Should I be flattered?" Cassius said and without turning back, he had threw his scabbard behind him, piercing straight to the other man’s chest as he had just managed to remove the sickle that had pinned him to the wall.
Cassius slowly pulled his hands in front of him, bloodied fingers curling with silent fury. From beneath his feet, a black liquid began to seep outward, moving like a living shadow that rippled with each breath he took. He gently shifted Arabella’s body in his arms, careful but swift, his eyes darting down to her condition.
She was burning up.
Her cheeks were flushed with fever, sweat dampening the strands of hair that clung to her face. And those letters, those cursed, ancient runes, continued to crawl across her skin like a brand from hell itself. Every line burned deeper, carving into her like molten iron, and the pain twisted her expression into sothing he couldn’t bear to see. Her eyes briefly opened to look at him but she could only shook her head, as though yelling at him that he should run away.
Run and leave her as their enemies were far too dangerous.
"Birdie," he whispered, barely recognizing the sound of his own voice. "I’ll send you away. Trust ."
Arabella couldn’t hear what Cassius said but the next second she felt her body subrging into a cold yet rather comfortable liquid that wrapped over her body like a warm hug. Her view then turned pitch black, her eyes unable to see anything other than a last glance over Cassius’s face, colored in such worry.
Why worried?
He was soone who would have drank poison with a smile.
But now it was as if he had felt fear for the first ti.
"I’ll co to you soon," his voice breathed to her ears, the only word she could hear before her body disappearing from the entire building in a blink, swallowed by the black liquid that Cassius had always controlled.
Seeing what had happened, the three sorcerers stood at their place, puzzled and rather shocked.
They seed to be unaware of the power Cassius had commanded as it wasn’t sothing normal even for a pureblood vampire.
"That was magic," said Danielle, her eyes narrowing as the three pair of hands on her body began to move in different directions. "But how? Vampires and magic," scoffed Danielle, "It’s impossible. What are you?"
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