To ruin an Omega Nov Chapter 313: Conjoined

Chapter 313: Conjoined

CIAN

She said nothing.

The silence stretched between us until it felt like sothing physical, like a rope pulled tight enough to hum. I waited. She kept her mouth closed. Her eyes stayed wet. She stood there like if she didn’t move, if she didn’t speak, the whole thing might pass over her.

Sothing shifted in my chest. It started as grief. It hardened fast. Turned into sothing with edges.

"Answer ."

She didn’t.

Her lips pressed together. Her shoulders stayed squared in that careful way she did when she thought stillness made her smaller, less visible, less guilty.

"Madeline." My voice ca out low at first, then it ripped free of my control and echoed off the walls. "Answer ."

She flinched. Actually flinched. The tears were still clinging to her lashes but her spine went straight, like she’d rembered who she was supposed to be. I watched sothing reorganize itself behind her eyes. Fear shifting into calculation.

"Aldric put a sentinel to watch ," she said, barely above a whisper. "If you keep yelling, you could alert them."

I stared at her. It took effort not to laugh.

"I wasn’t followed," I said. "I made sure of it. That ends that."

She held my gaze like she wanted to argue, then let it drop.

"Can I cast a spell?" she asked.

The request did sothing ugly to . I didn’t think. My hands reacted before my mind caught up. The claws pushed through my skin slow, which was worse than if they’d torn out clean. I felt the pressure build, the split, the sting. I looked down and saw the blood well against my palm, bright and imdiate.

Then I looked back at her.

"Do not," I said, and my voice was steady in a way that surprised , "even consider it."

"It’s just to seal the room," she whispered. "So no one can hear us."

The fact that she thought lowering her voice would soften

almost made

furious all over again.

"The problem," I said, pressing my bleeding hand against my thigh, "is that I don’t trust you anymore. Not even a little. So no spells. Just talk."

She wiped at her face with the back of her hand. The gesture made her look young. Too young. She had always looked younger when she cried, and that had always been my weakness. It used to undo .

It didn’t tonight.

"I didn’t an to hurt you," she said. "Cian, I swear."

"Yet you did." I kept my tone even because if I let it slip I didn’t know where it would go. "More than once. You killed a witch. You stirred hate against

from your own people. You shaped it carefully. Made

the problem. Made yourself the solution. Why? So you could circle back and look clean?"

I had to breathe. Just breathe. Because saying it out loud made it real in a way that thinking it hadn’t.

"How long?" I asked. "How long have you been working for Aldric?"

"Cian..." She said my na the way she always had when she wanted to slow

down. In that soft, weighted and intimate manner.

It dragged against .

My hand moved before I chose to move it. The claws caught the light and her eyes dropped to them instantly. She stumbled back and hit the wall, but that was pointless. I was already too close. Close enough to see the red threading through the whites of her eyes. Close enough to see where her tears had cut clean tracks down her face.

Sothing in

pulled back at the last second. I forced my hand down.

"Please," I said. It ca out rougher than I wanted. "Just talk. Don’t say my na."

She started crying again, and this ti it wasn’t careful. It wasn’t pretty. It was ssy and loud and humiliating. I watched her fall apart and felt two things at once. The years of knowing her. The refusal to let those years soften .

"When your father died," she said.

My stomach dropped so fast it made

dizzy.

"What."

She covered her mouth like she could shove the words back inside herself. Her shoulders shook. She kept crying.

"I didn’t want to do it," she whispered.

The drop in my stomach flattened into sothing cold. Clean, as it was exact.

I stood there and made myself understand what she had just said.

"So when you asked

to choose," I said slowly, because if I rushed I might lose control, "between you and the seat of Skollrend. That was because..."

She nodded.

I laughed. It sounded wrong in my own ears. Scraped raw.

"Wow," I said, shaking my head. "How could you? That was my father. You knew how much I loved him. You knew. How could you even think—"

"I had no choice."

The words snapped sothing.

"What does that an?" The cold cracked open and heat poured through. "You keep saying that. I had no choice. What does that functionally an, Madeline? Because from where I’m standing you made plenty. You planned. You maneuvered. You lied."

"He threatened ." Her voice fractured around the words. "Aldric threatened ."

I stopped moving.

She pressed her hands together like she was praying, eyes fixed on the floor between us.

"With what," I asked. My voice had gone flat. "What could he possibly threaten you with."

"My father’s sins," she said. "My family’s."

I felt my jaw tighten.

"Don’t be vague." I stepped closer. She didn’t move this ti. "Do not be vague with

right now. I promise you, Madeline, your magic will not save you from . Not tonight."

"I would never hurt you."

The words hit wrong. Hollow.

"The feeling," I said, and I could feel the anger threading back through , slow and rising, "is not mutual."

She swallowed again and I watched her throat work like the words were sharp on the way up.

"Aldric found out my father was involved in fleshcraft," she said. "He found out and he kept it. He used it. I couldn’t let that co out. I couldn’t let my family—"

Fleshcraft.

The word settled in my head heavy and imdiate. I did not need an explanation. I knew what it ant in our world. I knew what it would do to a family na. The kind of stain that did not wash off, the kind that followed bloodlines for generations. Standing lost. Alliances dissolved. Safety revoked in quiet ways that ended in very loud consequences.

I understood her fear.

I also understood that she had weighed it against

and decided I was lighter.

"So you were willing," I said, and my voice did not rise because it did not need to, "to burn everything we were. To burn my life. To burn the love I had for you, which was considerable, because your family.... No, your father... Because he needed protection from consequences he earned."

I took a breath and it scraped on the way in.

"They held priority. Over . Over my father. Over my entire family." I looked at her properly then, not at the tears, not at the shaking hands. At her. "It’s a good thing we never actually ended up together."

"Cian—"

"Why are you here."

The question ca out flat and I was already answering it for myself as I spoke. The shape of it had been there all along. I just had not wanted to look directly at it.

"The witches had to be turned against

so you could step in as my rescuer. That was the plan. Yours and Aldric’s. You make the wound, then you offer the bandage. Goddess..."

The realization hit and with it ca sothing ugly and humiliating.

"...I am so dumb," I muttered. "How did I not see it."

"He wants

to destroy what you have with Fia," she said.

There was no venom in it. No flourish. Just fact.

I nodded slowly because of course that would be the next move. Isolate

even more using her. Strip . Make

easier to unseat.

"And you were fine with that."

She did not answer right away. She looked at the floor like there might be sothing written there that could save her, then she lifted her gaze back to mine. For a mont her face did sothing complicated. It did not look like she burning through that manipulation juice. At least...not entirely. Sothing raw this ti slipped through.

"I won’t lie to you," she said. "It was one of the reasons I ca."

The honesty almost made

laugh.

"Because as vile as I know I look to you right now, I still love you. I love you very much." She inhaled, steadying herself. "So yes. I ca to break you up. But I started to see that you had already moved on. That I don’t sit at the front of your mind the way I used to."

Sothing in her expression shifted and I hated that part of

could still read it. The grief there was not staged. It did not look around for approval.

"It hurt," she said. "Watching you choose her in ways you could never choose . No matter what I did. I thought we were conjoined. That neither of us could survive separation. I... was... wrong."

I stood there and let that hang between us.

"Fuck you," I said finally.

There was no fire in it. Just exhaustion. "As much as I want you dead right now, I can’t bring myself to do it."

I looked at her and I felt the truth of that settle in, unwanted and solid. I could not kill her. Even now. Even knowing what she had done. That weakness, or rcy, or whatever it was, lodged itself under my ribs and refused to move.

"The good thing," I continued, "is that I don’t have to keep the traps I set for Aldric and Ronan in reserve anymore. You’ll do just fine in their place."

She went completely still.

It was the stillness of soone who had just realized they had stepped sowhere they did not understand.

Her eyes lifted to mine slowly.

"Ronan," she said. "Your Beta?"

I stared at her.

"Please," I said, the word coming out sharper than I ant it to. "Like you don’t know."

Sothing crossed her face then that did not belong to performance. I couldn’t ignore the tiny tells. The shifts of breath. The way her gaze hardened.

"Hekate," she whispered, and for the first ti, she sounded more than genuinely terrified and relieved all at once. "He’s the dead man’s switch."