Brute 181

Chapter 181 

 

“Why are we not hiding?” I asked Grace. “Or running?” 

Surprisingly, my heart wasn’t racing. Maybe because every part of me was still more focused on Cassian at the border than on myself. 

Grace opened her mouth to answer but stopped when the door burst open. 

It slammed into the wall hard enough to rattle the shelves. I flinched, turning just in time to see a body thrown across the floor. Lucas hit the rug and slid, shoulder first, before coming to a stop near the desk. 

“Lucas!” I moved on instinct, taking a step toward him but Grace stopped me before I could reach him. 

He tried to push himself up, but his arms shook violently. His whole body trembled like he was freezing, even though sweat glistened at his temple. His eyes were open, focused, but there was something wrong in them, strain, like he was fighting something I couldn’t see. 

Behind him, boots stepped over the threshold. 

Grace’s breath hitched. “Witchcraft,” she hissed. Her hand flew to the sword mounted near the wall. She ripped it free and stepped in front of me in one smooth motion, blade already raised. “Witches!” 

Then Matron Yara walked in as if she were entering a meeting hall instead of a guarded study. Two soldiers flanked her. Behind them, the hooded man from the corridor stepped in, that same stone clutched in his hand, faintly glowing. 

Seeing this, Grace didn’t wait. She lunged towards them. Her sword arced toward Yara’s head, fast, clean, the kind of strike meant to end a fight before it began. 

However, before the blade could reach the Matron, the hooded man lifted the stone a little higher. 

And… Grace froze mid-step. 

The sword slipped from her fingers and clattered onto the table’s edge before sliding to the floor with a dull thud. Grace’s whole body started to shake, muscles locking so hard I could see the strain in her jaw. She tried to move, to force another step, but nothing answered. 

“Grace!” I grabbed her arm, but the moment I touched her, I felt it, a strange pressure in the air, like a heavy hand pushing against my skin. It brushed over me, probing, then slid away. It didn’t take hold of me the way it did her. Yet, when I tried to heal Grace, an invisible force seemed to stop it. 

My eyes widened just as the man’s eyes flicked to me, confused for a second, before he focused back on 

Grace. 

Almost immediately, her breathing turned rough. “S-stop…” she forced out. “Let… her… go….” 

Yet, Matron Yara didn’t even glance at her. Most of her attention was on me. 

 

She took in the room, the scattered papers on Cassian’s desk, the box sitting open where Lucas had placed it earlier, Grace shaking in front of me, Lucas on his knees on the floor, bound and straining. 

Then her gaze finally settled fully on my face. A slow smile spread across her lips. 

“Well,” she said softly. “There you are.” My heart hammered now as I forced myself not to step back. 

“Hello there… my lady,” Yara drawled, as if we were meeting in some formal reception instead of Cassian’s study. “Did you expect to see me again so soon?” 

“What are you trying to do?” I demanded, forcing my voice to stay steady even though the air in the room felt wrong. 

I tried healing Grace again, pushing warmth from my palms into her trembling body, but something blocked it, something thick and oppressive, like a dark layer wrapped tightly around her that refused to let anything through. Grace’s earlier warning echoed sharply in my head. Witchcraft. 

My attention snapped back to the hooded man holding the glowing stone. The light pulsing from it wasn’t familiar. It wasn’t a fae stone, nor anything I had ever encountered in the North. Whatever power he was channeling felt unstable and hostile, sinking its weight over the room. 

“Stop this! You’re hurting them!” I shouted at him, unable to keep the anger from my voice. 

Yara let out a short laugh. “You really are foolish.” 

With a flick of her fingers, she sent two soldiers toward me. They moved quickly, intending to pin me before I could react. But Cassian had taught me better than to freeze in fear. 

I stepped back, drew the dagger at my waist, and struck the first man’s arm before he managed to grab me. He hissed and stumbled, but the second soldier was already at my side. I twisted toward him, cutting across his shoulder just enough to throw him off balance, then pushed against the desk to widen the distance between 

The two wounded soldiers fell back, but Yara only watched them with annoyance. “This is all it takes to injure you?” she muttered before gesturing again. Immediately, six more men stepped forward, larger, stronger, and clearly meant for overpowering, not precision. 

“Keep her alive,” Yara instructed without a hint of concern. “I don’t care what condition she is in. Just make sure she stays alive.” 

The six men advanced at once. One swung his dagger at my ribs, and I barely managed to dodge to the side, but another struck from the opposite angle. Their movements were coordinated, designed to corner me. I raised my arm to block the next strike, already preparing to counter, but before I could, metal collided with metal in front of me. 

Grace had moved. Somehow, she forced her body to break through the paralysis long enough to throw herself between me and the attacker. 

She caught the blow with a dagger. The clash sent a harsh vibration through the blade, and the dagger slipped from her shaking hands, crashing onto the floor and skidding across the room. 

I didn’t realize what had happened until I caught the coppery scent in the air and saw the dark stain spreading 

10:05 Wed, Nov 19 

Chapter 181 

across her sleeve. Blood seeped quickly through the fabric, warm against my fingers as I grabbed her before she collapsed. Grace’s breathing turned uneven as her knees buckled, her body giving out from the wound. and whatever force was still holding her down. 

Behind us, Yara’s smile widened as Grace sagged in my arms, her sleeve completely soaked as the blood kept spreading through the fabric. 

I pressed my hand over the wound and tried again to heal her, pushing every bit of warmth I could muster. into her skin, but the same crushing force blocked me each time. 

It felt like I was pressing against a thick wall, refusing to let anything through. The harder I tried, the stronger that invisible barrier held, making it clear that nothing I did would reach her while that stone remained in the 

room. 

Yara watched everything unfold with a kind of satisfaction that sent a cold shiver through me. 

“I didn’t plan to go this far,” she said as she stepped closer, her shadow sliding across the floor until it reached the tips of my shoes. “But seeing you now… you can only blame yourself.” 

I tightened my hold on Grace, who was barely staying upright. “Don’t touch her,” I warned, though my voice trembled more than I wanted. 

Yara didn’t bother acknowledging the threat. She simply lifted her chin toward her soldiers, her expression turning cold and resolute. “Hold her down. Cut off her limbs. I want to see how fast she heals from something like that.” 

The breath left my lungs all at once, and for a moment everything around me, the sound of Grace’s ragged breathing, Lucas’s restrained growl from across the room, and the heavy steps of the soldiers moving toward us, blurred at the edges. Her order seemed to echo inside my skull, repeating over itself until I could barely hear anything else. Cut off her limbs. Let’s see how fast she heals. Blame yourself. The more I tried to steady my thoughts, the louder those words became. 

The smell of blood on my hands was impossible to ignore. It clung to my skin and filled the air around me, warm and metallic, seeping into my senses until it was all I could smell. 

I tried to breathe past it, tried to focus on Grace and the danger in front of me, but the scent only grew sharper the longer the soldiers hovered nearby. It pushed deeper into my chest, stirring something I couldn’t identify. 

It wasn’t fear or panic, not the kind I knew. It felt more like heat, curling low in my stomach before spreading up my spine, prickling under my skin. The more the scent thickened in the room, the stronger that sensation became. 

My fingers twitched without meaning to, and my breathing turned shallow and uneven as something unfamiliar pressed against the back of my mind, demanding space it had never taken before. 

I could hear my own heartbeat clearly now. Even as Grace whispered my name in a voice so faint I almost missed it, it barely pulled my focus back to her, because everything inside me was pulling toward something else entirely. 

The soldiers circled closer, weapons drawn, but I hardly noticed the danger anymore. The scent of blood was changing something in me, peeling back layers of something familiar and bringing forward a part of me that 

10:05 Wed, Nov 19 

Chapter 181 

felt older, heavier, and disturbingly hungry for more of that scent filling the air. 

And no matter how I tried to push it down, that feeling kept rising 

The need… to see more blood,