Claimed by the Prince of Darkness novel Chapter 222

Chapter 222: Restless Compass

Ruelle watched Ezekiel bring the bowl of soup toward her, and her stomach turned over again. She could still feel the sting on her lower jaw from when he had grabbed her face. She said,

"I need cold milk. My stomach won’t be able to digest without it."

Ezekiel stared at her, the spoon paused mid-air. He didn’t blink. There was a patience in his eyes that frightened her more than his anger ever had, as though he had all the time in the world to wait for her to come around.

"It is good that I have everything prepared for you," Ezekiel said, and he smiled.

His smile was the worst part. It didn’t belong on the face of someone who’d just killed people whom she held dear.

"One moment. I will be back."

He straightened before stepping away from the room and the darkness in the corridor swallowed him.

Ruelle didn’t move at first. She didn’t dare.

Her hands and legs were bound in rope, jute biting into her wrists every time she shifted but she wasn’t tied to the chair. Either Ezekiel had forgotten, or he believed that even if she ran, she wouldn’t be too far to be caught. She didn’t dare to get up right away because if she were to trip and fall, it would only remind the halfling of how she wasn’t completely bound.

Ruelle didn’t know how many hours had passed since the harbour. Since she’d disappeared. With her heart pounding, she tried to calm her breath as she heard footsteps approach the room.

Ezekiel appeared in the doorway with a glass of milk in his hand. He crossed to her and brought the glass to her mouth. "Drink."

Though his voice was warm, it wasn’t a request.

She drank because she’d decided to play compliant. Defiance hadn’t worked earlier, so she took two sips before turning away. Her eyes drifted to the lantern hanging in the room. She asked him,

"What time is it?"

"Why should time matter now?" Ezekiel smiled. "You don’t have to worry about Sexton anymore. Or your family. Or anyone else." His expression softened. "You only have to think about us."

Ruelle doubted that telling him to let her go for her happiness, for her own good, would work. It was hard to reason with a person who was delusional. Reason required a shared reality, and Ezekiel had built his own. In his world, she loved him and only needed time to remember it.

He then continued, "You won’t have to worry about anything once we’re gone. I’ll take care of everything."

He reached for her hair, fingers hovering, then smoothing it back from her face with a tenderness that made her skin crawl. He continued,

"I know this place isn’t suitable, but it’s only temporary. I’ve already planned where we’ll go. Far away from here, where no one will disturb us." He smoothed another strand of hair from her face. "We only need to remain here a few more days."

What was he waiting for?

The lantern light dimmed for a heartbeat and the air thickened.

It was the snow. He was waiting for the ice to melt. Waiting for the ships and boats to begin to move again. And from what she remembered, the snow was predicted to melt by the fourth day.

But there was something else that had been gnawing at her, through the shock and the grief and the cold. Something she couldn’t shake. Lachlan had gone down in front of her. Blood spreading beneath his head before she could do anything. But Dane, how could he die?

"How were you able to take my appearance?" she asked. The question slipped out before she could stop it, but she didn’t regret it.

Ezekiel’s expression shifted at her question. He asked, "You think becoming you was difficult? I’ve watched you long enough to know how you move. How you speak. How you look at people when you’re trying not to show what you’re thinking. Taking your face was the easy part."

Ruelle felt her skin prickle by his words alone. To think all these months they have trusted and believed him. But something fell off as if he wasn’t telling the entire truth and she stared at him with suspicion.

"Are you sleepy?" he asked. The change in his tone was so sudden it made her flinch. The rage had drained out of him like water through a crack, and what remained was that patient, tender thing he always liked to show. He set the glass aside and said, "It is night, after all. And you must be tired from sitting for hours now. Let me take you to the bed."

"I am not sleepy."

It was night already? It was near to noon when they were at the harbour.

Her chest was beginning to ache from the anxiety and the pounding of her heart that hadn’t stopped. The rope burned against her wrists as she shifted, her skin raw beneath the fibres.

"The witch you killed," she said, forcing herself to meet his eyes. "Was she the one who helped you with everything?"

Ezekiel pulled another chair from the side, the legs scraping across the stone with a sound that left her on edge. He brought it to a stop directly in front of her, close enough that she could see the way the lantern light pooled in his eyes, and then he sat down.

"There are so many things to talk about, aren’t there, Ruelle?" He said her name like it belonged to him. "To think we had to be apart. I was wondering why the voodoo wasn’t working when I didn’t hear any news. But then I found out later that you are a fellow witch."

Ruelle’s eyebrows furrowed at his words and she stated, "You are a halfling..."

She saw him nod, and the nod was slow, almost pleased, as if he’d been waiting for her to catch up. He confirmed,

"I am a halfling. But I have traces of witch lineage that came from my father. But now that I think about it, all of it makes sense. I have traces of witchcraft, and you are a witch. A carry forward from what the past lives held." He paused, letting her catch up with what he meant. "Do you understand what it means?"

She understood exactly what he wanted it to mean, and she’d rather swallow glass than give him the satisfaction of saying it. She instead said,

"That we could be siblings for being the same."

The flash of anger in his eyes was instant before he laughed. Leaning forward, he placed his hand on either side of her armrest and replied,

"It is our destiny to be together. I am meant to protect you."

She had thought of tricking him but it was hard to think when her blood was roaring in her ears.

"A person meant to protect me wouldn’t keep me like this," she said, and her voice was low and sharp as broken glass. "You are no less than Harold Belmont, who saw me as an object."

Ezekiel’s hand had swept across it in a blur of motion, and the glass exploded against the rocky, uneven wall. Milk ran down the stone in pale streaks, dripping onto the floor where the shards glittered.

He was on his feet, pacing back and forth in front of her. He took a deep breath before exhaling and turning to her.

"I was the one who was protecting you in Sexton!" His voice cracked, raw with a fury he couldn’t contain. "I had to manipulate one of your tests because you almost failed! Because you forgot to write the rest of the answers, you missed the questions. I did everything I could in my power by getting rid of that Clifford girl so that you could live in peace!"

Ruelle’s breath caught in her throat.

For a moment, she was back in Sexton, standing outside the examination hall with the paper in her hands. Several sheets had been stuck together. She hadn’t even realised there were questions she had missed until it was too late. And the instructors had already been looking for any excuse to fail the Groundlings.

All this time, she had thought it was sheer luck that she had passed the test.

June Clifford... no matter how much they didn’t get along with her, death wasn’t the solution.

"But what did you do?" he went on, his voice rising, his hand shaking. "You went to live with Lucian fucking Slater! I wanted to get you out of the terrible state your father made you live in, but your stepmother put Caroline in your place after promising you to me! I have done nothing but ardently love you."

Ruelle sat very still, her face turned away. What her stepmother did was wrong. But at the same time, she was glad that was how things had turned out to be.

She couldn’t forgive him. No matter his reasons, no matter the twisted love he dressed his crimes in, she could not forgive him. The loss and the pain were still fresh, still raw. He had indirectly turned her into a murderer, the murderer of many and the weight was suffocating her. Ready to bury her in the ground.

And beneath the grief, she felt spite.

At the same time, her eyes dropped to his hands, where he pulled out a vial from his pocket. It was a small, colourless glass, and he pulled the lid free, which gave a soft pop that echoed in the room. He continued to speak,

"I have always held you dear to my heart. And if you find this difficult, I could always help you."

Ruelle felt her vision waver and she squinted hard, fighting to keep him in focus. The lantern light seemed to smear across the walls like wet paint and for a moment, her head felt too light, then too heavy. She questioned,

"What is that vial?"

She heard him say, as if from very far away, "If you want a window in this room, I will give it to you."

And in the blink of her eye, there it was. A window on the wall where there had been only blank, black stone. She heard him speak, "If you look closer, you will find a bird chirping."

And just as he said, a little bird came to sit on the windowsill. She was hallucinating. "And if it is Lucian Slater..."

When she looked back at Ezekiel, it wasn’t Ezekiel she saw.

It was Lucian.

The face she’d been longing for, aching for, holding onto like a candle in the dark since the moment the harbour had turned to chaos. The sharp line of his jaw. The pale, watchful eyes. The mouth she knew, the hands she knew. Her chest squeezed at the sight of him, a hard, sudden constriction that stole the breath from her lungs before she could stop it. But her body didn’t care what her mind knew.

This wasn’t him, she told herself. This was a trick. A trick that had possibly been used on Brother Dane.

She saw him step forward, his hand reaching towards her face. His voice like Lucian’s, which was low, but it lacked the depth she was used to.

"I love you so much, and I will do anything for you." His hand moved to her neck. She felt his fingers brush the place where the soul bond had been, the mark that bound her to Lucian. He said, "I will have this mark replaced. There are spells for it and then you will be mine."

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