41. Ava

AVA

O ver the rushing blood in my ears, I barely made out the crunch of leaves outside, the unmistakable sound of a single set of footsteps approaching the building. Each step was slow, deliberate, like whoever was coming knew they didn’t need to rush.

They owned this moment.

Cormac stumbled back from me, his eyes wide, fear etched into every line of his face.

“The High Lord is here,” he whispered, his voice trembling.

I’d never seen him like this before—utterly terrified.

Who was this High Lord?

Whoever he was, Cormac was terrified enough to forget everything else. The man who had taken so much pleasure in tormenting me just moments ago now looked as if he might crumble under the weight of whatever was about to enter the room.

“Please,” I rasped, my voice barely a whisper, the last shred of strength I had left .

My torso hung limp from my bound wrists, the pain of the ropes digging into my skin a dull throb compared to the dread building in my chest. I was slick with sweat, my body trembling.

But Cormac didn’t even look at me.

He stumbled farther back, retreating toward the bottom of the stairs, his gaze locked upward as the footsteps clomped above us, heavy and methodical.

With every stomp of those boots, my heartbeat ratcheted up another notch, my chest tightening.

Whoever this High Lord was, his presence cast a long dark shadow, even before I laid eyes on him.

I couldn’t let this man—this High Lord—get to me. I couldn’t let myself fall into his hands.

I looked up at the rope around my wrists again. I had a small chance. The slimmest of chances to free my hand.

But I had to do it now while Cormac was distracted.

I tugged at my hand, wincing as the pain seared through my wrist, hot tears blinding me.

I heard a long creak from the top of the stairs.

I blinked, my vision clearing enough to let me see Cormac dropping to one knee at the base of the stairs.

The High Lord’s shadow emerged first into the cellar. It slunk over Cormac’s stooped shoulders and then slithered across the floor to my half-naked body.

Cormac bent his head reverentially. “High Lord.”

Slow footsteps sounded down the stairs, each step groaning under their weight and dark pants came into view.

My thumb felt like it was going to dislocate if I pulled any harder. Or half my flesh would tear off .

But I couldn’t stop now. God, I was so close to getting a hand free.

The High Lord appeared now, tall and imposing, a dark hood covering his head, his face turned away from me.

A shudder ran through me as tension filled the musty cellar air.

Each step he took down the stairs landed like a countdown, the thudding reverberating in my skull.

I whimpered in fear as the High Lord stopped on the second step, directly in front of Cormac.

His pale hands with long fingers reached out from dark clothes to cup Cormac’s face.

Cormac leaned affectionately into the touch as the High Lord gently lifted Cormac’s face upward.

A blade flashed out like lightning, too quick to track, slicing cleanly through the air. The High Lord’s hand moved with terrifying precision, and in one fluid motion, the steel met Cormac’s throat.

The sound of it—a sharp, wet slice—echoed in my ears as vivid crimson blood bubbled and gushed from the open wound.

Cormac’s eyes widened in absolute shock, his face frozen in a grimace of disbelief. His hands shot up to his neck, desperate fingers pressing against the torrent of blood as if he could somehow stop the inevitable.

But there was no stopping it.

The blood poured faster, spilling down his chest in dark rivulets.

He toppled over, crashing onto the concrete floor with a sickening crack, the sound of bone meeting stone echoing through the room, his arms and legs bent at unnatural, grotesque angles as his body hit the ground.

I screamed, a guttural, terrified sound tearing from my throat as I stared at Cormac’s lifeless face—his wide, sightless eye locked on me, frozen in that same expression of disbelief.

A pool of sticky blood spread beneath him, dark and thick, soaking into his clothes, consuming him.

He was dead.

I stared at Cormac’s body, a strange mix of emotions churning inside me. Relief washed over me first, like a wave I couldn’t hold back.

He was dead. My captor was gone, and with him, the immediate danger.

The weight pressing down on my chest loosened, and for the first time in what felt like hours, I could breathe.

But then that relief twisted into something heavier, something I wasn’t expecting. Sadness. Not grief, exactly—not for him—but sadness for the loss of any life.

Because no matter what he’d done, no matter how much I hated him in those moments when he tormented me, there had been good times once.

Brief flashes of laughter during the few months that we dated, moments when we’d been something resembling friends. Those moments felt like a distant dream now, but they had been real.

I didn’t like Cormac. But I never wanted him dead.

I never wanted him to lose his life like this. There was something profoundly tragic about it, about watching someone’s life end, no matter who they were .

As I stared at his lifeless body, I couldn’t shake the emptiness that settled in my gut.

He was gone, and while I was free from him, the finality of it felt… wrong. Like something that couldn’t be undone, even if I wanted it to be.

Fear slammed into me, harder and sharper now, and I yanked desperately at my bound hands. The pain shot through my wrists, so fierce it made my lungs seize up.

Oh God. The High Lord had killed his own soldier without hesitation, without even a second thought.

He wasn’t just a terrible man. He was a ruthless monster, a psychopath who would kill his own men as easily and callously as one would squash a bug.

If the High Lord treated his own men with such cold disregard, how would he treat me?

After he took me, no one would be left to know where I’d gone.

He descended the final step, each footfall slow and deliberate. There was no urgency, no rush, just the slow, menacing approach of a predator.

He stepped over Cormac’s body like it was nothing more than a discarded piece of trash and stopped in front of me, his hood casting a shadow over his eyes.

But then I saw it—the skeleton mask covering his nose and mouth, the cold, ominous figure that had haunted me for so long.

Relief flooded my body, so fast and overwhelming it made my head spin. I should have known. I should have recognized those broad shoulders, that towering presence that consumed the space around him.

Scáth had found me. My stalker had found me .

He’d come to save me.

“Scáth!” I called out, tugging at the ropes. “Thank God you’re here.”

But he stood across the cellar, unmoving as my elation subsided. Something was wrong.

“Scáth?” I begged. “Answer me.”

He didn’t run to me. He didn’t call my name or rush to my side to release me.

A tingle of a deeper, darker fear prickled my skin.

He strode toward me, but something about the way he moved was all wrong. This wasn’t the lithe catlike grace I’d come to expect from Scáth.

Instead, he moved like a hulking giant, each step deliberate and heavy, as if he were forcing himself to take up more space than his body needed—like a living wall bearing down on me.

The relief that had flooded me when I thought I was being rescued evaporated, leaving a hollow emptiness in its wake.

My heart sank, dread curling in the pit of my stomach as he crouched in front of me, his forearms resting on his knees, his hooded eyes scanning my face.

I peered under his hood, but his eyes were in shadows. If I could just see his eyes, then I’d know it was him.

Usually, Scáth radiated raw emotion, an intensity that felt like heat rolling off him in waves, burning with fury or passion. But now? All I felt was cold.

An icy chill radiated from him, so stark and empty that it made my skin prickle. It wasn’t just unnatural for him —it was unnatural for any human. A void, a gaping nothingness that sent shivers down my spine .

Why was he acting like this? So detached. So distant. The man before me felt like a stranger in Scáth’s skin.

“Ty?” I whispered, my voice barely audible, hoping, praying to see a flicker of the man I loved.

“Hello, Ava,” he replied, his voice low, devoid of warmth.

It wasn’t him. This wasn’t the man I knew. The tone, the coldness—it was all wrong.

Scáth’s voice was fire, crackling with life, with passion and danger. But his? His was just ice, sharp and empty.

And his scent was different—it wasn’t the familiar blend of leather and spice that used to cling to him.

Instead, the air around him carried something new, something darker. He smelled of musk and sandalwood, dark and earthy.

Scáth was like a roaring crackling fire, ready to consume me and anything in his path. But this man, he was the ground opening up, a crack in the moist earth so deep and dark I’d never climb out.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out something. It took a second for my eyes to focus on it.

A syringe.

“What are you—?”

He plunged the needle into my neck, his unbothered, cold demeanor unchanging.

I let out a scream. Not at the needle, although the liquid stung as it was pushed into my skin. But at the betrayal.

I wrenched at my arm and finally my hand slipped free from the ropes.

I reached out to snatch his skeleton mask off his face. But my movements were already slow from whatever he’d drugged me with .

He caught my wrist with his strong iron fingers.

A realization struck me like a battering ram.

I thought over all the times I saw him from a distance with his mask on. I thought my skeleton-masked stalker was Scáth—because who the fuck has two stalkers?

But he wasn’t.

Scáth said he thought someone else was following me. He thought it was Cormac, but it wasn’t.

It was this cold, cruel figure before me. Hiding in plain sight all along.

I have a second stalker.

“You are the High Lord,” I spluttered, my head spinning with betrayal.

He said nothing, confirmed nothing, denied nothing. Just a cold statue glaring back at me.

He didn’t have to.

He was the High Lord of this secret society.

And I was now at his mercy.

“Why are you doing this?” I said, trying to snatch my arm from his grasp. But he was viciously strong and I could not break free. “What do you want with me?”

But I would get no answers. Because whatever he’d injected me with worked quickly. I felt it pull me under like I had weights tied to my ankles.

I had two last thoughts before I passed out.

I’d been saved from death.

There were far worse things than death.