Page 108 of Hellebore

“Why the fuck not?” Enzo demands from the other side of the table, steadying the bleeding man.

“Because that means she was raped because of me!” The words rip free, each one carving deeper. “I’m the one that got her hurt! I’m the one to blame for all of it!”

The warehouse swallows my scream, but it doesn’t stop the unraveling. Six years of starving in the dark for her—obsession, worship, ruin—and now this. My own blood had reached out and taken her.

Touched her.

Hurt her.

“Drystan—” Easton steps in front of me, blocking the table, his voice cutting through the haze. “We finish here and go after Lawrence.”

“No.” The word leaves me like a blade being sheathed. I pull the rage back, folding it into something colder. I straighten to my full height, wiping blood and sweat from my face with a rough swipe of my sleeve. The fabric comes away dark. “We finish here and I go after him. He’s mine.” My voice drops, laced with the promise of an endless night. “I will make him suffer. No—she will. And if he killed her… I will follow him to the pits of hell and torture him for eternity.”

I lock eyes with Easton. The doubt flickers there, brief as a dying ember, but he nods.

“The hellebore.”

Easton nods and hands me the box. My fingers close around the hellebore vial—dark liquid swirling inside. I pull it free and step past him to the table. Nicholas is still twitching from the earlier dose, his broken nose leaking steadily, blood mixing with sweat and drool. I force his jaw open again and pour the full lethal measure down his throat and it mingles with the coppery blood.

“We should go now, burn this place,” Easton mutters, already turning toward the door. “Leave nothing.”

I don’t move. “I need to watch it. I need to see the hellebore kill him.”

The effect comes slowly at first, then all at once. Nicholas’s body arches against the chains, a violent convulsion ripping through him. His eyes—still blown wide and black—roll back until only the whites show, veined with red. A guttural gag tears from his throat, wet and choking. He retches hard, vomiting a dark, frothy mess that splatters across the steel table and onto the concrete floor, a blood-flecked bile that smells of rot and bitter herbs. More convulsions follow, his limbs jerking in unnatural spasms, chains rattling, sounding like funeral bells in the decaying warehouse. Sweat pours off him in sheets, his skin flushing then paling to a sickly, mottled gray as the poison claws deeper.

I stand over him, unmoving, the moonlight slicing through the roof to paint his dying body in silver and shadow.

In my mind, the scene fractures. Briar. Where is she right now? Bound in some forgotten room, or already cold?

Did I fail her again—too late, always too late?

The thought carves a hollow through my chest, the same endless starvation I’ve carried for six years suddenly yawning into an abyss. Her blue eyes dimming. Her voice silenced. The one light in my black heart, snuffed out by my own father’s hands. If she’s gone… the world can burn with me. I’ll drag every soul responsible into the dark and make them feel what it is to starve without her.

Nicholas’s breathing turns ragged, wet gurgles escaping with every heave. Another convulsion seizes him, harder this time, his back bowing so much the chains bite into flesh, drawing fresh blood. He vomits again, weaker now, a thin trickle of crimson-flecked foam sliding down his chin. His heart stutters visibly beneath sweat-soaked skin, erratic and failing. The warehouse seems to lean in, the shadows thickening as if feeding on his agony, the air heavy with the sweet-decay perfume of hellebore and death.

A final, shuddering breath and his body goes slack against the steel altar, eyes fixed on the broken roof above. The silence that follows is absolute.

I stare at the ruin of him a moment longer, the feral need inside me only half-sated.

Now I go after my father.

Chapter Thirty-Four

DRYSTAN

Two days have passed since the warehouse, and I no longer remembered what it felt like to breathe without pain.

“You can’t go alone!” Easton yells, slamming his fist on the table with a crack that echoes through the grand hall. “We go with you!”

“No. This is my battle. Not yours.” My voice comes out flat, hollow, as if the words themselves are already mourning.

I turn around and walk towards the door of Hellebore, maybe for the last time. Each step feels heavier than the last, my boots scraping against the ancient stone floors.

In the hallway, I pause. My gaze falls on the painting in the living room. Enzo has been restoring it after that fucker ruined it, careful strokes trying to heal what was torn. There she is. My bleeding heart cradled in her hands. The crimson seems too vivid, too alive against her pale fingers.

The painting stares back like an omen now, a prophecy written in oil and blood—our blood. I will bleed for her. I will give her my heart… every last drop. I just need her to be alive.

Please, God, let her still be breathing.