Page 19

I ignored her, forcing my way deeper into her consciousness, searching for what she hid. Her mind fought me, throwing up barrier after barrier. Impressively strong, but not enough. I battered through her defenses, catching flashes of memories?—

Images flooded my consciousness—fragmented, confusing flashes: Ada in unfamiliar white walls, looking hollow-eyed and thin; voices speaking in hushed, clinical tones, “The healing process will take time…” and “Trauma response is severe…”.

Glimpses of her hands bound, though I couldn’t understand why?—

The scenes hit me with such force that I reeled back from the shock, though I maintained my grip on her through the shadow bonds.

The images were fragmented, making little sense, but the pain in them was unmistakable.

Something had happened to her after I’d driven her away—something that had required healers, that had left her looking broken in ways I didn’t understand.

“What happened to you?” The question escaped before I could stop it, my voice barely recognizable.

For a heartbeat, I saw myself as she must see me—the monster who had broken her, who now tore into her mind without consent, who treated her like a possession rather than the woman who had once held my heart.

She took advantage of my distraction, striking out with light magic that caught me across the chest, searing through my shirt to the skin beneath.

I hissed when flesh burned, the scent filling the chamber.

She was breathing hard, her chest rising and falling rapidly, light still flickering around her fingertips like she was ready to strike again.

Rage flared first—white-hot fury at her defiance, at the pain radiating across my burned skin.

My shadows darkened instinctively, ready to lash out, to make her pay for daring to hurt me.

But then something else stirred beneath the anger.

She was magnificent like this—fierce and deadly, her power crackling in the air between us.

Even broken, even terrified, she still fought back with everything she had.

The Ada I’d fallen in love with had been exactly this—unbreakable, defiant even in the face of impossible odds.

Part of me had wondered if that fire had died completely, if I’d destroyed it along with everything else.

But here she was, proving that some things couldn’t be extinguished no matter how much darkness tried to smother them.

“Fight all you want,” I snarled, and tightened my grip on her wrists until the delicate bones ground beneath my fingers. “I’ll have the truth from you.”

“Get out of my head!” She struggled against my shadows with frantic desperation.

I redoubled my efforts, forcing our connection wider, delving deeper into her memories, searching for whatever secret she was so desperately protecting.

But she was fighting too hard, her light magic flaring in desperate defense of whatever secret she guarded.

Every time I pushed toward certain memories, I was met with blinding walls of light that repelled my intrusion.

The barrier wasn’t just light magic—it was something more ancient, more powerful. Golden symbols pulsed within the light, arranged in patterns I didn’t recognize. This wasn’t just Ada’s magic; it had been strengthened by someone else, someone with deep knowledge of the old ways.

Behind that barrier, I sensed something precious—something Ada would die to protect. But it felt wrong for a lover. The energy was different, warmer somehow. Not romantic love, but something else entirely. Something pure and innocent and desperately important.

Fury surged through me at her resistance. “What are you hiding that’s worth this pain, Ada? Who helped you ward your memories so thoroughly?”

“Because you have no right,” she gasped, trembling with the effort of maintaining her mental shields. “No right to anything of mine anymore.”

I withdrew from her mind but maintained my physical hold, my shadows keeping her pinned to the bench. Blood trickled from her nose—testament to the mental battle we’d just fought.

“There are other ways to break you,” I said, my tone dangerously soft.

My shadows shifted, responding to my surge of anger and frustrated desire without conscious direction.

They caressed her skin through the thin robe, and despite myself, my body responded.

The scent of her, the memory of how she’d once welcomed my touch—it was torture.

We still hadn’t consummated our marriage, but part of me craved that final claiming, that irrevocable bond.

“Don’t you dare,” she breathed, eyes wide with fear.

“Your body remembers me.” I noted her involuntary responses. “Even if your heart belongs to whatever—whoever—you’re protecting.”

The shadows moved as if guided by invisible hands, responding to my deliberate control now rather than emotion. Each touch was a question, each caress a demand for truth. I wanted to break through her defenses, to understand what was so precious that she’d endure this agony to protect it.

“Tell me.” I brought her to the edge of response before withdrawing completely. “Tell me what you’re hiding, and this ends.”

“I won’t—” She panted, her body trembling with unfulfilled need and exhaustion. “I won’t give you anything.”

Again and again, I repeated the cycle. Push her to the brink, then deny release. Search her memories, encounter that impenetrable barrier. Each time, the strange resonance behind her shields grew stronger—something that felt both familiar and utterly foreign.

“This can continue all night,” I warned, and fought to maintain my composure as echoes of her need reverberated through our bond. “How long until you break, I wonder?”

The words tasted like poison, and I hated myself for speaking them. The darkness within me compelled me forward, drowning out the voice that screamed this was wrong, that I was destroying the only person who had ever truly mattered to me.

Her eyes met mine, defiance blazing despite her trembling body. “Go to hell.”

I leaned closer, our faces nearly touching. “Tell me what you’re protecting. Just give me that, and this stops.”

I invaded her mind one final time, tearing through her defenses with brutal efficiency. She screamed—a sound of pure agony that echoed off the stone walls. Her back arched, her body convulsing while I ripped through layers of memory and thought.

Then I encountered it again—that wall of blinding light, protecting whatever she guarded so desperately. I threw all my power against it, determined to break through?—

But the barrier held, and the effort left us both shattered. Ada collapsed, her mind retreating into itself while trauma overwhelmed her conscious defenses.

Horror crashed through me as I watched her crumble.

This wasn’t what I’d intended—I’d wanted answers, not this complete mental collapse.

The woman who had just struck me with such fierce defiance was gone, replaced by something broken and fragile.

My shadows recoiled instinctively, as if even they recognized the wrongness of what I’d done.

Monster. The word she’d called me echoed in my mind, and for the first time, I truly understood what she meant. This was what monsters did—they broke beautiful things simply because they could. They tortured the people they claimed to love until nothing remained but pain and fear.

But almost immediately, the darkness I'd cultivated for five years reasserted itself—the cold calculation that had kept me alive in my father's court, the cruelty that had become second nature.

It warred with my recovered memories, creating a constant battle between the man who'd loved Ada and the monster I'd deliberately become to survive.

She didn’t seem aware of me anymore, her eyes unfocused, her body curled protectively while she rocked back and forth.

While her surface defenses had been shattered by my assault, I could sense that the ancient barriers protecting her deepest secret had somehow held firm—whatever she was hiding remained locked away behind those golden symbols of power, her core self battered but intact.

“Can’t breathe, can’t escape, he’s everywhere, always watching,” she muttered, her voice childlike and broken—words that spoke to her trauma rather than any connection to shadow magic.

The familiar words—echoes of her breakdown—sent nausea through me. How completely had I destroyed her? What had I driven her to become?

The door burst open, revealing Sarp. I recognized immediately that he’d been searching for me when Ada’s screams had reached him through the corridors—the sound carrying farther than I’d anticipated in the stone passages.

His eyes took in the scene, and his expression shifted from concern to fury in heartbeats.

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” he demanded, shadows lashing out to strike me backward into the wall. “Look at what you’ve done to her.”

The binding's protective magic erupted with unprecedented force—this wasn't the manageable backlash from emotional manipulation or minor pain I'd caused before.

This was the bond's most severe punishment, reserved for when one partner's actions threatened the other's very sanity.

The ancient magic woven into our connection recognized what I'd done to her in that laboratory as a violation so profound it triggered every defensive mechanism built into the binding, sending agony through me that nearly brought me to my knees.

“She’s mine to break,” I managed, though the words sounded hollow even to me. The shadows whispered that I had to maintain control, couldn’t show weakness, even as part of me wanted to crawl to her and beg forgiveness.

“She’s not a thing,” Sarp spit, and crossed to Ada and kneeling beside her with gentle hands. “Ada, it’s Sarp. You’re safe now.”

Her wild gaze focused slightly on his face. “Sarp? The shadows…they’re in my head…”

“I know,” he said, staring at me with utter disgust. “But they’re going to recede now. Aren’t they, Hakan?”

I could have forced him out, could have reminded him who ruled here. But something in Ada’s broken expression stopped me. I fought against my own emotional turmoil, forcing my shadows to withdraw completely despite their instinctive response to my agitation. I gave her mind space to recover.

Minutes passed when I watched her fight to reassemble the pieces of her shattered consciousness.

Her breathing gradually steadied, the wild look in her eyes slowly fading while she forced herself back to awareness through sheer will.

I could see the tremendous effort it took, the way she had to rebuild her mental walls brick by brick.

But even when awareness returned, something remained fractured—her gaze drifted occasionally, as if she was seeing things that weren't there, and when she focused on me, the hatred in her eyes was accompanied by a haunted quality that spoke to deeper damage.

She tried to stand but swayed dangerously, her hand pressed to her temple as if fighting off a migraine.

"I can't—the memories keep shifting. What did you do to me?

" The question held genuine confusion, as if she couldn't quite grasp what had happened or separate present reality from the fractured images in her mind.

I wanted to ask about what I’d seen, about what she was still hiding. But the words caught in my throat. What right did I have to demand explanations after what I’d just done?

“Help her back to her room,” I told Sarp, unable to meet his accusing gaze. “Summon additional guards to her door—triple the watch.”

“You’re at war with yourself, Hakan,” Sarp said, his voice cold with disgust. “This obsession with breaking her—it’s going to cost you everything.”

I watched them leave, haunted by what I’d witnessed. She was still hiding something, something significant enough to endure this torture to protect. But whatever it was, it wasn’t what I’d expected.

Back in my chambers, I smashed my fist into the wall until blood ran freely. I had tortured her for nothing, broken her while chasing the wrong answers entirely.

Yet beneath the self-loathing, a terrible truth lurked: part of me had enjoyed her pain, her fear. The part shaped by my father’s teachings, by years of embracing shadow and cruelty.

That part disgusted me more than anything else.

Whatever Ada was hiding, it carried some strange resonance I couldn’t identify—something that felt both familiar and utterly foreign. The implications were staggering, but I couldn’t grasp them.

And somewhere deep inside, beneath layers of shadow and cruelty, a part of me mourned what we had once been—and what we could never be again.