Bound by the Mark of Lies (BL)-Chapter 218 - 213: Don’t Be Shy Now

And in walked the Emperor.

No coat. No crown. No armor to hide behind.

Just a white shirt—open at the collar, sleeves rolled to the elbows—and golden embroidery that caught the ether-light like it had been dipped in fire. The hem shifted as he moved, slow and deliberate, the way storms move when they know you can’t outrun them.

He looked like a man relaxing in his study, not an executioner in her prison cell.

And that terrified Patricia more than if he’d come armored, roaring, with chains in hand.

Because this—this was a man who didn’t need weapons to destroy her.

He stepped inside as if the cell belonged to him—and it did, in a way. Everything beneath this palace did. Everything under the Empire’s sky answered to him.

Patricia straightened on instinct, like her body remembered what it meant to stand before power, even if her pride had long tried to forget.

She licked her lips. They were dry. "So. You’ve come."

"I have," Damian said simply.

He stopped only a few feet from her, the golden light catching in the folds of his sleeves, swirling softly around the embroidery like a living thing. He looked effortless. Controlled. Lethal.

"I imagined this differently," she said, carefully. "I thought there would be more... shouting."

"I don’t raise my voice," he said, each word smooth and precise. "I can find what I need with other methods."

He let the statement settle, heavy and unhurried, like a blade laid gently on silk.

Patricia’s mouth pressed into a line. "You always did prefer silence. It unnerves people."

Damian’s eyes didn’t waver. "Silence is honest. You can’t lie when no one’s speaking."

He stepped forward, just enough for her to feel the shift in air pressure again—that quiet, uncanny sensation of standing too close to a storm that hasn’t broken yet.

She tried to hold her ground, to stay upright in her pride. "I’m not afraid of you."

"I know," Damian said calmly. "That’s why you’re here."

He turned his palm, revealing the ring she had touched during her arrest—the gilded band faintly glowing, pulsing with a last, dying signal. "You thought this would save you. That someone would come running."

His fingers curled around it. The light stuttered.

"Hadeon isn’t coming," he added, his voice like velvet over iron. "No one is. Because they know what I am."

Patricia’s breath hitched—but only for a moment. She lifted her chin, desperate to preserve even the illusion of control. "You can try to scare me," she said, her voice cold but tight at the edges, "but you’re not invincible."

Damian’s expression didn’t shift. No amusement. No threat. Just a stillness that was far more dangerous than rage.

"No," he said. "I’m worse."

He stepped forward—only one step—but the temperature of the room seemed to drop as the ether around him stirred, responding not to a spell, but to him. To what pulsed beneath his skin. The white of his shirt seemed to glow brighter under the pressure, gold embroidery catching every strand of light like it had been carved from a spell itself.

"I bleed," he said evenly. "I make mistakes. But unlike you, I learn. And when I strike, I don’t miss."

Patricia’s tongue darted out across dry lips. "You’re bluffing."

"You think that because you’ve seen Emperors fall. You think I’m one more name waiting to be scratched from a monument." He leaned in, close enough that she could feel the weight of his breath. "But I’m the one who buried the last dynasty. I’m the one they couldn’t kill. You didn’t rise because you were smart, Patricia. You rose because men like Hadeon needed puppets who believed they were queens."

Her face twisted—offense and fear colliding, a noblewoman’s pride cracking beneath the weight of something she couldn’t name. She opened her mouth, some retort forming—sharp, practiced, rehearsed.

But Damian’s voice cut through it, low and cold, with the weight of truth behind it.

"I find people like you entertaining," he said, his tone almost conversational. "That’s why you’re still alive."

He turned back toward her, just enough to meet her eyes—nothing but gold and fire behind them now. No fury. No theatrics. Just the truth of a man who’d seen empires fall and walked out of the ashes wearing a crown.

"But you touched my mate," he continued, and his voice dropped—silk tearing at the edges. "And that..."

He took a step forward, and the etherlight in the walls dimmed, shadows dancing behind him as if they, too, recoiled from what he was about to say.

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Her body slammed into the wall with brute force, as if something unseen had grabbed her by the spine and thrown her back. The impact rattled her bones, knocked the air from her lungs, and left her gasping as her knees buckled beneath her.

She crumpled, the stone unforgiving beneath her palms.

Damian hadn’t moved.

He stood exactly where he had been, no hand raised, no visible cast of a spell. The etherlight in the room pulsed around him—alive, humming like it knew what he was. Like it feared what it served.

His voice came again, and this time it was colder.

"I don’t need chains or fire to punish you."

Patricia coughed, her hands trembling as she tried to push herself upright. Her lip had split on the fall, a thin line of red cutting across her mouth, a smear of proof that he hadn’t even touched her.

Damian’s gaze didn’t waver.

"Now," he said, voice low and absolute, "tell me what I don’t know."

The air thickened, ether drawn inward like breath before a scream, and then she unraveled.

Her mind snapped open like a scroll caught in the wind. Her body jerked violently, shoulders slamming back against the wall, fingers twitching as her nerves lit up with white-hot fire. It wasn’t torture. It was precision. The pressure of a high arcanist peeling back layers of illusion and memory, emotion and fear, without mercy.

She flinched in pain, her mouth opening in a soundless cry, eyes wide, veins shimmering faintly with threads of ether that pulsed through her like ghostlight.

"Stop—!" she gasped, but the words barely made it past her teeth.

Damian tilted his head, the light from the golden embroidery on his sleeves casting flickers across his face—striking, terrible, inhuman in its calm.

"Oh, come on," he murmured, his voice smooth as cold silk, "don’t be shy now."

His hand didn’t move, but the pressure inside her skull twisted again—deeper this time, sharp and surgical. Not violent, no—intimate. Like he was peeling open the folds of her mind with a scalpel made of ether and command.

"You were bold enough to forge images of my mate," Damian continued, his voice cold and deliberate, each word sharpened like a scalpel. His eyes didn’t blink, didn’t soften, only watched as Patricia’s body spasmed once more against the stone wall—her muscles twitching, her mind fraying at the edges of his grip.

He stepped closer, the embroidery along his sleeves pulsing faintly with ether, the light alive and responding to his will. Her pain wasn’t from violence. It was from precision. From truth being dragged into daylight.

"Who helped you with Gabriel’s detailing?" he asked softly, almost conversationally, as if they were exchanging ideas over wine instead of standing in a prison reeking of fear.