Surrendered To The Lord Of Sin-Chapter 34: Not permitted

Vaeron stared at the unconscious Princess in his arms. His expression was stoic and unreadable, but those hazel eyes burned brighter than flames, dark in inner wrath.

The image of her lying limp in his arms, unnaturally still, shifted something cold in him. Her skin was pale beneath the grime and streaks of dried blood, lashes dark against her cheeks, and her lips - usually sharp with defiance - were parted in shallow, uneven breaths. Frost clung to the hem of her torn dress, melting slowly where his heat touched her, while faint traces of black-veined magic still flickered beneath her skin like dying embers. She felt fragile there, heartbreakingly light as her head tucked against his chest.

The horror living in her pain-striking face was enough to drag a tiny bit of humanness from his cold soul. Watching her pain - he wouldn’t deny - it fucked him off. She was his. His to torment.

His eyes scanned the clearing for a fleeting moment. Realizing how long he had taken to find her made rage roil violently within him. He was angry at himself. Why? He didn’t know. He didn’t even want to know.

It took him almost an hour before picking up her scent again after it disappeared. Almost an eternity before he discovered her presence. Vaeron kept every second ticking inside his head, reminding him how much pain she’d to endure. How much tears she’d wasted. How much scream tore from her throat, and the defiance that burned brighter than he’d witnessed before.

Cold tore past him as he reappeared at the forest’s edge. His boots sank into snow so deeply it cracked like bone beneath his weight, as he fixed his senses sharply in the alley where that heartbeat caught his attention.

His head snapped to the east. Her faint yet fractured scent brushed against his senses like a dying ember but was diluted, soaked in blood and foreign magic, smeared with smoke and scorched earth, erasing the trace of her as soon as it came.

But it sent a ripple of fury through him so violent that the trees bowed in submission. The more he tried to pick her scent, or the faint thrum of her heartbeat, the more difficult it was to discover that trace.

He wasn’t used to... mess. The chaos of a human psyche or the disgusting pull of emotions was not permitted in his world. In the short time he’d known her, she’d successfully made him feel something he had no fucking right to feel.

Don’t admit it.

Vaeron inhaled sharply. No, he wouldn’t admit it. He would never verbalize the slow burn of anger in his gut or the confusion in his mind when it came to understanding her.

For a while, he walked through the deserted alley without anything hinting at her whereabouts. Each moment of failed attempt drove his patience to the edge, striking with darkness from the abyss of hell. The thought of his little wolf’s absence sent something coursing through him that was hotter than rage. But the fact that he felt something throughout his entire existence was worse than rage.

In a split of a second, a slow, faltering heartbeat threaded weakly through the air, pulsing against his own. It wasn’t clean. It stuttered, tangled with residual magic that scraped against his senses like thorns, but it existed, and that was enough for him to move.

The forest blurred as he crossed impossible distances. Every trace he followed sharpened his focus, carving away the last fragments of restraint he’d pretended to possess. Broken branches. Scorched bark. Blood frozen mid-splash across the snow, before the clearing.

Sigils burned faintly beneath the snow, warped and bleeding into one another. The air trembled with thick and metallic aftershock energy, as trees lay split and twisted with their roots clawing uselessly at the sky. But that didn’t matter because at the center of it all, he found her.

Returning to the present, Vaeron inhaled a breath. He expected her to cower at his presence. To run. To hide from the Devil that was worse than the creatures who held her captive. To cry for the people in her life who had let her down. But she’d done none of those things. He’d known her only briefly, yet she’d demanded more of him- in actions, not words - than any other woman ever had.

It wasn’t permitted, and now, he’d glimpsed the perplexing woman who’d become his charge, prisoner, and plaything. Someone who had successfully confused the shit out of him.

He ground his molars, watching her fingers dig deeply into his coat as he picked her up effortlessly. Her strength was weak, utterly fragile he could swat away with a finger as she breathed softly against his chest. The sound of her breath - slow, ragged, and weak - calmed the fury inside him, but not enough to restrain everything.

Again, the sight of her shattered him. How was he to inflict that torment that was promised when he couldn’t even handle what he saw?

A few strands of her hair glued to her sticky face, covered with slight bruises, cuts, and dirt marred on those soft delicate features. Her body was cold against his, seemingly dead had it not been the faint pulse tripping inside her veins.

She was alive, but that didn’t mean for too long. It was weak. Erratic. Too slow. Too close to stopping.

Centuries ago, he would’ve let her kind rot as pain and terror licked their skin and ripped their life away. He would turn a blind eye to the living’s pain, burying himself in the abyss of what he was created with. He should’ve let that happen, but he didn’t. Why? He didn’t know.

The cold rage inside him was enough to splinter the wood in half.

The forest resisted him at first, branches snagging his cloak, roots clawing at his boots as if reluctant to release what had been broken within its bounds. Vaeron ignored it. His focus never left the woman in his arms, her warmth seeping through his armor, her hair damp with sweat and snow.

"You’re not permitted to leave yet," his cold voice cut through the weather’s friction. It lacked emotion, enough to tell the frost in them was utterly unreedemable as he vanished once more.

The space tore open with violent precision, hurling the figures through the rupture as they reappeared inside a stone chamber thick with the scent of herbs and old magic.

Warmth slammed into him like a foreign thing as fire crackled low in the hearth. Shelves lined the walls, stacked with dried plants, vials, and bones etched with runes older than most kingdoms. The air pulsed faintly with restorative enchantments woven carefully into the structure itself.

The place appeared empty yet it was far from abandoned. Every object rested with deliberate purpose, and the surface bore quiet evidence of regular care. There was no sign of a living presence, only the fervor it provided.

"Take a second more and I guarantee you visiting your grave," 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

The words had barely settled when the air beside the hearth rippled, folding inward like disturbed water. A woman materialized from the distortion, her boots striking the stone with practiced steadiness.

She was human - or close enough to it. Grey-streaked hair bound tightly back, eyes sharp despite the years carved into her face. Her posture was rigid with her expression stern, though a faint edge of annoyance sharpened her gaze, as if she’d been summoned in the middle of something far more important.

"Again?" the healer muttered, already moving. "You have a talent for arriving at the brink."

She wore layered robes darkened by years of use. The scent of herbs intensified at her arrival, clinging to her like a second skin as a satchel hung at her side, heavy with tools that jingled softly when she moved.

Her eyes swept the chamber once, then locked onto him with clinical precision with irritation flickering briefly across her face before being buried beneath professional focus. She took in the scene in a single glance - him and the woman in his arms.

Surprise flashed in her eyes for a fleeting moment. She gestured sharply toward the stone table etched with restorative sigils. Vaeron didn’t bat an eyelid and laid the unconscious woman down without hesitation.

His hands lingered for only a fraction of a second before withdrawing, giving space to the woman who approached her. "What happened?" she asked.

Vaeron’s jaw ticked for a fleeting moment before responding, "Black magic,"