"See what you've caused" Aurelia hissed as she pushed him away, her foot lifting in disgust, the dark smear still clinging to her skin, panic and irritation rising like fire in her chest.
But Calvus didn't even look at her feet, didn't care, didn't blink, his attention fixed entirely on her face as if the rest of the world were nothing but noise.
"Bring him here" Calvus said, his voice low and carried with a strange authority that didn't belong to a servant.
The guards obeyed instantly, dragging forward a man whose head was covered with a filthy sack, his shoulders trembling under the weight of whatever he feared.
Aurelia's breath hitched, unease crawling up her spine.
Why is he showing me this?
Who is that?
Thoughts swirled into her skull.
Calvus's gaze remained locked on her, unwavering, intense, almost feverish, as if everything he had done, everything he was about to do, existed only because she was standing there.
After all, she made him do it simply by breathing in his direction.
"Remove the mask" he said, voice deep and steady, and the guards obeyed without hesitation, tugging the filthy sack upward.
The moment the face appeared, Aurelia felt her stomach twist, heat rushing up her neck.
Marcus!, the fool, the coward who stabbed her father brutally in her front.
Marcus's eyes widened the instant he saw her, recognition hitting him like a slap.
He burst into frantic movement, his shoulders jerking, his voice cracking as he struggled against the guards, screaming her name, begging, sobbing, all of it a tangled noise that filled the stable air with panic and confusion.
This was Calvus's plan, slow and quiet and patient, a scheme that wrapped around Aurelia like a shadow, win her piece by piece, thought by thought, fear by fear, until she wouldn't even notice she had stepped fully into his hands.
Aurelia's eyes burned as tears rose too fast, her breath shaking as she stared at Marcus, the man who destroyed her planned life , the sight of him pulling memories up from a place she never wanted to touch again, her chest tightening until she could barely breathe.
"How do you know," she cried out, her voice sharp and rude and trembling at the edges, "how do you know anything."
Calvus stepped closer, not to comfort her but to anchor himself deeper inside her thoughts, his presence heavy, his voice low and disturbingly steady as he answered.
"I know Gaius and I will do anything to help his sister"
Then his tone shifted, hardening like steel wrapped in silk as he spoke again
"Now don't look at me, look at Marcus, anything you want to do to him, do it"
He placed something in her hand.
A wooden medieval spiked weapon, heavy and rough against her skin, the weight of it dragging her arm down as if it carried every painful memory she had tried to bury.
Her fingers curling slowly around the handle.
Calvus watched her with a gaze that burned with obsession, a hunger to shape her, to see what she would choose, who she would become, whether she would step toward the darkness he opened for her and eventually step toward him.
"Please Aurelia please" Marcus screamed, the sound cracking against the walls of the stable, his voice shaking so hard it felt like the ground trembled with him.
Aurelia walked toward him, each step slow and heavy, her fingers tightening around the spiked weapon until her knuckles went white.
The weight of it dragging her arm downward, the heat in her chest rising like a storm she could no longer swallow, every breath rough and uneven as she stared at the man who ruined everything.
I am going to kill you, people like you do not deserve to live!
She told herself, the thought circling her mind again and again until it felt like it was the only thing she could hear.
She moved toward Marcus again, each step heavier than the last, the weapon clenched so tightly in her hand that her knuckles blanched.
The guards forced Marcus down, his knees scraping the dirt, his breath breaking into frantic, trembling gasps.
"Aurelia please— please—" he sobbed, voice cracking like something already halfway broken.
But she no longer heard him, her mind burning with everything he stole from her, every memory he stained.
Every night she had cried herself to sleep wishing her father were still alive.
She lifted the weapon high, her chest rising sharply, and brought it down with a force that shook through her entire body, the crack of impact echoing through the stable like a violent curse released into the air.
"Ahhhhhhh," Marcus screamed, a raw, tearing sound.
She didn't stop, she struck again, and again, the rhythm brutal, relentless, her arms moving with a strength born from years of grief and fury, her breath turning wild, uneven, her hair sticking to her damp face as she leaned forward and hit him again.
Blood flecked across her cheek, brushed the corner of her lips, but she didn't care, didn't flinch even a second.
She wanted him gone, wanted every memory of him erased with every swing she delivered, wanted the world to finally be rid of his act of betrayal.
Marcus's voice cracked for long , then it faltered.
It slipped into silence as his body began to slump under her blows, his resistance fading like a dying echo, until there was nothing left—no movement, no breath, no sound at all.
Aurelia stood over him, weapon trembling in her grip, chest heaving, vision blurred with tears as the world finally went still around her.
Marcus lying motionless at her feet, her whole body dripping blood.
And only then did she realize he had stopped breathing.
He was gone.
She would swear she wanted him to suffer more, because what she'd done — the way he collapsed, the way his breath finally gave out — felt too quick, too small compared to the size of her hatred.
He had taken her father. Her only blood. Her only home. Her life had cracked the moment he touched her family and now even beating him wasn't enough to glue anything back together.
Her chest heaved, streaks of red trembling on her skin, her hand still locked around the weapon as if ready for more even though there was nothing left beneath her but a ruined shape held up by guards who no longer knew whether to restrain him or let him fall.
Then, through the ringing in her head, a single thought slipped in like a knife sliding between bones.
Calvus said he knew Gaius.
And suddenly the rage burning inside her twisted into something sharper darker more dangerous than what she had just done.
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To be continued...