Claimed by the vampire prince

Chapter 444: Chapter 444

Circe’s hand moved before her mind caught up with it.

The crack of it rang out sharp and vicious in the small cell and the force of the slap sent Mirelle toppling sideways, the chains rattling discordantly as she went down.

The sting that bloomed across Circe’s palm in the aftermath was the thing that finally made her register what she had done. She stood there for a second looking down at the woman who had not yet moved from where she had fallen.

Then Circe stepped forward, reached down, and grabbed a fistful of Mirelle’s hair before wrenching her head up harshly so that their faces were close and Mirelle had nowhere left to look but at her.

"My baby is not a monster." Circe snarled.The grip she had on Mirelle’s hair tightened. "You dare to call my child a monster? You, who came into my home, into my service. You, who smiled at my face every single day while you were already planning what you would do to me?"

She released Mirelle’s hair with a shove that sent her head snapping back, and then she straightened and stood over her, chest heaving. "You speak of loyalty. You speak of Westeria and its people as though you have any right to after what you have done. You poisoned me and you have the audacity to sit there and tell me it was out of care?"

Mirelle said nothing. She had pushed herself back to her knees, but that insufferable expression on her face had not changed.

It made everything worse.

"You prayed for me?" Circe laughed, and the sound of it was hollow and ugly, utterly lacking mirth. "You prayed for me and then you put poison in my cup. That is what your prayers look like. That is what your loyalty looks like. You do not know anything about what was taken from me. You do not know anything about what I have lived through or what I have endured or what I have come to understand about my own life, and you had no right— no right— to make decisions for my body. For my child. That was never yours to touch."

"I did what I believed was necessary," Mirelle said. Still calm. "Someone had to."

"Someone had to," Circe repeated, the words tasting like ash. "You tried to kill my baby and you are telling me someone had to."

"I told you. I never wished you harm, your high—"

"Do not." The word came out menacing. "Do not speak to me about what you wished. What you wished for is irrelevant."

Her hands had curled into fists at her side. "You are a coward and a traitor and you will die in this cell, and when you do, not a single person who matters will mourn you."

Something flickered across Mirelle’s face at that, just briefly.

Circe felt the rage crest inside her like a wave reaching its full height and she was trembling with the effort of standing here in this cell and breathing the same air as this woman and not coming apart entirely at the seams.

And then she felt something else. A movement, small and subtle, coming from somewhere near her hair— a sliding sensation that traced down the side of her neck, across her shoulder, and down along the length of her arm. She looked down instinctively, and what she saw there made her go very still.

A shadow tendril moved down her forearm purposefully like a snake. It coiled over her wrist, and then continued further. freeweɓnovel.cøm

Across from her, Mirelle had seen it too.

The calm that had sat so stubbornly on the woman’s face throughout this entire encounter cracked. Her eyes had gone wide, and she was moving, scrambling backward on her knees as far as the chains would allow her to go, which was not far at all. She stared at the shadow, terrified, not entirely sure what she was looking at.

Circe stared at it too. She knew who it belonged to and who it answered to. She had watched him command shadows effortlessly in the past. But Ragnar was not here. Ragnar was on the road to the capital, and she had absolutely no idea how to explain the shadow currently unwinding itself from her arm.

She frowned at it, genuinely puzzled. It moved the way something moved when it had a destination already decided, and it left her hand entirely a moment later, dropping to the floor of the cell and sliding across the stone with a fluid, boneless ease that made no sound at all.

It was moving toward Mirelle.

Mirelle shuffled farther, a sound escaping her that was more of a yelp than a scream, her chains pulling taut as she tried to put distance between herself and the thing advancing on her. But the shadow did not slow. It reached her and began to climb, creeping up her leg, her torso, her neck.

Mirelle’s breath was coming in short ragged bursts now, her head jerking back and forth as she tried to track it, tried to get it away from her. She did not know what it was doing and the not-knowing was torture.

The shadow reached Mirelle’s mouth. freēwēbnovel.com

Mirelle clamped her lips together but it slipped between them anyway, and then it was gone. Inside her.

For one second, nothing happened.

Then Mirelle’s hands flew to her throat.

Her fingers pressed into the skin there, clutching hard, and a choked sound pushed its way out of her mouth. Her eyes found Circe’s across the cell and what was in them was pure, undiluted terror. The skin at her neck had begun to change, swelling.

Circe could see it happening right before her, the flesh rising and distorting, stretching outward in a way that skin had absolutely no business stretching, and within seconds Mirelle’s throat had doubled in size and was still growing, the skin pulled so taut it had changed color.

Circe retreated a few steps until she was next to the guard. Her back found the cell door and she pressed against it without taking her eyes off Mirelle, her own breathing shallow and unsteady, shock moving through her in cold, rolling waves.

The guard beside her had gone rigid. Neither of them spoke.

Mirelle’s lips were moving. Trembling, a last desperate attempt to produce sound before speaking became impossible. Her eyes were still locked on Circe’s, brimming with tears. Horror was written across her face.

Then her throat ruptured, blood splattering down her clothes.

Mirelle’s body hit the floor and did not move again.

Circe stared at the woman on the ground, her own pulse loud in her ears, her hands at her sides, trembling slightly in a way she could not seem to stop. The shadow was gone. She didn’t know where it went. It had simply ceased to be present the moment its work was done.