Chapter 3: The Crimson Anchor

Damien's eyes locked onto hers, the shock rippling through his frame as the blood-ink anchor took hold, tethering his life to her fragile survival.

The air in the bridal chamber thickened, turning syrupy and metallic. Isabella watched the pupils of Damien’s eyes dilate until they were naught but obsidian voids, reflecting her own pale, mask-like face. He tried to pull back, to wrench his spirit from the invisible hook she had cast into his marrow, but his knees buckled. A mirrored spasm went through Isabella’s chest—a sharp, sympathetic pang that forced a jagged breath from her lungs.

"What... have you done?" Damien’s voice was a low rasp, stripped of its usual silken arrogance. He looked down at his own hands as if they no longer belonged to him.

Isabella straightened her spine, despite the hemomantic exhaustion dragging at her limbs like leaden weights. She reached up, slowly tracing the high lace collar of her gown, ensuring it still hid the jagged history of her neck. "Pray, do take care with your footing, My Lord," she said, her voice a cool chime in the silence. "If you fall too hard, I fear I shall feel the bruise. And should your heart decide to cease its rhythm, mine will surely follow as an uninvited guest."

Damien lunged. It was an instinctive, predatory movement, the strike of a panther who had forgotten he was caged. His hand shot toward her throat, but halfway there, his fingers curled into a claw and his entire arm began to tremble violently. He let out a choked sound, a grunt of pure frustration, as his own muscles refused the command to harm the source of his current existence.

"It is a blood-ink anchor," Isabella explained, her tone dripping with the clinical detachment of a tutor. "A specialty of the Nightbloom, usually reserved for those we cannot trust but must keep close. My blood is now the ink, and your life is the parchment. We are written together, Damien. A singular, bloody sentence."

Damien shoved himself away, stumbling toward the heavy oak wardrobe. He gripped the wood so hard it groaned. "You’ve breached the Treaty," he spat, his eyes burning with a mix of fury and a new, dark fascination. "The Unmarked Vessel clause. You are far from unmarked, witch. I saw the scars. I saw the rot beneath the silk."

Isabella’s expression didn’t flicker, though inner ice crystallized around her heart. "A touch inconvenient, I admit. But the Treaty also demands my protection. Can you fulfill that duty if you are dead? Or if I am? Pray tell, how does one bind a heart with vows of crimson, only to watch it bleed defiance?"

A sudden, white-hot pulse radiated from the small of her back—the Peace Vow, sensing her internal dissent, her refusal to be the submissive trophy the Blackthorn Coven demanded. The magic lashed her. Isabella gasped, her knees hitting the plush carpet. 

Immediately, Damien let out a cry of genuine agony. He collapsed against the wardrobe, clutching his spine at the exact meridian where she felt the Vow’s sting. 

"Stop it!" he roared, sweat beading on his brow. "Whatever you are doing, cease!"

"I am... doing... nothing," Isabella managed, her teeth gritted. "It is the Vow. It punishes the defiant. It seems you are now being punished for my sins."

The irony was a bitter tonic. She watched him stagger toward her, not out of malice, but out of a biological imperative he could no longer ignore. He reached down, his large, calloused hands trembling as they gripped her shoulders. His touch was supposed to be a violation, but the anchor transformed it into a desperate stabilization. He pulled her upright, his strength compensating for her waning vitality.

"You are bleeding," he noted, his voice dropping to a dangerous, low frequency. 

He didn't need to look at her wrists to know. Beneath her fine silk gloves, the fresh scars from her recent ritual had reopened under the stress of the Vow’s lash. A dark, damp heat bloomed under the fabric. Damien’s gaze traveled to her hands, and for a moment, the predator in him resurfaced—the vampire who craved the very essence she used as a weapon.

"Pray, keep your hunger in check," she whispered. "If you drain me, you effectively commit suicide. A tragic end for a conqueror, is it not?"

Damien’s grip tightened, but not in a way that hurt. He lifted one of her gloved hands, his eyes fixed on the deepening crimson stain. "I have never seen such reckless hemomancy. To bind a Blackthorn... it is an audacity that deserves either a crown or a pyre."

"I have already had the crown," Isabella retorted, her breath hitching as the pain subsided into a dull throb. "And I find the pyre much too warm for my tastes."

The silence that followed was charged with a nuclear tension. They stood too close, the scent of crushed lilies and copper filling the small space between them. The Peace Vow’s pulse had receded, leaving Isabella hollowed out, her hemomantic exhaustion reaching a critical point. She needed to stabilize the anchor—and she needed to satisfy the ritualistic demands of the tower.

"The Sanctioned Heir," she said, the words tasting like ash. "The High Priest waits below. The blood-ink will not hold indefinitely if the union is not recognized by the Keep’s own ancient magic."

Damien’s lip curled. "You want me to bed you? Now? After you’ve shackled my very soul to your heartbeat?"

"I want a regal correction of this power dynamic," Isabella corrected icily. "We have an obligation. If there is no heir, or at least the commencement of one, your father and my coven elders will storm this room. And then, Damien, they will find the anchor. How long do you think they will let us live once they realize the 'Witch of Nightbloom' has stolen the agency of the Blackthorn heir?"

Damien leaned in, his shadow swallowing her. "You speak of duty as if it were a blade."

"In my hands, it always is."

He moved then, swift and decisive. He didn't take her with the gentleness of a lover, nor the brutality of a conquerer. It was a negotiation of flesh. He lifted her, carrying her to the massive, silk-draped bed. Isabella’s heart hammered against her ribs—not with fear, but with the frantic rhythm of a bird hitting the bars of a cage. 

As he leaned over her, his hands moved to the high collar of her dress. Isabella froze. 

"No," she commanded.

"If I am to be bound to you, Isabella, I will see what I am bound to." He didn't ask. He unhooked the silver fastenings, peeling back the lace to reveal the network of faint, shimmering crimson scars that raced across her collarbones and up the side of her neck. 

Damien’s breath hitched. "Who did this?"

"The coven. My mother. Myself," she said, her voice a series of cold fragments. "It is the price of power. Every oath. Every vow. It leaves a mark. I am a map of every promise I have ever kept."

Damien’s finger traced a line of raised, pink tissue near her throat. The anchor hummed, a low vibration that made Isabella’s skin prickle. In that touch, there was a flash of something that wasn't hatred—it was a recognition of shared scars, of a different kind of bondage.

They moved together then, a frantic, desperate attempt to satisfy the Keep’s magic. It was a partial consummation, a collision of teeth and tangled limbs that served more to bind their blood than to foster intimacy. Isabella felt the anchor pulse with every gasp, drawing from Damien’s vitality to stitch her own tattered energy back together. It was predatory. It was necessary.

When they drifted apart, both were breathless, the air between them thick with the scent of salt and iron. No heir would come of this—not yet—but the magical threshold had been crossed. The room felt different. Heavier.

Isabella sat up, her movements stiff. She reached for a small, antique silver locket resting on the bedside table. With a sharp, practiced movement, she pressed a thumb against a hidden needle in the clasp, drawing a single, concentrated drop of the blood-ink from her palm and sealing it inside the talisman. 

"What is that?" Damien asked, watching her from the shadows of the pillows.

"Insurance," she replied, her fingers trembling as she clicked the locket shut. "This amplifies the anchor. As long as I wear this, the tether remains unbreakable. Try to leave this room, and the distance will tear your heart right out of your chest."

Damien let out a dark, sharp laugh. "You truly are a monster, Isabella Voss."

"I am what my vows have made me," she said, her fingers tracing the faint crimson scars on her wrists absentmindedly as she fumbled with the chain. 

"Let me," Damien said. He reached out, taking the locket from her hands. His fingers brushed her neck as he fastened the clasp, his touch lingering on the scars he had uncovered. For a heartbeat, Isabella felt a wave of his emotion through the tether—not humiliated fury, but a strange, protective heat. It terrified her more than his rage.

"You have the Unmarked Vessel breach to worry about," he whispered into her ear. "If Malakor sees those scars on your wrists... if he realizes you are not the 'pure' sacrifice the Treaty demanded..."

"Then I suppose you had better ensure he doesn't see them," Isabella snapped, pulling away and re-fastening her collar. "Our lives are intertwined now, My Lord. My secrets are your secrets. My survival is your only priority."

"Is it?" Damien rose from the bed, his physique imposing even in the dim light. He looked at the door, then back at her. "I wonder what would happen if I simply... stopped fighting? If I let the Vow take us both?"

"You are too vain for martyrdom, Damien."

A heavy thud shook the chamber door. It wasn't a knock; it was a demand.

"Lord Blackthorn!" High Priest Malakor’s voice boomed from the hallway, vibrating through the thick wood. "The hour of the sealing rite has passed. The coven demands proof of the union's consummation. Open this door at once, or we shall conclude the Nightbloom Witch has offered only insult in place of an heir!"

Isabella looked at Damien. Her mask of regal correction was firmly back in place, but beneath it, the predatory focus was sharper than ever. She caught her breath, the exhaustion threatening to pull her under, but she forced her hands to remain still.

"Pray," she whispered to Damien, her eyes hard as diamonds, "do make yourself look like a satisfied husband. Our audience is waiting."

The door groaned again under the weight of a second strike. The nuclear standoff had just invited the world inside.