Chapter 3

A gasp escaped my lips. It was small, a tiny, involuntary sound of pain and something else-triumph. But it was loud enough to cut through the quiet murmur of their conversation.

The shadows in the study froze.

The door swung open with a violent crash, slamming against the hallway wall. Liam stood there, his face a mask of fury. His eyes, which had been full of adoration for Chloe moments before, were now chips of ice as they landed on me.

"What are you doing skulking in the hallway?" he snarled, his voice a low growl.

He stalked toward me, grabbing my arm. His grip was like iron. Pain shot up my shoulder, but it was nothing compared to the searing agony that flared in my chest. The Lotus Mark erupted in a blaze of torment. The contract was reacting to his hostility, forcing a deep, physical anguish upon me. It was the curse of the servant bond; his anger towards me translated directly into my own suffering.

Tears streamed down my face, hot and real. My body convulsed with a sob I couldn't contain. "Liam, please... you' re hurting me."

Even as the pain ripped through me, a part of my mind remained icily calm, observing. This was the contract' s power, its cruel mechanism of control. It made me feel the despair he wanted me to feel. But deep inside, where the contract couldn't reach, the joy I felt was a roaring fire. He was accelerating the end. He was giving me exactly what I needed.

"Hurting you?" he sneered, his face close to mine. His breath smelled of expensive whiskey. "You' ve been a leech on me from the very beginning. A nobody from a broken family. I gave you everything. I made you who you are."

He shoved me against the wall. My head hit the marble with a dull thud, and spots danced in my vision. Chloe appeared behind him, her expression a perfect blend of concern and satisfaction.

"Liam, darling, be careful," she said, her voice dripping with fake worry. "She' s so fragile."

Liam scoffed. "Fragile? She' s a manipulative social climber. A parasite. Did you think I didn't know? Did you think I didn't see you for what you were the moment I met you?"

His words were meant to crush me, to reinforce the narrative he had built for himself-that he was the brilliant visionary, and I was the lucky girl he' d picked up along the way.

But as he spat his venom, my mind flashed back. Not to our first meeting in this life, but to the one that truly mattered, six hundred years ago.

It wasn't a romance. It wasn't a partnership of equals. It was a calculated deception.

I was a reclusive scholar then, a young woman with an uncanny gift for seeing patterns in the world. He was a minor nobleman with immense ambition and no talent to back it up. He sought me out, not with courtship, but with a trick. He presented the contract not as a bond of servitude, but as a "sacred partnership," a way to link our souls and destinies for the good of the world. He spoke of legacy, of greatness, of a shared future.

I was young, naive, and isolated. I believed him.

I signed my name in blood, and in that instant, the first Lotus Mark bloomed over my heart. The drain began immediately. My brilliant insights became his. My good fortune became his. My vitality became his. And my life began its first rapid decline.

He didn't make me. He tricked me. He stole me.

And now, standing in this cold hallway, being brutalized by the man whose entire existence was a testament to my sacrifice, the full weight of those six hundred years of deception settled in my soul.

"You' re right," I choked out, the words tasting like ash and freedom. "It' s time to end this."

He thought I was surrendering. He thought I was finally breaking.

He had no idea I was agreeing to his terms for a war he couldn't possibly win.