Bound by the Mark of Lies (BL)
Chapter 395 - 389: Gabriel and the shard (1)

Chapter 395: Chapter 389: Gabriel and the shard (1)

Gabriel’s fingers danced over the brass‑rimmed keys, every movement carefully planned, every glyph an extension of his mind.

On the map, the shard’s resonance pulsed again, faint and stubborn, hidden deep in the chaos of Donin’s occupied wards.

The Empire’s core shard, tethered by Damian’s own burned ether channels, throbbed in quiet acknowledgment from beneath the palace, a silent twin calling across impossible distance.

Gabriel closed his eyes briefly, feeling the echo through the wards like a heartbeat in his palm. It was faint, the wards already eating at it the moment Damian fused it to the Empire’s core.

He opened his eyes again, lashes lowering against the green glow reflected in them, and set his shoulders.

The shard in Donin answered in faint, broken intervals, like listening to a voice underwater, but it was enough. Enough to call to. Enough to wake.

Gabriel’s fingers moved faster, weaving glyph after glyph into the command array, feeding the connection through layers of encoded latticework. The consoles hummed in protest as ether surged through channels not meant to carry this much precision at once.

On the map, the two points, one deep in Donin, one buried beneath the palace, flickered. Faint threads of power stretched between them, a spiderweb spun over a battlefield.

He felt the drain immediately. His breath shortened, vision narrowing to the tight circle of light around the projection, but he didn’t stop. He poured more ether into the glyphs, coaxing, threading, and locking the resonance into a single tether.

The core shard throbbed again, and the echo struck him like a pulse against his own veins. He flinched, just slightly, but his hands never left the keys.

"Almost," Gabriel whispered, his voice hoarse. His lips barely moved.

The resonance in Donin stuttered, and then flared, a sharp green burst rippling across the map as Olivier’s dormant shard stirred.

Gabriel’s heart slammed against his ribs. His hand shot out to stabilize himself against the console, knuckles white, but a grim smile cut across his face.

"There you are."

The surge hit him a moment later. A backdraft of ether rushed through the link, the shard’s awakening thrumming like a second heartbeat under his own. His knees buckled, vision swimming. He reached instinctively for the console, breath dragging ragged through his lungs.

The map blurred. The glyphs flickered. His chest ached as if something heavy had pressed down on him.

Through the bond, like a lightning strike, he felt Damian feel it.

Gabriel’s hand slipped from the keys just as the lift of air and sudden blaze of golden light split the chamber. The scent of scorched ether filled the room as a figure tore through the wards in a blink.

Damian’s arms caught him before his body could hit the polished marble, pulling him in against a heartbeat steady and furious.

"Gabriel."

Gabriel’s lashes fluttered, a faint, satisfied curve pulling at his lips despite the gray creeping into his vision. "It... worked," he breathed, voice paper‑thin.

Damian’s grip tightened, his golden eyes burning brighter than the projection still pulsing on the dais. "You fool," he murmured, but it sounded like something closer to mine.

And then Gabriel’s head tipped against his shoulder, breath shallow, body giving in to the weight of the power he’d just spent.

Damian turned, cloak sweeping, and the wards themselves seemed to recoil from the force of his voice as he spoke, low and lethal, to the empty room.

"Seal this level. Now."

The ether screens dimmed in obedience, the map’s green threads still glowing faintly as Damian carried his mate from the chamber, each step a vow written in silence.

—

Gabriel’s eyes opened to dim light and the muted hum of ether wards humming through walls he didn’t recognize.

The ceiling above him was high, carved with geometric ribs that caught the glow of lanterns in slow arcs. Not the palace. Not any council room or familiar hall. The air smelled faintly of old stone and ink, libraries, maybe, or some preserved chamber forgotten by the court.

For a moment he didn’t move. His body ached in that dull, distant way that came after ether overreach, muscles heavy but intact. His fingers curled against the bedding, smooth linen over something firm. A settee? A medical couch? He couldn’t tell.

He knew, though, before he even sat up, that Damian would be there. He could already hear the lecture, see the infuriatingly calm expression paired with molten eyes, ready to scold and shield in equal measure.

A slow smirk crept to Gabriel’s lips as he rubbed his temple, rehearsing the opening volley in his head:

’Spare me the sermon, Damian. It worked. And I didn’t even break a bone this time.’

He shifted, preparing himself, letting the smirk linger, already tasting the dry satisfaction of throwing that line in Damian’s face...

But the words never reached his tongue.

Something was wrong.

It hit him like the drop before a fall: a subtle shift in the air, a quiet absence where there should have been the steady pulse of Damian’s presence pressing against his senses. His stomach seemed to drop through the mattress, leaving him cold and oddly weightless. He drew a slow breath, trying to reach out through his bond, but the world felt muffled, as though someone had wrapped his senses in gauze.

The ether hum was still there, he could feel it faintly in the walls, but dulled, distant, not the familiar heartbeat of the palace wardroom. Even his own body felt wrong: the ache in his limbs sharper than expected, his pulse was too quick, and there was a faint lag in his focus like waking from a fever.

And then he noticed the man.

At first, Gabriel assumed Damian was by the window, reading his usual boring reports, his shoulders tense in that deliberate way he had when pretending to be calm. But as his eyes adjusted, details scraped against memory in ways that made his gut tighten.

Too lean in the shoulders.

Too still.

And as the man shifted, folding the report with one gloved hand, Gabriel saw hair pale as hammered gold, cropped short and catching the muted light.

His breath caught hard in his throat. That wasn’t Damian.

It couldn’t be.

Gabriel’s smirk vanished, his fingers curling into the sheets. He forced himself upright despite the dull resistance in his muscles, the unfamiliar sluggishness in his veins. His gaze locked on the figure as the man turned fully, stepping into clearer light.

Blue eyes met his. Clear, cold, piercing eyes he hadn’t seen in six years, eyes that had burned bright in banners and then gone still forever on the day the rebellion began.

Gabriel’s stomach lurched. His heartbeat hammered in his ears as the name slipped out, barely a breath, tasting like ash:

"...Olivier."