Page 224 of Owned

Lucian’s back arched in agony, and a scream tore from his throat that seemed to vibrate at a frequency beyond normal hearing. The black stains on his skin began to writhe andcontort, spreading rapidly across his chest and up his neck like living ink, seeking escape from a dying host.

His hand shot up and gripped my throat with surprising strength, and I let out a cry as his nails dug into my flesh. For a terrible moment, I thought he might overpower me after all—that despite the poison, despite the dagger in his heart, his evil might prevail.

Tears streamed down my face and dripped off my chin as I pushed harder.

“Just— Die!” I screamed.

His fingers tightened, bloody teeth bared in fury as I stared down at him…

But then his grip faltered.

His eyes were fixed on mine and burned with hatred—but then they dimmed. The storm of magic that swirled around us weakened and then swirled into smaller and smaller currents until it dissipated entirely.

“My sons...” he hissed. Blood stained his teeth black in the darkness. “They will never... forgive you.”

“They’ll only be angry that I didn’t let them kill you themselves,” I said through gritted teeth as I pushed his hand away from my throat.

Lucian’s lips moved once more, forming words I couldn’t hear, and his blackened fingers twitched against the coverlet.

The black stains on his skin ceased their frantic movement as they settled into a pattern that looked more like decay than anything… Rotten bastard.

Then, with a sound like a sigh, his body seemed to collapse in on itself.

Not decomposing, but compressing, as if some essential force that had been keeping him inflated had finally been released.

The glowing red orb that followed him everywhere flickered brightly, and then fell to the stone floor with a crash that made me flinch, but I didn’t release my grip on the hilt of the dagger.

The man who had married my mother, murdered her, and sought to claim me was dead. The Romano patriarch, the terror of Messana, had died by my hand.

And in the silence that followed, I realized I could no longer feel my father’s presence within me.

I looked down at Lucian’s collapsed form, the dagger still buried in his chest, my hands sticky with his unnaturally dark blood. Something was happening inside me—a vacuum where my father’s presence had been, drew me toward Lucian with the inexorable pull of a tide.

My fingers trembled as they reached for the dagger’s hilt, not to remove it, but to press deeper. I didn’t understand the compulsion that gripped me, but I couldn’t resist it any more than I could stop my own heartbeat.

“Father?” I whispered, searching for any remnant of his presence. But the hollowness inside me remained, a space waiting to be filled.

Power radiated from Lucian’s corpse in waves I could almost see—dark currents that lapped at my skin like hungry tongues. The black stains that had marked his hands now spread across his entire body, transforming from random patterns into deliberate shapes that now resembled arcane sigils.

My hands moved of their own accord, one gripped the hilt of the dagger while the other pressed flat against Lucian’s chest. Words bubbled up from some place deep inside me, from knowledge I hadn’t known I possessed.

The language was ancient and twisted, each syllable like a thorn in my mouth as I spoke.

“From flesh now still and soul undone, let dying fire pass to one.”

The words flowed from my lips without conscious thought and echoed in the darkened chamber.

Lucian’s blood began to move beneath my palm, not flowing outward but creeping up my fingertips. It climbed my wrist in thin rivulets that burned like acid.

“By blood unbroken, bond be sealed. Their power mine—by death revealed.”

The air in the room thickened and pressed against my skin with suffocating weight. The dagger in Lucian’s chest vibrated against my palm, gently at first, and then stronger. Its blackened blade glowed with a dull red light that pulsed in time with the words I continued to chant.

“Through marrow deep and shadow’s claim, I rise reborn, and bear their name.”

Pain exploded through my body as the power transferred—not just magic, but knowledge, memories, secrets that had been locked in Lucian’s corrupted soul.

I saw flashes of his life: rituals performed in blood-soaked chambers, women sacrificed on altars of ambition, the slow corruption of his sons from innocent children to damaged men.

---