MistNovel - Read Web Novel Stories & Fiction Online

Two hours past midnight, Lilith sat beside her sister's bed and watched Lucy die.
The blight did not grant mercy. Instead, it rotted slowly from the inside out, turning vibrant magical cores into festering wounds that leaked corruption into the bloodstream. Lucy's skin had taken on a grayish cast, and black veins spiderwebbed beneath her flesh like cracks in porcelain, pulsing faintly with each labored breath.
"Lil?" Lucy's voice was barely a whisper. "Is it morning?"
"Not yet, sweetheart." Lilith dipped a cloth in cool water and pressed it gently to her sister's forehead. "Just a few more hours."
"Will the sun still rise if I am not here to see it?"
The question hit like a blade between the ribs. Lilith forced herself to breathe through the pain, to keep her expression calm and reassuring even as something vital shattered inside her chest.
"You will see it." She kept her voice steady through sheer force of will. "I promise."
Lucy's hand found hers in the darkness, fingers thin and cold as winter bones. "You always were a terrible liar."
"I am not lying."
"Yes, you are." A ghost of a smile crossed Lucy's pale lips. "But I love you for it anyway."
Lilith said nothing. There was nothing to say. She simply held her sister's hand and listened to the rattling sound of her breathing, each inhale more labored than the last.
This was what powerlessness felt like.
All her magic, all her ruthlessness, all her carefully cultivated superiority meant nothing in the face of this creeping rot. She could raise the dead and command shadows, but she was unable to save the one person who actually mattered.
The injustice of it burned like acid in her veins.
"You should rest," she murmured, smoothing Lucy's hair back from her clammy forehead. "Save your strength."
"For what?" Lucy's eyes drifted closed. "We both know there is no cure."
"There is always a cure." The words came out harder than she intended. "I will find it."
"Lil." Lucy's grip tightened weakly around her fingers. "Please do not do something stupid. It is too late for that."
Lilith waited until Lucy's breathing evened out into the shallow rhythm of sleep before she allowed herself to move. Her legs had gone numb from sitting so long in one position, but she barely noticed as she crossed to the locked cabinet in the corner.
She had spent weeks scouring every forbidden text in the family library, and three nights ago she had finally found it. The grimoire was old, its pages yellowed with age and stained with substances she preferred not to identify.
Forbidden magic always came with a price, but she was willing to pay it.
She flipped through the ancient text with careful efficiency, finding the page she had marked. Her pulse quickened as she read through the description again, her analytical mind cataloging what she would need.
The Rite of Crimson Union.
It was forbidden for a reason. The kind of magic that made even the most ruthless practitioners hesitate. She could already imagine Damian's dark laugh if he knew what she was considering. The text was frustratingly vague on the specifics, but it promised a fusion of abilities that would grant access to unprecedented strength through intimate, soul-binding acts, sexual rituals that would merge their magic through physical union.
Enough strength to cure the blight. Enough strength to save Lucy.
The decision settled over her like armor, cold and certain. She would perform this ritual, she would save her sister, and she would emerge from this stronger than ever before. She would dominate it the same way she dominated everything else, through sheer force of will and strategic ruthlessness.
No one would ever make her feel powerless again.
Lilith was about to close the grimoire when her gaze caught on something in the margin. A small notation written in faded ink and marked with an official seal.
The Dwayne family seal.
No. Anyone but him.
The ritual was bloodline-specific, designed to merge opposing magical types in a way that created perfect balance. Necromancy and elemental magic. Shadow and lightning. Mortaine and Dwayne.
There was only one person in the world who could serve as her partner in this ritual. The man who had pinned her against a tree just hours ago with murder in his eyes.
Lilith looked toward Lucy's sleeping form, then back at the grimoire. The Rite of Crimson Union required a series of intimate, soul-binding acts. Sexual acts. With Damian Dwayne.
Her body remembered the heat of him, the violence barely leashed beneath his skin, and something low in her stomach twisted with a feeling that was absolutely not anticipation.
She was going to have to seduce her worst enemy. She was going to have to convince Damian Dwayne to perform a series of forbidden sexual rituals with her without revealing that her magic was failing, her sister was dying, and she was desperate enough to bind her soul to his for eternity.
This was going to be complicated.