Chapter 147-Back to square one

Chapter 147: 147-Back to square one

After delivering her threat, Zolani turned and walked away.

Maisa remained where she was, watching the mixedblood’s retreating figure until she disappeared from sight.

She had volunteered to help Zolani regain her humanity, believing that if she showed enough sincerity and patience, she might be able to reach her.

She hadn’t expected Zolani to turn the tables on her so quickly or to threaten to expose the secret she had fought so hard to protect.

How did she find out? Maisa’s thoughts began racing. She had been extremely careful since arriving in the vampire nation.

She had guarded her identity as though her life depended on it. She had never spoken carelessly about her past, never mentioned her family’s connections, and never brought anything with her that could reveal her ties to the Everheart vampire hunters.

She had made sure of it so, how had Zolani discovered the truth?

A cold sweat broke out across Maisa’s forehead. The thought of her identity becoming public knowledge made her stomach twist.

She could already imagine the whispers spreading through the nation, the suspicious stares, the accusations, and the questions she would never be able to answer.

What would happen when the vampires learned that she was the youngest daughter of a famous vampire hunter family?

Would they cast her out? Would they hunt her down? Or would they kill her before she had the chance to explain herself?

Maisa shuddered. She considered running after Zolani and demanding answers. She wanted to know exactly what the mixedblood had seen, how much she knew, and whether she had told anyone else.

But she quickly abandoned the idea. Zolani was in no mood to talk and now that she knew Maisa’s secret, she held all the leverage. She wouldn’t simply hand over the information Maisa needed.

"Think, Maisa. Think."

She forced herself to retrace their interactions, searching for the moment when something might have slipped.

"Wait..."

A memory of the blood trial surfaced in her head. Maisa remembered Zolani holding her hand throughout the ordeal. The mixedblood had been beside her, offering comfort and congratulating her when the trial seemed to confirm her innocence.

Then the blood had triggered a memory. Her first kill and Maisa’s breath caught.

She remembered the moment with painful clarity: the blood’s influence, the sudden flash of her past, and Zolani standing right in front of her, watching.

"Oh, no!"

Panic rushed through her. Only weeks after the trial, Maisa had read something about the nature of the blood’s judgment.

When a charged criminal entered the trial and thought of their sin under the blood’s influence, the memory could manifest in their pupils. Their crime could be seen and their guilt could be exposed.

Maisa’s face drained of color. When she had remembered her first kill, Zolani had been looking directly into her eyes.

"So she saw it all..."

The realization hit her so hard that her knees nearly buckled. She wanted the ground to split open beneath her and swallow her whole. Anything would be better than standing there, trapped inside the nightmare of her own making.

"What am I supposed to do now? Could she still pack her bags and flee to the human world?"

She could leave the hacienda tonight, disappear before anyone realized what she was doing, and return to the life she had left behind but the thought barely had time to take shape before another figure appeared.

Zazen entered the main room. Like Maisa, she looked pale and shaken. Her expression was distant, as though her mind were still caught in the conversation she’d just had with Taratoya.

Maisa stared at her and then the other things she’d learned came rushing back.

Taratoya’s warning, the mysterious whiteblood, Zazen’s master and the fact that Zazen had been sent to keep an eye on her.

Maisa’s thoughts sharpened. "Then she must know something about the benefactor."

Before Zazen could walk past, Maisa hurried toward her and stepped directly into her path. She had a sea of questions.

Who was her master? What did the mysterious whiteblood want with her? Why had they chosen her? And what exactly was Zazen supposed to protect her from?

The questions crowded her mind, pressing against her tongue. But when she finally stood face-to-face with Zazen, not a single one came out. Her mouth opened and nothing came out.

Zazen looked at her. Their eyes met. Maisa was the person she had been sent to guide and protect. Yet after everything she had just heard, Zazen seemed to have no strength left to deal with her.

"Excuse me."

She stepped around Maisa and continued walking.

Maisa didn’t stop her. She simply stood there, frozen once again, watching another person walk away while leaving her with even more questions.

"What is happening to me?"

The room suddenly felt smaller. The walls seemed to draw closer, pressing in from every direction.

Maisa felt trapped inside a cage. A four-by-four prison with four walls closing around her.

The first wall was the poison in her blood. The second was the silence of the flower of fate—the severed connection that had once allowed her to feel her mates. The third was the web of enemies and hidden mysteries surrounding her, each one lurking in the shadows with secrets she couldn’t begin to unravel.

And the fourth was her secret. The truth of her identity was no longer safely buried. Zolani knew it, and Maisa had no idea who else might discover it next. The walls were closing in.

"Is it too late to turn off my own humanity?"

The thought came suddenly. "Maybe then I wouldn’t have to care about any of this."

Maisa raised her hand and smacked herself across the cheek.

"What am I thinking?"

Turning off her humanity wouldn’t solve anything. It would only put her problems on pause and when her emotions eventually returned, everything would still be waiting for her.

The poison, the broken bond, the enemies and the secrets. She would be right back where she started, only with even more damage to repair.

If she wanted to escape this cage, she had to find a way out herself. One problem at a time, one answer at a time but where was she supposed to begin?

Maisa let out a shaky breath. "Where do I even start?"

She wandered into the kitchen, her steps slow and heavy. The room was quieter now, and the memory of Taratoya’s lightning flames still lingered in her mind.

She opened the refrigerator and stared at the neatly arranged blood bags. She couldn’t decide whether she was hungry or simply looking for something to occupy her hands.

In the end, she took one. Then she left the kitchen and headed toward the garden.

The night air greeted her, cool against her skin. The moon hung above the hacienda, bathing the garden in pale silver light. Leaves stirred softly in the breeze, and the flowers along the path swayed as though nothing in the world had changed.

Maisa lifted the blood bag to her lips and drank. The taste was familiar but she could barely taste it.

She swallowed again, trying to quench the stress tightening in her chest. The blood slid down her throat, yet it brought no comfort. Her thoughts remained a tangled mess, each one dragging her deeper into confusion.

"Should I stop taking the medicine?" she lowered the bag letting the question linger.

If the medicine was responsible for the silence of the flower of fate or for the poison in her blood then continuing to take it might only make things worse.

"But what would happen if I stopped taking them suddenly?"

She had been taking it for so long. Would her body suffer from the sudden withdrawal? Would the backlash return all at once? Could stopping it harm her mates even more?