The woman’s cracked, hoarse voice scraped through the air as she leaned forward.
"You don’t rember how you died?" she asked, head tilting, eyes glinting.
Catherine recoiled into her chair.
Her chest felt crushed... caught between a heavy anvil and molten rock. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t cool down. Heat and pressure warred inside her, stealing her voice.
How she died...
She had always assud it was Maximilian’s sword. That was the story she had carried, the one that made sense. Clean. Simple. Convenient.
But now...
She wasn’t sure.
The woman straightened, the crystal ball casting a sickly glow across her hollowed face, stretching shadows where they did not belong.
"You already ran once," she intoned, her voice dropping into sothing deeper, older.
"This ti..."
A pause.
"You will have to choose... with open eyes."
Pain slamd into Catherine before she could react.
Ran? As though staying would have saved anyone. He abandoned . I had to run!
Maximilian gasped sharply, clutching his chest as if sothing had reached inside and twisted. The woman noticed imdiately... and smiled.
She rubbed her hands together, delighted.
"The bracelet appears on the one who ran," she crooned, as if punishnt were justice. "The pain is shared. Always shared." Her laughter spiraled, unhinged. "Both... by both... hahahaha..."
"Stop."
Maximilian slamd his hand onto the table. The sound cracked through the room.
Catherine had folded in on herself, gripping her abdon, breath coming out in shallow gasps. Despite his own agony, Maximilian dragged himself toward her, one arm wrapping around her shoulders, the other rubbing her back in slow, grounding strokes.
He couldn’t move far. The pain anchored him.
But still, he reached her.
He knew this now. His pain eased only when hers did.
And he didn’t resent it, knowing it didn’t right anything.
For now, she was close. That was enough.
"Distance..." he managed, teeth clenched. "Desire... You said longing shrinks the distance. If we stay close—"
"Intimate," the woman cut in, her voice dropping into a wet, gurgling whisper.
"If you satisfy what was left unresolved—sexual frustration included—the bond weakens."
Catherine froze.
"Sexual what?" she repeated flatly, disbelief sharpening her tone.
She twisted to glare at Maximilian.
"Oh, now I get it," she snapped. "So this is your grand plan? You cursed just to get my body?"
The irony burned.
In their previous life, he had taken everything from her—her trust, at one point her heart, her future, her children, her land...
The one thing she had never given him... was her body.
And now?
Now that was the price?
"Scumbag!" she lunged at him, fingers fisting his coat, nails biting as if she could tear sothing vital free. "Why do you tornt like this?!"
"Enough!"
The woman slamd both palms onto the table.
Lightning tore through the room... white-hot flashes cracking the air itself.
Catherine scread, instinctively shrinking back...
And Maximilian moved.
He turned fully toward her, his back to the violent light, body shielding hers without hesitation. Catherine stared at him, stunned, eyes wide as the flashes reflected off his broad shoulders.
Why... would he protect her?
Slowly, deliberately, Maximilian straightened and faced the woman.
"Who gave you the right," he said, voice low and cold with authority, "to hurt her?"
Catherine couldn’t see his expression... but she felt it.
That rigid posture.
That commanding stillness.
That presence that bent the room around him.
The enemy king.
She could only laugh. This man... this man who now pretended to care for her hurt her more than anyone else. And he had the audacity to utter those words?
The storm receded.
The candles steadied, their flas no longer shuddering. The lightning vanished as if it had never existed at all—no thunder, no echo, no proof that the room had almost been torn apart.
Maximilian returned to his seat.
His jaw was tight, his expression unreadable, one hand still resting at Catherine’s side: not possessive, not tender, but instinctive, as though his body had moved before his mind could stop it.
The woman watched them in silence.
Then she smiled.
"This can’t be," Catherine said, shaking her head. "There has to be another way. I’m not sleeping with this—" she turned sharply toward Maximilian, fury flaring, "—monster. And I’ll never fall in love with him again."
The word again burned her tongue, but it was already too late.
Anger surged, hot and reckless, and she forced herself to rein it in. The more ti she spent near him, the more the chain tightened... around her wrist, around her thoughts, around parts of herself she had sworn were long dead. She was not being herself.
She needed distance.
She needed control.
"Again," the woman murmured, lips curving knowingly.
Catherine’s breath hitched.
She’d said it. Admitted it. Even she hadn’t ant to.
She didn’t dare look at Maximilian. If he was smiling—if there was even a flicker of triumph on his face—she might actually lose what little restraint she had left.
"This does not end with love," the woman said calmly. "It ends with acceptance."
Catherine turned back to her, head tilting. "So this curse doesn’t demand love?" she asked. That... that... was unexpected.
"The Soul Shackle loosens through intimacy," the woman replied, unbothered, "not because it desires passion, but because closeness forces truth."
"Truth?" Catherine scoffed.
"You are the one who ran," the woman said gently. "And because of that... you hold the control."
Catherine stiffened. "What does that an?"
The woman only smiled.
Catherine clenched her fists. "Then explain how this works. Practically."
"You’ll discover that yourself," the woman replied.
And then... just like the storm...
She was gone.
-----
On the way back to the university, Catherine sank deep into thought... an unsettling, spiraling kind of thought she would have preferred to avoid.
That woman’s words echoed far too clearly.
Desire tightens the shackle.
And worse... she controlled it.
Catherine grimaced. She didn’t like the sound of that. Not one bit. But denial had never been her strength, so she forced herself to analyze it properly.
That night on the bed... he may have initiated it, but she hadn’t been... entirely uninvolved. Desire had stirred—unwanted, unwelco, but real. And almost imdiately, the distance between them had collapsed.
And before that... hadn’t it shortened sharply while she stood outside the door? That morning, the attraction was faint, barely acknowledged... and so the distance had still shifted, just not as violently.
It was not the curse that made her desire him; it was the other way around.
In both lives, even if he hadn’t ant to destroy her, he had. And she was the one who had learned to live afterward.
Catherine slowed her steps, the pattern settling into place with unnerving clarity.
So it wasn’t random.
It was proportional.
The intensity of desire dictated the punishnt.
Too much attraction, and the shackle tightened rcilessly; too close, too fast. A flicker of interest only nudged it inward, tolerable, manageable, and slow.
Her jaw clenched.
So this thing responds to how much I want him.
Her steps slowed.
Then that horrifying conclusion reared its head.
To widen the distance... I’d have to get intimate?
Her stomach twisted violently. Her skin crawled like it wanted to detach itself and flee.
Absolutely not.
The university halls were unusually empty, footsteps echoing faintly against polished floors. Maximilian walked beside her, calm, composed—entirely unaware that she was ntally battling the most cursed equation of her life.
He unlocked his faculty office and stepped inside.
The door barely closed before Catherine slamd it shut behind them.
Before he could turn fully, she grabbed his tie and yanked.
"What—" Maximilian stumbled a step forward, instinctively catching her shoulders and pushing back just enough to regain balance. "—are you doing?" he demanded.
"I’m testing a hypothesis," she said briskly.
She tugged his tie again, pulling him closer until his face filled her vision. Far too close. Unacceptably close.
"I have to kiss you."
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