Chapter 89-A cruel trap (2)

Chapter 89: 89-A cruel trap (2)

"He said his name is Nersus and he is a blackblood," Maisa gave the reply with a clear voice.

Varitreya and Kayden exchanged a look. They had a bad feeling about the Nersus character, everything about him didn’t sit well with them.

Maisa noticed their reaction. "What?" She asked, not understanding why they were reacting so coldly to the news that she found help inside the prison.

Varitreya came closer. "Maisa, prisoners in the Dark Forest cannot meet one another," she spoke calmly and tried not spook her.

"What do you mean?" Maisa met her eyes. She had met another prison so was Varitreya doubting her or calling her insane?

"The forest separates every vampire inside," Varitreya crouched slightly so they were closer to eye level. "Every vampire who enters is placed inside an isolated section of the prison. They can wander for days, weeks, even years, and they’ll never encounter another prisoner. They’ll encounter the creatures and monster... they’ll encounter endless terrain of the forest... they’ll encounter the consequences of whatever sentence brought them there... but they don’t encounter each other."

Maisa’s face slowly lost its color. If that was the rule of the Dark Forest then how did she meet Nersus? "But I met him. I swear he was there."

"That’s the problem," Kayden folded his arms. "He couldn’t be a blackblood. I think who you met is a whiteblood."

"And if he really was a whiteblood, that opens doors to a billion questions," Varitreya locked eyes with him.

Maisa stared at them. "A whiteblood?"

She searched her memories and nothing about Nersus screamed of whiteblood unless he was really good at hiding it... then once again, she had fallen for a lie.

"Only whitebloods can enter and leave the Dark Forest without losing their vampirism. No whiteblood has ever been sentenced there so him appearing there couldn’t have been an accident," Varitreya spoke out.

Kayden’s gaze sharpened. "So if you met one inside, he wasn’t a prisoner."

"He was there voluntarily," Varitreya finished. "And he specifically came for you, Maisa."

The words landed heavily that Maisa’s heart sank. She remembered Nersus standing beneath the trees, his calm voice. The strange way he’d seemed to know more than he should and not just about the forest. The way he’d disappeared the moment Varitreya and Kayden approached.

"He told me a story about why he was sentenced," she whispered. "Was that a lie too?" Her voice lowered a nitch below a whisper.

"What story?"

Maisa began recounting everything. She told them about the blackblood he’d claimed to have been, about the redblood girl who fell for his friend and tricked him, about the failed wedding and about the hunters waiting for them. She went on to narrate about Nersus’s friends dying and about his revenge against the village.

Varitreya’s expression changed before Maisa even finished. She recognized thar story immediately, how could she not. That tale had traumatised her nation the previous year and left a wake of broken hearts.

Kayden looked toward the ground. His heart tightened and his eyes softened with sadness at the story that had left the vampire nation heartbroken last year.

When Maisa reached the part about the blackblood killing the girl’s entire village, Varitreya finally spoke.

"That story wasn’t about some unknown vampire named Nersus, Maisa," she said, her tone full of grief.

Maisa frowned.

"It is about Asher Challan," she added. The name meant nothing to Maisa at first until Varitreya continued. "Addessa’s brother."

Maisa froze. What did the story have to do with Addessa’s brother and why did Nersus tell her the story when it wasn’t about himself? What was he trying to achieve?

Kayden took over quietly. "Asher was once one of the academy’s greatest champions. He was brilliant, respected and powerful but then he fell in love with a redblood."

"His family rejected the relationship when it became public..." Varitreya said. "... so the girl convinced him to leave with her. She claimed they could build a life together beyond vampire territory."

"But she wasn’t actually in love with him," Kayden continued. "She had another lover... a human hunter and was using Asher."

Maisa’s stomach dropped. She wanted to get up and run away before she heard the rest of the story. She couldn’t help it.

Every time she heard about hunters and vampires in the sane sentence, her heart sank. Because at some point the story was going to take a cruel turn and land on her family and add to the guilt she was already carrying.

She already owed the Ashbourne’s and Mortensen’s, she couldn’t afford a life debt to the Challan’s too.

"She had turned into a vampire specifically to help the hunter lure vampires out for him to increase his kills," Varitreya said, anger and ache rising inside her.

Kayden’s voice was grim. "The wedding was a trap."

Maisa stared at them. The bad feeling she had was coming true, they were getting to the twist.

She clasped her hands behind her back and crossed her fingers. ’There are a million hunters in the world, heaven. Please don’t let this have anything to do with the Everheart family,’ she offered a silent prayer in her heart.

"Asher invited his friends. They crossed into human territory believing they were attending a celebration. Instead, hunters were waiting for them, fully armed," Kayden angrily kicked a pebble on the ground.

Maisa could almost hear Nersus’s voice again. The story suddenly felt different and real, not a confession but a tragedy.

"And the hunter?" Maisa asked.

Varitreya eyes met hers. She gritted her teeth and spoke, "Who else if not a member of that cursed Everheart family, Rayne Everheart."

The world seemed to stop. Maisa’s entire body went cold. The name and the tone Varitreya used kept resonating in her head, ears and heart. All of her seemed paralysed.

The fingers she had crossed at her back came undone. Her brother? Her older brother?

The same Rayne who had spent years perfecting the art of hunting vampires. The same Rayne whose name was spoken with pride in her family as her parents adored him and saw him as next head incase they retired.

The same Rayne who had recently stood in the forest with an arrow aimed at her back as he hadn’t recognized his own sister because he believed she was still human.

Maisa’s hands began trembling. "He..." she couldn’t finish. What could sue possibly say?

Varitreya watched her carefully. "Rayne was the one who orchestrated the trap... I can’t believe this hunter would turn a human into the very thing they claim to hate just to lure more vampires for a kill..." she spat on the ground. "Disgusting!"

Maisa lowered her head. She suddenly felt sick, not because she had learned that her brother was a hunter, she had known that all her life. It was the ruthlessness of it, the calculated deception and the use of someone’s love to lure people into a slaughter.

She had been raised to believe hunters were protectors. But standing beside a waterfall in the middle of the night, Maisa found herself wondering when protection had become indistinguishable from cruelty.

"What happened to Asher?" she asked, unable to stop her heart from tearing open and bleeding.