Chapter 307: The Catena Animae

Maximilian changed and had breakfast before returning to the bedroom.

He had already taken his medication, just as Catherine had insisted he do. If he forgot, she would worry. She always worried about the smallest things when it came to him, and after everything they had been through, he had no intention of giving her another reason to wake up anxious.

He carried a cup of coffee into the room and sat beside her.

Catherine was still asleep.

The sight should have been peaceful, but something about it unsettled him. She had been sleeping for far longer than usual.

Maximilian reached out and gently brushed his fingers over her earlobe. He traced the curve of her cheek, then let his fingertip linger against her lips.

“Catherine…”

She didn’t stir.

He smiled faintly and tried again, stroking her hair away from her face. Nothing.

His smile faded. He leaned closer, watching her chest rise and fall. Her breathing was steady.

Fine.

He let out a quiet breath and shook his head at himself. There was no reason to panic. She was simply exhausted. After everything she had endured, perhaps her body had finally decided to claim the rest it had been denied.

Even so, he couldn’t quite settle.

He stepped outside and returned a short while later with a smart watch. After carefully fastening it around Catherine’s wrist, he connected it to his phone so he could monitor her heart rate and sleep.

It was perhaps excessive. He didn’t care. Catherine had never slept this long before.

Maximilian sat beside her again, his thumb brushing gently over the back of her hand as he watched the readings on his phone.

Only when everything remained normal did some of the tension leave his shoulders.

His phone rang.

Jonathan.

Maximilian answered.

“We’ve dealt with the other channels,” Jonathan said. “The accounts, the investments, the sources of cash we could trace. Dorian’s access to them has been cut off.”

“So he’s cashless.”

“Essentially.”

Maximilian looked toward Catherine. “Good.”

He ended the call. Another call came almost immediately. It was from Bobby.

Maximilian answered.

“What’s happening?”

“Something strange,” Bobby said. “I’ve had people watching the hospital all night. I even had a few of them try to finish the job.”

Maximilian’s brows drew together.

“And?”

“He’s still alive.”

Maximilian went silent.

Bobby sounded almost incredulous. “I don’t understand it. The man should be dead. It’s as if something keeps protecting him.”

“Something?”

“My men are calling it a miracle… Or God,” Bobby muttered. “That’s what some of them are saying.”

Maximilian glanced toward Catherine.

“God doesn’t usually protect careless sociopaths who spend their lives hurting everyone around them.”

He ended the call.

Yet the words stayed with him. Something was protecting Dorian. His eyes slowly moved to Catherine. More specifically, to her wrist… to the bracelet.

Maximilian’s expression changed. He carefully lifted Catherine’s arm and removed the Catena Animae from her wrist. The moment it rested in his palm, an uneasiness settled over him. Something wasn’t right.

He stared at the Alexandrite in the center. It looked different. It was darker, almost entirely purple now. The green had vanished.

Maximilian closed his fingers around the bracelet.

His mind returned to his final moments in his previous life.

He had spent so long trying to remember them. For the first time, fragments came back with startling clarity.

Fire… Heat… The roar of the flames… And his hands clutching this bracelet against his chest as he stepped into the pyre.

And the curse… Dorian had been the one who put it there.

Maximilian’s gaze hardened. Perhaps this bracelet had never been meant simply to bind two souls together. Perhaps it had been waiting for something. A purpose that had not yet been fulfilled.

He looked at Catherine, sleeping peacefully.

He had gotten the Alexandrite, because it contained the color of Catherine and his eyes. Now, in the bracelet, the green had disappeared, as if she had fulfilled her purpose. And the rest…

He stepped into the hallway, still holding the bracelet. He didn’t have to wait long. Sebastian and Bernice appeared at the end of the corridor.

Sebastian noticed him first. “Did Jonathan inform you?” he asked. “We worked together through the night to shut down Dorian’s remaining accounts.”

Maximilian barely answered. Instead, he held out the bracelet. “Touch it.”

Sebastian frowned. “What?”

“Touch it.”

There was something in Maximilian’s voice that made Sebastian obey. His fingers closed around the bracelet.

The Alexandrite pulsed. Sebastian staggered. He caught himself against the wall, his breath suddenly coming in ragged gasps.

“Sebastian?” Bernice rushed toward him.

But before she could reach him, Maximilian held the bracelet out to her. “Now you.”

Bernice hesitated. Then she touched it. The stone pulsed again. She gasped.

And suddenly, they were no longer in the hallway.

Memories crashed through them. A palace filled with sunlight. Katerina laughing… The first time they had sworn fealty to their princess…Long afternoons spent beside her… The countless times she had protected them, defended them, and treated them as something more precious than servants…

And then came memories of something even more intimate.

A love that had grown quietly between two people who had never been given enough time… A first kiss… A promise… A future they had once believed they would have.

Then… Death.

Sebastian’s body trembled violently as the memories returned. He saw it all.

The betrayal… Dorian… The moment his own life had been ripped away.

And then another memory struck him with such force that he cried out. “Dorian killed me!”

He straightened, his eyes wide with horror. Then he remembered something worse.

“He’s going to kill Her Majesty!” Sebastian looked at Maximilian, panic flooding his face. “We have to get to her! He’s going to kill the princess!”

Maximilian immediately stepped forward and wrapped his arms around him. “She’s safe, Sebastian.”

Sebastian froze. “You know she’s safe.”

The words slowly reached him. His breathing steadied. “She survived?”

“She survived.”

Sebastian closed his eyes. For the first time in centuries, he let out a broken breath.

“She survived…”

Beside them, Bernice had sunk to the floor.

She was crying. Her shoulders shook as memories of her own death returned in full.

It hurt. It hurt more than she could bear.

She had remembered the loneliness, the fear, and the knowledge that she was leaving everything behind.

Then Sebastian knelt beside her. “Bernice…”

She looked at him through her tears.

“He…” Her voice broke. “He was with me as I died, Bash.”

Sebastian’s face changed.

“Maximilian, The King of Dravencourt.”

Bernice covered her face.

“I thought wrong of him. I thought he was the reason the princess was suffering. I should have let him speak to her. I should have trusted her.”

Her voice became almost inaudible.

“The princess wouldn’t have suffered so much if I had only…”

She couldn’t finish. The guilt she had carried into death had returned with every detail intact. Then she looked at Sebastian, and held his cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry I left you alone, Bash.”

Sebastian pulled her into his arms.

“No,” he whispered, holding her tightly. “You don’t have to apologize.”

Bernice clung to him as though afraid that if she let go, he would disappear again.

For a long moment, Maximilian simply watched them. Two people who had died loving each other. Two souls who had spent another lifetime apart, never knowing why the absence of the other had always hurt so much.

And now they had found each other again.

Maximilian looked down at the bracelet in his hand. The Alexandrite pulsed softly.

He thought of Catherine sleeping in the next room.

Perhaps that was what the bracelet had been waiting for. Not merely to bind them. But to bring back everything that death had stolen.

And perhaps, this time, none of them would have to lose the people they loved again.

And as Maximilian watched, the bracelet began to crumble in his palm.

The gold darkened first, losing its warmth as the Alexandrite gems dulled until no trace of their former brilliance remained. Then, with a faint crackling sound, the metal and stones collapsed into fine, black dust.

Black.

The same cold, empty black as Dorian’s eyes.

Sebastian stared at the dust in Maximilian’s palm. His expression changed, his eyes sharpening as understanding settled over him.

“I know what to do, Maximilian,” he said quietly.

Maximilian nodded, his gaze still fixed on the black dust coating his hand. For the first time, the meaning of what had happened was becoming clear.

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