[BL] Accidentally Becoming the Healer of the Deranged Archduke novel Chapter 401

Chapter 401: Blood for the Gods

There was a time when Xion had been truly rebellious against Michael.

Not just a stubborn or uncooperative one.

But truly, viscerally rebellious. The kind of defiance that lived in bone and blood, that didn’t fade even when his body had died once.

He had fought him with every ounce of strength he could muster. Even when the laws of the universe pressed down on him, smothering his power like a heavy blanket, he had refused to stop.

His breathing had been ragged, his vision dark at the edges, but his hand had still found the hilt of a knife.

And with a surge of rage, he had driven the blade straight at Michael.

The memory was a jagged, vivid fragment in his mind.

There was the sound of steel slicing through the air, the startled, almost disbelieving look in Michael’s silver-grey eyes before pain overtook him.

The chaos that followed was still fresh in his mind. The scent of blood, burning in his lungs, and the heavy slap that had knocked him to the floor.

That was also the day Michael had shed whatever last shred of humanity he had before making good on his promise.

He had turned Xion into nothing but a mindless puppet.

And somehow... somehow, in that chaos, Xion had managed to make Michael lose his right eye.

It was ironic because in this new life, Xion had lost the vision in his right eye as well.

The reason for it all was Talia Valaria.

If it weren’t for that incurable poison, nothing of this would have happened.

There weren’t many things the system couldn’t detect, unless they were not simple medical things...

The poison was crafted by one person alone, a creator of things so heinous they almost defied logic. And it had been handed to Talia deliberately.

Come to think of it, perhaps, Michael had noticed him long ago. Maybe when he first stepped into that broken church.

Even in this life, there was a slight scar on his eyebrow. It was faint, almost negligible, and Xion would not have recalled it if not for his system pulling Michael’s 3-D picture.

’You are being too generous, system. Doing everything without even asking for any reward.’

The system snorted at the back of his mind.

[I am keeping a tab on everything. The moment we are done, I’m going to vanish with all your mall points.]

Xion merely shook his head.

Noxian was still fast asleep.

With the night getting darker, Xion realized Darius wasn’t coming to find him.

With the way Darius’ mind worked, there was no predicting what he would do.

Maybe he was sulking over the earlier incident. Maybe he was plotting some new way to cage Xion, to put chains on his ankles before they could run far away.

Or maybe both. Darius had always been ambitious enough to multitask his vicious obsession.

And yet, Xion wasn’t afraid of him.

To others, Darius’ love might have been a suffocating, terrible thing.

The kind of love that clung like chains, that shadowed every step, that demanded the world shrink until it was only the two of them. A love too sharp to hold without bleeding.

But to Xion, it was the only thing that ever felt like home.

He was love-starved, though he rarely admitted it — even to himself. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

His skin remembered those loving touches the way deserts remembered rain: with aching, desperate thirst.

Every brush of fingers, every lingering kiss was something his body hoarded greedily, as if it might be the last.

In his last life, there had been no warmth to curl into when the nights felt horribly long.

There was no gentle voice calling him lovely names every two sentences.

He had been alone — not just in the physical sense, but in the way that seeps into the marrow, leaving hollows that no one can see.

So when Darius came, with his consuming presence and his stubborn obsession, Xion didn’t see the cage.

He saw proof that someone could care enough to hold him this tightly. That there was a man who would think of him before the sun, before the air, before himself.

Even if that love was twisted. Even if it bordered on madness. Darius’ devotion was a kind of violence, but it was violence wrapped in the comfort of certainty.

Xion never had to wonder if he mattered. Never had to question if he was wanted when Darius was with him.

That was his anchor.

And for someone who had once been a ghost walking through life, unseen and untouched, that kind of love wasn’t suffocating.

It was the first breath after drowning.

[Are you ready, host?]

Xion blinked, pulled out his musing by the system’s voice. ’Yes, I am.’

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