It wasn't until she was at Ian's side that she truly understood how vicious the curse was. Her cultivation was still shallow. The only way she could sustain his health was to drain her own life essence—her vital blood. Every night, the agony tore through her organs, and she endured it until dawn.
She had told herself it was worth it. Every last drop, for the man she would spend her life with.
She never imagined that the love on his lips had been nothing more than a cheap trick to satisfy his curiosity and claim her body.
Clara wiped the blood from the corner of her mouth. She swallowed the dense, suffocating ache in her chest and left the hotel.
She thought it was finally over.
But the moment she stepped into her building, the sight stopped her cold. Red paint slashed across the hallway walls. FRAUD. CHARLATAN. WHORE.
And the small apartment she had so carefully arranged—the one filled with years of sacred texts and talismans painstakingly inscribed with her own blood—was engulfed in flames.
She ran toward the fire like a woman possessed, heedless of everything.
One step forward, and the flames lunged. They caught her without mercy.
The skin on half her body blistered and split, peeling back to expose raw, bleeding flesh beneath. Tears fell onto the exposed tissue, and the salt ignited a pain so sharp it nearly blinded her.
Ian appeared behind her at some point, his arm draped around Nadia's waist.
His gaze drifted to Clara's mangled arm. His eyes creased with a mocking smile.
"Well, well. I thought you were all-powerful. Turns out you feel pain like the rest of us."
"Ian Delgado, what gave you the right to burn my things?!" Her voice cracked. "These past three years—without those texts, you'd be dead!"
"Enough!"
He closed the distance in a single stride and locked his hand around her throat.
"Stop waving your filthy little trinkets around. They make me sick." His grip tightened. "I'm not just burning them. I'm going to make sure the entire world sees you for the fraud you are."
Before she could gather herself, dozens—no, hundreds—of reporters flooded the narrow hallway. Camera lenses and microphones thrust into her face.
"Miss Pruitt, you've swindled the Delgado family out of a fortune over the past three years. Do you feel any remorse at all?"
"You realize this constitutes criminal fraud, don't you?"