Chapter 1300. Generosity Has a Price, and It’s Paid in Finger Bones

Chapter 1300: 1300. Generosity Has a Price, and It’s Paid in Finger Bones

Helena’s response was nothing more than a weak, wet cough that sent a spray of blood spattering across Rex’s boots. It was a feeble gesture, a dying ember of defiance that lacked even the strength to be insulting.

Her head lolled back in his grip, her vision swimming in a haze of crimson and gray.

"Still trying to hold onto something?" Rex asked, his voice dropping to a murmur that was almost intimate. "Still trying to maintain some shred of dignity?"

He tilted her chin upward with his free hand, forcing her swollen eye to focus on the long, imposing gray wall that bordered the garden. "Your children are watching, Helena..."

"All three of them... Do you see them? But only two are currently watching..."

"Don’t..." she wheezed, the word breaking into a crimson bubble at her lips. "Don’t you... dare..."

But he did. He forced her gaze toward the stone barrier, and in that moment, the psychic dam broke.

Behind the wall, Lily wasn’t just crying; she was unraveling.

The sound didn’t reach Helena’s ears; first it invaded her mind through their telepathic bond. It was a raw, tearing wail that bypassed hearing and went straight to the nerve endings.

’Mother, Mother, please, stop, stop, stop, stop...!’ The plea was a rhythmic mutilation of thought, repeated over and over until the words lost their linguistic meaning and fused into one continuous, psychic shriek of pure, unadulterated agony.

In Helena’s mind’s eye, she could see her daughter: Lily’s face was a wet, red mask of terror, both fists pressed so hard against her temples that her knuckles were white.

She was sobbing with such violence that her shoulders heaved in convulsing spasms. Through the bond, Helena felt every flinch.

Every time Rex’s telekinesis slammed Helena into the dirt, Lily’s body jerked as if she had been struck by the same impact.

Rex felt it too; the girl’s psychic trauma arrived in his skull like waves of scalding water, tearing at the edges of his concentration, pulling at his focus like a relentless tide against a rotting pier.

Screeeee...

The sound of a bowstring being drawn taut cut through the psychic chaos.

Diana had drawn her bow.

It was a reflex born of pure, animal instinct, something her hands had done before her conscious mind could even process the horror. The string was pulled halfway back, the arrow’s tip resting against the grip.

But there was no steadiness in her stance. Her entire body was convulsing with the impossible strain of the moment.

The arrow’s point wavered in a small, jittery circle stabbing at Rex, then darting toward the sky, then dropping to the ground, before snapping back to Rex’s heart.

A muscle jumped spasmodically under Diana’s ear as her jaw clenched with enough force to crack bone. Her breathing came in shallow, panicked gasps.

The world had become an impossible equation she couldn’t solve.

She loved him. She had said it aloud, with all the terrifying vulnerability of her soul.

She had said it in front of her family, in front of the court, in front of the entire world, and every syllable had been the absolute truth.

And yet, the man she loved was the monster systematically grinding her mother into the bloody dirt.

The cognitive dissonance was physical. It felt like her ribcage was being split open from the inside.

There was no space in her chest where both of those truths could coexist: the love for the man and the horror of the butcher.

She stood paralyzed at the edge of the carnage, caught between two opposing gravitational pulls, a single thread stretched to the breaking point between two warring gods.

Valentina had closed her eyes. Tears didn’t come in waves; they slid steadily down her cheeks like silent rivulets of grief, dripping off her chin and soaking into her collar.

Her face remained eerily still, her lips pressed into a thin, bloodless line. She wasn’t looking away from the carnage; she was retreating inward, seeking refuge in the dark chambers of her own mind, the way a person does when the pain becomes too vast, too corrosive to be held in the light.

Beside her, Elizabeth stood like a statue carved from pale marble. Her knuckles were white where she gripped Lily’s shoulder, anchoring both the sobbing girl and herself against the psychic storm.

Elizabeth’s face was strained, drained of all color, but she maintained a terrifying, brittle calm.

Rex heard it all. Through the telepathic link, he didn’t just hear their voices; he felt the texture of their despair.

Their grief felt like ice water seeping through his pores, a cold, invasive wetness that should have made him flinch.

But he did not stop.

He needed them to see this. He needed Lily’s innocence and Diana’s conflicted love to be burned into their retinas with the same permanence as a brand.

He wanted them to understand the terrifying economy of his world. A promise of loyalty is a beautiful, fragile thing to whisper over candlelight during a pleasant evening.

But loyalty has a price, and that price is paid in blood when the stakes become real. They had made their choices with their whole hearts; they had chosen him, his secrets, and his power.

And Rex would never allow them to believe that such a choice was free of consequence. He would never let them forget the weight of what they had accepted.

He kept his eyes locked on Helena, letting the chorus of their weeping wash over him like harmless rain.

Helena bloodied, half blind, and broken was still fighting.

Through the haze of agony, through the ringing in her ears and the copper taste of blood flooding her throat, she refused to surrender.

With a guttural, wet growl that sounded more like an animal than a mage, she began to drag her right hand across the dirt. Each inch was a battle against gravity and pain.

Her fingers clawed at the soil, leaving bloody furrows in the grass. Her dislocated shoulder dragged behind her like dead weight, the joint grinding audibly against her ribs.

The telekinetic grip had loosened just enough to give her that one limb of defiance, and she hauled herself forward, one agonizing inch at a time.

"I won’t..." she wheezed, blood bubbling between her teeth as she spoke. "I won’t stop."

"I’ll... never..."

Her one good eye, bloodshot and wild, fixed on Rex’s bare feet with the desperate focus of a cornered predator.

CRUNCH.

Rex didn’t hesitate. He brought his heel down directly onto her outstretched fingers.

The sound was unmistakable: the wet, splintering crack of bone snapping like dry kindling under a boot. Helena’s scream was primal.

It wasn’t a human sound; it was a full, tearing shriek of pure torment that tore through the air, bounced off the ancient stone walls of the garden, and sent a panicked flock of birds exploding from the trees in a chaos of feathers and wings.

Her entire body convulsed against the earth, her spine arching in a spasm of unbearable pain.

Rex didn’t flinch at the noise.

Instead, he crouched down in front of her. His movements were precise, almost gentle, carrying the quiet, detached interest of a scientist examining a fascinating insect under glass.

He reached down and took her chin between two fingers, tilting her face upward with deceptive tenderness. He forced her swimming, unfocused eyes to meet his own cold stare.

"You aren’t finished yet, Helena," he said.

His voice was terrifyingly soft. A slow, satisfied smile spread across his face, the half that wasn’t concealed by metal, glinting cruelly in the fading light.

"That wasn’t cruelty... That was merely my generosity."