THE PRIESTESS'S WORTHLESS HUSBAND IS A DRAGON

CHAPTER 4: DRAGON SPIRIT PART 2

Derek stepped forward from behind Patricia. His face was arranged into the most careful expression of guilt and sympathy, every muscle placed exactly where it needed to be. His eyes were soft. His brow was pinched. His hands were clasped together in front of his chest like a prayer.

"I'm sorry, Brother. I told them not to do it. You know I'd never want to hurt you." His lower lip gave one small, perfectly timed tremble.

The Spirit made a gagging sound inside Ethan's head. "That kid is a better actor than anyone I've seen in four centuries. And I've seen empires fall. Kid, your brother played your parents like a fiddle made of stupid."

Ethan didn't look at Derek. He didn't look at his parents. His eyes moved past all of them and found Jessica at the top of the stairs. Her face was calm. Composed. Untouchable.

"You drugged the milk."

Three words. Flat. Quiet. Not a question.

Jessica met his eyes without flinching. Her posture didn't change. Her expression barely shifted. But something moved behind her gaze, something quick and uncomfortable that she buried before it could reach the surface.

"This is what you owe your brother, Ethan. Derek has carried the weight of this family's expectations his entire life. You got lucky with one awakening. Can't you be a little more sensible about this?"

Deep inside Jessica's chest, something heavy turned over. She knew this was unfair. A part of her felt the wrongness sitting in her stomach like a stone she couldn't swallow. But she would marry Ethan and compensate him with the rest of her life. She would be kind. She would take care of him. That had to be enough. He lost a Bloodline Core but he would gain a wife who cared. The equation had to balance. Because if it didn't, then she was the kind of person she swore she would never become.

The Morrisons turned and walked up the stairs without another word. The lock clicked behind them like a period at the end of a sentence.

"Alright, kid." The Spirit's voice turned serious for the first time. No sarcasm. No jokes. Just a low, steady tone that vibrated somewhere deep in Ethan's bones. "I'm going to be real with you for thirty seconds, and then I'm going back to being mean because that's more fun. You just lost everything. Your family, your bloodline, your girl, your future. Every person in your life just stabbed you from the front and told you it was for your own good. I know what that feels like. I've watched it happen to better men than you."

A pause. The silence lasted three heartbeats.

"But what they took from you was never the real thing. The real thing is what I am. And I'm not going anywhere."

Hours passed. The moonlight shifted across the floor. Then the basement door opened again.

Harrison Clarke walked down the stone steps slowly, a polished cane tapping against each one. He was an old man with sharp eyes and a face that gave away nothing. He looked at Ethan's whip marks, the dried blood crusted across his back, the hollow in his chest, and his expression didn't change at all.

"You look like you've been thrown away."

"What do you want, Mr. Clarke?" Ethan's voice was flat, emptied out, like a glass that had been drained and set back on the shelf.

Harrison leaned on his cane and laid out the deal with the precision of a man who had been rehearsing it for weeks. Jessica would be reassigned to Derek. Ethan would marry Serena, Harrison's youngest daughter, same age as Jessica. She had been in a coma for over a year. The public called her the Cursed Priestess. She held fifty percent of the Clarke Group shares. Harrison needed someone powerless and ignorable to marry her and protect her shares from the eldest branch of the family.

"You want me to marry a comatose woman."

"I want you to marry my daughter." Harrison's voice didn't waver, his eyes locked onto Ethan's with the weight of a man who was not asking.

"Kid," the Spirit whispered inside his head, and for the first time, the sarcasm was completely gone, replaced by something almost reverent, "take the deal. I don't know why yet, but something about that comatose girl is making my scales tingle. And my scales haven't tingled in four hundred years."

Ethan looked at Harrison for a long time. The basement was silent except for the dripping of water somewhere in the walls. Then he exhaled, slow and tired, like a man letting go of the last rope.

"Fine."

Harrison nodded once, turned, and walked back up the stairs. At the top, Jessica stood in the doorway. Her arms were crossed, and her jaw was set tight.

"You're really going to marry her?" Her voice was clipped, sharp at the edges but controlled. "They call her cursed for a reason, Ethan. Doctors, healers, specialists, nobody can wake her up. You're walking into a nightmare."

"You drugged me, Jessica."

She flinched. The smallest movement, barely a twitch of her shoulders, but Ethan saw it.

"I did what was best for the family."

"Then let me do what's best for me."

Jessica's nostrils flared. Her fingers tightened around her own arms. "I'm not saying I wanted you to marry me. I'm saying you'll regret marrying her. Don't come crying to me when it falls apart."

She turned and walked away. Her heels clicked against the stone, sharp and fast, and the basement door swung shut behind her.

"She's jealous," the Spirit said casually, almost bored. "She doesn't want you, but she doesn't want anyone else to have you either. Humans are hilarious."