Bound by the Mark of Lies (BL)-Chapter 338 - 332: Poison Before Breakfast

By the time Damian lowered the handkerchief, Gabriel was already standing, the screen forgotten, the stylus abandoned mid-note, his breath catching in his throat the moment he saw the bloom of red soaking through white.

It wasn’t a trickle. Not a paper-cut smear. It looked like Damian had coughed out a chunk of his lungs.

Damian blinked at it like a man observing an inconvenient stain on a report, as though it were mildly rude to bleed before breakfast.

"Huh," he murmured, his tone flat with curiosity. "Well, that’s dramatic."

Gabriel crossed the space between them in three long, silent strides, his fingers already on Damian’s wrist, pulse steady but elevated, as he gently, but with no room for argument, pressed the Emperor into the nearest chair.

He bent over him then, eyes scanning his lips, his tongue, the pale tint of his skin, and the sharp edges of tension behind his jaw, measuring everything with the detached, terrifying precision of someone trained to assess worst-case scenarios first.

His heart was beating hard in his chest; his first thought was that Damian’s ether channels had collapsed and his lungs would be next after his arms.

Damian tried to wave it off with the kind of exhausted charm he usually reserved for minor injuries and insubordinate dukes. "I only took a sip. Didn’t even swallow all of it."

Gabriel didn’t answer, not even to argue, and that silence, coming from a man who had no shortage of words when annoyed, was louder than anything he could have shouted.

He reached for the cup instead, with the deliberate hands of an engineer inspecting a failed system, his grip controlled, his breath held as he brought it close and angled it just enough to catch the light.

The smell hit him immediately.

Not burnt beans or bitterness. Not even the strength Damian preferred, the kind that scalded tongue and throat alike.

No, this was different.

It reeked of metal and ether, thin, acrid, and wrong in a way that curled inside the nose and stayed there, clinging to the senses like a warning. It was faint but unmistakable, the kind of subtle corruption designed to go unnoticed by a lesser man, someone who drank without thinking, someone not used to surviving assassination attempts before breakfast.

Gabriel set the cup down slowly, his fingers unfurling from the handle with the restraint of someone holding a detonator.

"You’re poisoned," he said quietly, a statement of fact, as clinical as it was damning.

Damian shrugged with a breath that barely passed for a laugh, his body still at ease even as his throat worked through the last of the cough. "Technically, I’d say irritated," he said, voice hoarse but unconcerned. "They aimed low. I’m insulted."

Gabriel turned, eyes sharp enough to cut through the façade Damian wore like armor.

"Don’t joke," he said, and this time, there was no softness in it—just ice and the echo of something jagged beneath it.

"I’m not." Damian wiped his mouth again, another streak of red blooming on the cloth. "If this was meant to kill me, they miscalculated."

Gabriel stared at him, pulse still pounding in his ears, a low and steady drumbeat that refused to fade no matter how carefully he forced his breaths.

"It passed the security," he said at last, his voice flat, distant. "I thought your channels had collapsed."

His hand hovered near Damian’s arm, not quite touching him, like he didn’t trust himself not to crush something if he did.

Damian didn’t flinch. "That didn’t happen," he said quietly. "And they never will. But you’re right. Edward will want to dismember the ones who failed."

Gabriel let out a sound that could have passed for a breath or a curse.

His eyes didn’t leave Damian’s face. Not for a second.

Because he’d seen it before, what happened when the ether veins that ran like molten glass beneath Damian’s skin burned too hot or cracked open under pressure. He’d read the reports, the classified ones buried under a dozen imperial seals. He knew what it looked like when those channels ruptured, when the power that made Damian Lyon unstoppable turned inward, liquefying blood and bone alike in punishment for being flesh and not iron.

He knew it.

And for one moment, for one terrible, breathless moment, he had thought it was happening again.

"I’m going to kill them," Gabriel said softly, eyes still locked to Damian’s like a man clinging to the last stable thing in the room.

"Gregoris will get there first," Damian replied, with the faintest trace of amusement tugging at the corner of his mouth. "I’m not going to let my pregnant wife stain his hands."

Gabriel’s head snapped toward him with a sharp, incredulous look, somewhere between disbelief and outrage. "We are not married."

"Tch. We’re engaged," Damian said, waving a hand like that settled everything. "Let me have this."

He tried to look pitiful.

It didn’t work.

The blood on the handkerchief was still wet.

The cup on the desk still reeked of ether and iron.

And Gabriel, Gabriel, who could have matched his theatricality on any other day, just stared at him, unmoved. Unforgiving.

Then, in a voice as crisp as shattered glass: "Edward."

The name rang out like a commandment.

The door opened before the second syllable faded, and Edward entered with the speed of a man who had run from the far side of the wing, already bracing for disaster.

He took one look at the blood-stained cloth in Damian’s hand, the untouched cup still steaming faintly on the desk, and the slight tremble in Gabriel’s fingers before he forced them still and Edward stopped breathing.

Gabriel didn’t turn. "Secure the cup. Containment protocol, full sequence. I want every member of the kitchen staff detained, interrogated, and screened for ether residue. Every delivery route. Every touchpoint. Everyone."

Edward bowed stiffly, but his voice was steady. "Yes, Your Grace."

"Call Dr. Marin?"

"Already done," Edward said. "With a full med team."

"Good."

Gabriel finally exhaled, just once, the air sharp and tight in his lungs, then walked to the side table and poured a glass of water with a grace that didn’t match the rage crawling just beneath his skin.

He returned to Damian, kneeling down, holding the glass out with one hand while the other checked again—pulse, color, focus, certainty that he was still here.

Damian took the glass with one brow raised. "You’re kneeling," he murmured, amused despite himself. "Should I be worried or flattered?"

Gabriel didn’t even blink. "If you don’t drink this in the next five seconds, I’m pouring it over your head."

That earned a laugh. Hoarse, low, but real.

He drank.

And Gabriel watched him the entire time, because he’d seen too many brilliant men die from slow poisons, and he would not add this one to the list.

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