Keeping Lord Imas calm is not a passive act. It requires a constant, grueling exertion of the muscle I didn’t know I had. I have to find the silence within myself—that small, gray room in my mind—and hold the door open, forcing my own peace to bleed out into the room like incense.
It leaves me hollowed out. Scraped clean.
Behind me, the scratch of a quill against parchment stops.
"Wine," Imas says.
It is not a request. It is a statement of fact, delivered in that low, modulated voice that slides over my skin like cold silk.
I turn. He is sitting at his massive mahogany desk, surrounded by towers of scrolls and maps. He has not left this room in two days. He sleeps in shifts of three hours, and when he wakes, he demands I be awake too, sitting on the rug or the chair, anchoring him.
He looks… different.
The frantic, jagged energy that vibrated off him in the slave market is gone. The darkness that usually wreaths him like a second skin has settled. He looks sharper. The lines of his face, chiseled and arrogant, are no longer tight with suppressed rage. His platinum hair is pulled back severely, revealing the high arch of his cheekbones and the cruel slant of his brows.
He is undeniably beautiful. It is a terrible, poisonous kind of beauty, like a flower that blooms only in the dark and kills whatever touches it. I hate that I notice it. I hate that when I look at his hands—long-fingered, ink-stained, powerful—my stomach twists with something that isn't quite fear.
It is confusion. Because when the dam breaks and I feel him, I don't feel a monster. I feel a man standing on the edge of a cliff, desperate for someone to pull him back. And I am the rope.
"Leora," he prompts, his violet eyes lifting to meet mine.
I jolt into motion. "Yes, My Lord."
I move to the side table. My hands tremble slightly as I reach for the crystal decanter. It is filled withPaquir, a bright red vintage from the southern vineyards. The scent of it fills the air as I unstopper the bottle—floral and fruity, a jarring note of summer in this tomb of winter.
I pour the wine into a goblet. The liquid sloshes, threatening to spill. My grip is weak.
I carry it to him.
He watches me approach. He always watches. He dissects my movements, my breathing, the way I hold myself. I am not a person to him; I am a mechanism he is trying to reverse-engineer.
I stop beside the desk and place the goblet near his hand.
"You are pale," he observes. He does not sound concerned. He sounds like a craftsman noting a flaw in his material.
"I am tired," I say, the words slipping out before I can check them.
He leans back in his chair, steepling his fingers beneath his chin. The gesture draws my eyes. I watch his knuckles, the smooth, charcoal skin. He is not wearing the gloves today.
"Fatigue is a price of utility," he says softly. "You serve a purpose, Leora. A tool does not complain when it is used."
"A tool breaks if you use it too hard," I counter.
His eyes narrow, a flash of violet fire. For a second, the air thins, the pressure dropping as his temper flares.
Instinctively, I push back. I don't even have to think about it anymore. I find the well of empathy inside me—the part of me that remembers what it’s like to be frustrated, to be misunderstood—and I project a wave ofpatiencetoward him.
It costs me. A sharp ache pulses behind my eyes.
Imas inhales sharply. His shoulders drop. The tension bleeds out of his frame, replaced by that unnerving, unnatural stillness. He really looks at me, and his expression shifts. It isn't gratitude. It is hunger. Not for food, and not for the pain he used to crave from The Serpent.
He is hungry forme. For the silence I bring.
"You are learning," he murmurs. He reaches for the wine, but he doesn't look at the goblet. He looks at my mouth. "The servants are whispering, you know."
I stiffen. "Whispering?"
"They say the Lord of Pain has gone soft. They say the screams have stopped coming from the west wing." He picks up the goblet, swirling the red liquid. "They wonder what sort of witch I have locked in my tower."
