Instead, I dressed her in the midnight blue silk of my House and stood her in the shadows of my dining hall, a weapon I am arrogant enough to believe I can wield.
I glance toward the corner where she stands. She is fulfilling her role as the silent servant, clutching a silver pitcher of wine, but my gaze lingers longer than strategy requires.
I had the tailors cut the gown to fit her properly, shedding the rags of the slave market. The silk clings to the sharp fragility of her frame, exposing the long, pale line of her neck and the hollow of her throat where I rested my thumb only days ago.
A muscle feathers in my jaw. I find myself tracing that line with my eyes, remembering the warmth of her skin against mycold hands. The urge to cross the room, push the heavy hair back from her shoulder, and bury my face in the curve of her neck is a sudden, physical ache. I tell myself it is the addiction—the craving for the silence she carries in her blood. But the heat curling in my lower belly feels dangerously like a man’s desire, base and mortal. I want to own her. Not just her fear, and not just her quiet.
Her.
It is madness. I tear my eyes away, forcing my attention back to the table. She is not human. She is a fracture in the world. And she is the only reason my mind is clear enough to endure the man sitting across from me.
The heavy oak table groans under the weight of a feast fit for a king, yet the room is stale, suffocating beneath layers of tension and pretense.
Across from me sits Lord Malek. He is everything a devotee of The Warrior should be—broad-shouldered, loud, and utterly devoid of subtlety . He tears into a haunch of roastedtaurawith grease shining on his chin, his red eyes darting around the room, assessing threats, counting exits, calculating weaknesses.
I despise him.
He is a blunt instrument in a world that requires a scalpel. Yet, tonight, he is dangerous. Not just because of his armies or his favor with the War God, but because he has the nose of a bloodhound. If he catches even a whiff of the secret rotting in the center of my estate—if he senses that my magic is dormant, or worse, that I am harboring a Purna—he will not just kill me. He will dismantle me.
"Your estate is quiet, Imas," Malek says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He does not use the linen napkin. It is a deliberate insult. "The screams from your dungeons usually provide such charming dinner music. Have you lost your taste for the whip?"
I steep my fingers together, resting my chin on them to hide the tick in my jaw. I can feel Leora’s presence against my mind, a soft, terrified static. I need her silence to think, but I hate that she is witnessing this. I hate that she knows I am vulnerable.
"Silence is its own form of terror, Malek," I reply, my voice smooth as oil. "Only the unimaginative rely solely on noise."
Malek laughs, a barking sound that grates against my nerves. "Or perhaps you have simply lost your edge. Rumors fly on wings of shadow in Lliandor. They say the Serpent's favorite son has been neglecting his prayers."
He leans forward. The atmosphere in the room suddenly thickens.
It is not a metaphor. Malek is pushing his aura outward—a heavy, suffocating pressure of pure aggression granted by The Warrior. It presses down on my shoulders, a challenge meant to crush me into submission before my own servants.
I reach for my own magic. I command the Chaos within me to rise, to flare outward and meet his brute force with the twisting, maddening power of The Serpent.
Push back,I order the void.Crush him.
Nothing happens.
My obsidian ring remains cold, a dead weight on my finger. The connection to my god is there, but it is faint, a distant, static-filled whisper that refuses to coalesce into power.
Panic, sharp and metallic, floods my mouth.
It isn't working.
I glance toward Leora again. She is staring at Malek, her eyes wide. She does not see me looking at her, does not see the way my hand twitches on the table, wishing it was her skin I was gripping instead of the wood.
I was a fool. I thought I could control this. I thought I could use her as a tool to sharpen my mind and then discard her influence when I needed my power. But the silence she bringsisn't a switch I can flick. It is a mire. It is dragging me down, stripping me naked before my enemy.
I am defenseless.
Malek senses it. His grin widens, revealing teeth that seem too sharp. He pushes harder. The pressure intensifies. The candles on the table flicker and dim. My breath catches in my throat, my lungs refusing to expand against the weight of his dominance.
He knows. He can feel the hollowness where my power should be.
"Well?" Malek taunts, his voice dropping to a growl. "Where is the bite of the viper, Imas? Where is the sting? Or are you truly nothing but a serpent without fangs?"
Rage flares in my chest, hot and impotent. I want to flay him alive. I want to summon a thousand shadowed horrors to tear the flesh from his bones. But I can't. I am trapped in the silence she has created.
I look at Leora. I want to strangle her. I want to drag her from the shadows and break her neck for doing this to me.
