He looks at Leora.
She is standing perfectly still in the shadows, her head bowed, her hands clutching the empty wine pitcher. But the air around her still hums with the residue of the power she projected. To a sensitive eye, she must look like a beacon in the gloom.
Malek’s eyes narrow. He inhales, tasting the air. He looks from her to me, a slow, dawning suspicion tightening his features.
He says nothing. He simply gives a short, sharp nod—not of farewell, but of acknowledgement—and strides out into the corridor.
The doors close.
I stare at the wood, my heart hammering a rhythm I can no longer suppress. He saw something. He sensed the connection.
I look at Leora. She is trembling now, the adrenaline fading, leaving her exhausted. She looks at me, waiting for praise, or perhaps just acknowledgement of what she did.
I feel the confidence she gave me curdle into something sour and violent.
"Get out," I whisper.
She flinches. "My Lord?"
"Get out!" I roar, sweeping the heavy silver candelabra off the table. It crashes to the floor, extinguishing the lights, plunging the room into shadows that I can no longer command. "Get to my chambers. Now."
She flees.
I sit alone in the dark, clutching the arms of my chair. I won the battle. But as I look over my dead ring and feel the ghost of her strength fading from my veins, I know I am losing the war. And Malek knows it too.
8
LEORA
The door to his chambers is heavy, a slab of iron-bound oak that should make me feel safe, but as I press my back against it, I feel only the vibration of the storm raging through the estate.
I do not light the candles. I cannot bear to see the opulence of this cage—the velvet drapes, the silver tapestries, the massive bed that smells of him. I slide down the wood until I hit the floor, pulling my knees to my chest.
My hands are shaking. Not a subtle tremor, but a violent, racking quake that rattles my teeth.
I look at them in the gloom. They look like the hands of a stranger. Pale, bony, stained with ink from his desk and the invisible residue of the magic I pushed out of my soul.
I saved him.
The thought tastes like bile. I saved the monster who promised to dissect me. I saved the tyrant who keeps Rina broken and Asema on a leash. When Malek’s power filled the dining hall, pressing down like a ceiling of lead, I didn't let Imas crumble. I poured my own strength into the void where his soul should be.
And it felt... right.
That is the horror of it. It didn't feel like coercion. It felt like fitting a key into a lock.
Heavy footsteps thunder down the corridor. They are not the measured, predatory strides of Lord Imas. They are chaotic. Uneven.
I scramble up to my feet, backing away from the door just as it flies open.
It hits the stone wall with a crash that sounds like a gunshot.
Imas stands on the threshold. The hallway torches cast his shadow long and distorted across the carpet, a jagged specter stretching toward me. He has lost the icy composure he wore at the dinner table. His hair has escaped its severe tie, strands of platinum falling over his face. His chest heaves.
He looks my way, and his eyes are not violet. They are almost black, the pupils blown wide with an emotion that is too hot for hatred and too cold for passion.
He slams the door shut behind him and locks it.
"You," he breathes. The word is a curse.
