His brows arched, a thread of true confusion forming. “Oh?”
“I’ve heard what they call you.” I bared my teeth in a feral grin. “TheShadow Drask?”
Ashterion’s smile didn’t fade, itvanished. Gone, wiped from his face as though it had never been there. He rose, slow and controlled, every movement a warning.
“What did you say?” His voice vibrated with lethal intent behind the quiet.
I stood too. If I was going to die here, I’d do it on my feet.
“You heard me.”
“Say it again.”
The shadows behind him twitched. I should’ve shut up. I didn’t.
“Shadow. Drask.”
Ashterion didn’t move. Not right away. But the temperature dropped. A chill swept down my spine. The shadows behind him shifted, growing teeth.
But then he laughed. A brittle sound, like glass cracking under too much pressure. His hands came together, fingers lacing, masking tension as discipline.
I still saw it.
His thumb rubbed compulsively along his left ring finger, where the gleam of his wedding band caught the firelight. “Do you even know where that name comes from? Or are you simply parroting what your male whispers in your bed?”
The insult didn’t land the way he wanted it to.
I met his gaze, steady and cold. “Well, considering Varyth spoke quite clearly in that meeting ofservicesyou offer to other courts…” I shrugged, feigning nonchalance even as the realisation hit me in real time. “Even a dumb little human like me can put things together.”
The tension radiating off Ashterion was like a wire drawn too tight, one wrong move and it would snap.
He leaned forward, his expression turning to ice. “That’s hardly a matter I feel the need to discuss with adumb little human.” A subtle tremor ran through him, though whether from rage, or something else, I couldn’t tell. “But if youalready know the truth... then why are you asking me?”
I didn’t flinch. Didn’t let him turn this on me.
“I’m not asking,” I said evenly. “Just pointing out someone who’s trading companionship for power, perhaps shouldn’t judge me for how Ismell.”
His expression fractured, an old wound bleeding too hard, too fast. Ashterion turned away, paced a few steps, exhaling through his nose as if cooling something that threatened to burn.
When he turned back, he was composed again. “How my wife and I gain alliances.” The words were honeyed, but carried the precision of a weapon. “Does not concern you.”
I watched Ashterion, noting how his shoulders had tightened, how he let his hands fall open, as though he was physically releasing the will to argue.
“It concerns me when your alliances involve torturing me and my friends.”
Ashterion’s jaw tightened. “There are worse things than torture, Isara.”
“Like being a political commodity?”
His movements were too fast to track. One moment he was standing across the room, the next he was before me. His eyes burned with something ancient and terrible.
“Choose your next words carefully.”
“Did I strike a nerve, High Lord?”
The room darkened around us, the air growing thick and heavy as his power bled past whatever control he normally maintained.
“You think you understand,” he said. “You think you’ve pieced together some grand revelation about me.”
