“Youaremineto command.Myprisoner.”
I ground my teeth together. My hand lashed out before I could stop it, aiming to slap him across the face. His calloused hand caught my wrist effortlessly.
“You are impossibly mouthy, and violent,” he murmured, almost amused. His calloused hand squeezed my wrist until I gasped, and I struggled against his hold uselessly.
“For something so—” His gaze dragged over me with cruel deliberation as he twisted his hand with brute force, and a sickening crack echoed louder than my scream.
“—breakable.”
Agony ripped through my arm, white-hot and blinding. My knees buckled as I cried out, the sound tearing from my throat before I could swallow it. My fingers spasmed, and the world tilted violently as my bone protruded through my skin.
The word struck something raw inside me, a fault line I’d tried relentlessly to bury under my defiance.
He stepped closer, my chest flush against his abdomen. He was so tall. His fingers tightened painfully around my wrist, and cold tendrils crept across my skin. Painfully cold shadows. They moved like liquid frost, crawling and coiling against my skin.
“Is that what you want?” My chin lifted despite the tremble in my voice. “To break me? Many men have tried before you, Commander.”
He clenched his jaw, a dark chuckle vibrating through his chest. “Do not compare me to those Mortal excusesyou call men,” he replied, voice low and lethal. He stepped forward, and I instinctively shifted back a pace. His eyes caught the movement, glinting with predatory hunger. “I am your Kingdom’s nightmare, Little Drownling.” His breath was suddenly hot against my ear. I retreated another step, bark scraping against my back. His body caged me against the tree. Too close. I couldn’t move.
“And you are my prisoner. If I want to break you…” His lips brushed the shell of my ear. Anger mingled with the fear rising in my stomach. “Nothing can stop me.”
But he was wrong. I would fight himeveryGods-dammed moment. The world wavered. I hummed a haunting melody, and his form twisted in my sight like I was seeing him through dark, churning water. Power rippled over my skin almost like a living, breathing entity. Without shame, I pushed my breasts against his bare chest, using the distance he’d tried to weaponize. He blinked, a crack in his composed, deadly front. I smirked up at him through thick eyelashes and bit down softly on my bottom lip. I could feel the water within him—humming beneath his skin like a tide waiting for command. The moisture in his blood. His breath. The sheen of sweat. Every droplet was a thread I could tug.
Boil,I demanded it. I whispered power into the water that pulsed through his fingers, coaxing it to heat.
“What the fuck are you doing to me?” the Commander growled. He tried to step back, but I refused to let him, pulling him closer instead. If I kissed him, could I control him? Would his eyes have that iridescent sheen that waited for my command?
“I thought you wanted to play monster?” I asked innocently, my voice a melody of layered tones. Hisjaw flexed, his neck muscles straining against the pain I was causing, and he dropped my broken arm, falling useless at my side.
I tilted my head at him, drinking in his muscular form. I grinned. “I thought I’d show you mine.”
I should’ve feared this power. It was a pull that threatened to drown me and kill anyone in my way. But I needed it. I lifted my good hand, skimming it over the tattoo on his chest. Gooseflesh broke out across his skin under my almost touch. He felt different to the others I had drowned, more powerful.Older.
“This will hurt, Commander. But I want you to watch me break you.” I reached for the water in his cells, drawing on an instinct I didn’t understand, forcing the molecules to vibrate—fast, faster—until heat built beneath his skin. His knees crashed into the forest floor. His head was just shorter than my standing height. My fingertips buried in his dark hair. His anger felt as lethal as his shadows burrowed into my skin. I hovered mere inches from his sweat-covered face.
My lips tingled as they brushed his, a whisper of contact that sent a violent shudder through his body. My lips moved, slow and intentional, sliding against his with reckless precision. The space between us disappeared, and the air became thick with something sharp and volatile.
He went utterly still beneath me, and I felt the way his control strained, as if he were one moment away from exploding. Steam curled from his skin, mixing with his seething shadows as they clawed across my skin with searing pain.
The growl that rumbled through his chest would make anyone cower as he pulled against my hold, not to escape, but totest.
The moment stretched until he broke free withunsettling ease, my spell unravelling as if it had never truly taken root.
His power rolled over me, and my body betrayed me as my magic bled away, each molecule slipping from my command like water released by an opened hand.
“No!” I shouted as my power collapsed in on itself.
“Lyra!” Cerilla yelled, suddenly beside me. I whipped my head towards her fear-filled eyes, my heart constricting with each beat under the weight of her stare. She was scared for her brother’s life. Scared of the monster I had let surface. Scared ofme.
His boot slammed against my shin and the world tilted in a sudden blur. I thrashed, trying to find balance, but it was too late. Air whooshed from my lungs, jarring reality back into place as my back slammed into the ground. Darkness swallowed me. Shadows coiled and crashed, devouring everything. Every nerve ending screamed, like I had been plunged into acid so cold I feared I would turn into ice itself. I thought I had known pain. I waswrong. Screams lodged in my throat, unable to break free as the shadows relentlessly pressed down on me.Intome. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t scream. I was dissolving, undone by the very darkness I had tried to control.
A sudden warmth spread over me like honey. Thick and slow, oozing over the coiling shadows that wreaked havoc on my body. It washiswarmth. The Commander’s face was inches away from mine, twisted in a snarl that would frighten the bravest Iron Guard. His massive form pressed down on me, anchoring me to the world. My fingers gripped his skin, desperate to pull him closer, to steal whatever heat I could to survive his volatile shadows. A whimper escaped my lips, my back arching against his chest. I was going to shatter. He convulsed above me, his form writhing, contorting.Flesh and shadow warped in a struggle I didn’t understand. He was darkness itself. And yet, I clung to him as though he were the only light I could find. He roared so loud my ears throbbed, his hot breath washing over my face. “I cannot,” he ground out breathlessly, “kill you, yet.”
The shadows reluctantly began to crawl back into his body as he fought its control. He was the pure definition of volatile. How could all that power reside in one male without tearing him apart?
The glow of the campfire broke through the shadows as they receded, the light dancing against the sharpness of his face. The Commander hovered above me for a heartbeat longer, the stars reappearing behind him as my eyes struggled to focus. His jaw tensed before he finally pushed off me, and a strange coolness swept over my skin, not from the night air, but from the loss of contact of his body. That or, I was freezing from his shadows. He shot me a final, unreadable look over his shoulder before turning and vanishing into the night.
Cerilla appeared at my side in an instant, her hand wrapping gently around mine as she pulled me to my feet. I gritted my teeth against the pain and my legs trembled beneath me.
