“No one here would dare accuse you of trespassing,” he said, as though the darkness had never existed at all. His fingers tightened briefly at my hand before easing again. His thumb brushed absently against my knuckles before he seemed to realize the intimacy of the gesture.
Then he told me,
“You belong at my side.”
I sucked back a quick breath at the confession. The words seemed to land between us before he added, more controlled now,
“You are safe here.”
Safe.
It was a complicated word to hear coming from his lips. But what was stranger still was that a part of me wanted to believe it. The conflict sat uncomfortably in my chest because the protection offered by the one who had once controlled my movements, and now my future, didn’t exactly fit neatly into any category I trusted at this point. Because the man who claimed he would keep me safe was the very same man I needed protecting from.
My captor.
“I owe you an apology,” he said, surprising me enough that I stopped mid-step.
The words did not fit with the image of him seated upon that Hellish throne, eyes cold as a man’s hand crumpled beneath nothing more than his will. They did not belong to the rulerwho presided over judgment with effortless authority, or the businessman who commanded a boardroom without raising his voice.
“You what?” I asked, unable to keep the incredulity from my voice.
“For the way you were treated when you first arrived,” he clarified, his gaze steady on mine. There was no edge to it now, no teasing flicker.
“Torin acted as he was meant to. You tried to enter my domain without an invitation and refused to leave. His response was… appropriate. But I should have intervened sooner.”
I studied him carefully, watching for the telltale sign of BS. The tightening jaw or a dismissive shrug. Maybe the subtle curl of his lip meant he was humoring me. But there was none of that as his hands remained relaxed at his sides, fingers neither clenched nor restless. All of which told me that he was being sincere.
“You’re apologizing for him?” I asked cautiously.
“I am apologizing for the circumstances,” he corrected, and there was something almost restrained in the way he said it, as though this was not a gesture he offered easily.
“You were frightened. That was never my intention.”
The admission left me momentarily unbalanced. I had expected dominance or perhaps a casual dismissal of how I had been treated. But not this. He sounded almost sorry that we had met the way we had.
“Torin was doing his job,” I heard myself say, surprising us both.
“Besides, I wasn’t exactly cooperative.”
A faint smirk tugged at his mouth at that.
“No,” he agreed, and something in his eyes warmed briefly at the memory.
“You were not.”
“And the other one?” I asked before my courage evaporated.
“The tall one with the cane?”
“Vor,” he said without hesitation, and I had to say, the name suited him, although I wondered if it was short for something else.
“He serves on my council.”
Council…Umm… The word conjured images far more structured than the chaos I had walked into that first night.
“Council?”I repeated, tilting my head slightly.
“You say that like you’re running some ancient board meeting,” I commented.
