Torin noticed.
“You need not look as though you are walking toward execution,” he said mildly, and I let out a soft breath that might almost have been a laugh.
“Well, that’s comforting,” I replied dryly, and his gaze softened fractionally. Just enough to suggest he understood the undercurrent of nerves beneath my composure.
“He would not allow harm to come to you,” he added, as if I needed to hear this.
The statement didn’t carry blind loyalty. It carried certainty, and it made me wonder what Oblivion had told him about me. Whether he knew far more than I did, like the reason I was being held captive by his boss. Not that I was brave enough to ask.
Ahead, the passage straightened, and a single dark door came into view at the far end. Its surface was etched faintly with patterns I didn’t recognize. The music beyond it was clearer now, and Torin slowed once more, turning slightly toward me as we reached the threshold.
“You ready?” he asked.
I laughed without humor and said,
“No.”
He smirked at that and changed my answer for me.
“You’re ready.” Then he reached for the handle, not waiting for me to argue.
Instead, my heart pulsed hard against my ribs as the door opened inward without a sound. The music struck first, not loud or overwhelming, but deeper here. As if it was threaded through the floor like a pulse. Heat followed, thicker air carrying the scent of smoke, expensive liquor, and something metallic that had nothing to do with the décor. The lighting shifted from the cool restraint of the passage to something richer, something darker. A crimson edged with gold.
Torin stepped aside, allowing me to enter first like always, and the reaction from the patrons in the club was immediate. Conversations didn’t stop entirely, but they softened. Heads turned, and bodies shifted. The subtle ripple of awareness moved outward in widening circles as though my presence had been announced without words. I felt it before I saw it, that parting of space, that careful widening of distance.
Like they remembered me.
Not me, perhaps, but what had happened the last time someone had mistaken me for something they could lay their hands on.
The floor of the VIP level gleamed beneath the club lights, and tables curved around the perimeter. Each was occupied by figures whose silhouettes were too sharp at the edges to be entirely human. Eyes tracked me as I walked, some curious, some amused, a few assessing in ways that made the fine hairs along my arms rise beneath the gloves.
But then I saw him.
The owner of this club and master of his domain.
And the man I knew I was foolishly…
Falling for.
31
THE UNEXPECTED
My breath faltered the moment my eyes found him.
The throne rose at the far end of the room, obsidian and bone fused into a structure as deliberate as it was severe. It was not designed to impress. It was designed to rule, and seated there was its master, the embodiment of that authority.
Not in the tailored business suit he had worn earlier, but neither was he entirely the ancient warlord depicted in the painting I had seen in the gallery. He was more like a fusion of both.
Black fabric cut with the precision of modern tailoring hugged his torso. The lines were clean and immaculate, interrupted only by the dark armor fitted over one shoulder. Its muted metal glimmered like something forged for much more than simply sitting on a throne.
It wasn’t bulky or cumbersome, but sculpted, as though grown from shadow and metal combined. A thick strap of black leather lay against his chest, subtle but unmistakably symbolic, disappearing beneath the lapel of the jacket.
And as usual, his posture was relaxed, which was the complete opposite of my own. Especially when his eyes found me instantly. His gaze did not wander or falter, it fixed on me with a certainty that felt almost physical. And, in that moment, everything else in the room receded.
The distance between us felt longer than it was. I was acutely aware of every step required to close it. Of the way the emerald silk brushed against my legs, and the steady click of my heels against the floor. The composure I had so deliberately constructed in the mirror cracked beneath the force of his focus.
He didn’t smile immediately. Instead, he studied me. A slow, leisurely scan of my body from the top of my head, down the curve of my shoulders. His eyes lingered just long enough at my waist to make heat coil low in my stomach before they returned to my face.
