Her breath is warm against my mouth, her presence filling the space in a way that doesn’t crowd—it centers.
“You don’t win by reacting to him,” she continues, her voice softer now, closer. “You win by making him react to you.”
I nod slightly, the motion small with how close we are.
“I know.”
“Then stop giving him what he wants,” she says.
“I’m trying.”
“I know,” she replies, her lips brushing mine briefly, not a demand, not a distraction—an interruption. “That’s the problem.”
I let out a breath against her, my grip tightening slightly at her waist as the tension shifts, not gone, but redirected.
“Then help me fix it,” I say.
“I am,” she murmurs.
This time when I close the distance, it isn’t impulsive.
It’s deliberate.
The kiss deepens slowly, built on the same control she’s been forcing me into, each movement measured instead of taken, her hands guiding as much as responding, keeping me grounded in it instead of letting me disappear into it.
There’s nothing rushed about it.
Nothing desperate.
Just…choice.
Her fingers trace along my neck again, then down, mapping the line of my shoulder, the tension still held there, easing it in small, deliberate motions. My hands follow her lead, learning the pace instead of setting it, the rhythm steady, controlled.
“You feel that?” she murmurs against me.
“Yeah.”
“That’s what control feels like,” she says softly.
35
LYRIA
The first thing I hear isn’t a shout.
It’s the sound of something heavy hitting stone hard enough to crack the rhythm of the hallway outside, a dull, sharp impact that doesn’t belong to the steady cadence of guard rotations I’ve been tracking for hours. It echoes wrong—too sudden, too final—and then everything after it fractures. Metal scrapes. Boots shift too fast. A voice starts to rise and cuts off halfway through like it never gets the chance to finish.
I go still before I realize I’ve done it, my hand tightening instinctively where it rests against Verr’s arm, my breath catching just enough that I feel it in my chest instead of hearing it.
“That’s not routine,” I murmur.
Verr is already listening, his posture shifting beside me, not tense in the way it was before, but focused, aligned, the stillness now deliberate instead of lost.
“No,” he says quietly.
The second impact comes closer.
This one I feel through the floor before I hear it fully, a vibration that runs up through the stone and into my boots,followed by the unmistakable sound of a body dragging—not clean, not controlled, but pulled with effort.
