Page 64 of The Vespertine Treaty

"Not a single word?" he hissed, his voice vibrating with dangerous incredulity. "I just tore a hole in the fabric of space to save your life, Ophelia. Most would offer gratitude for being pulled back from the brink."

I let out a breath that was half-laugh, half-sob. I looked up at him, meeting that glacial gaze with everything I had left.

"Thank you," I rasped, the sarcasm dripping from my tongue like poison. "Thank you for ensuring I remain enslaved as your personal stabiliser. YourterrorisingGrace."

His jaw tightened, the insult landing, but I wasn't finished.

I found my voice growing stronger, weakened but still biting. "You claim mastery over the Void, yet you refuse to acknowledge the price of your power," I whispered, the words laced with profound accusation. "You use me as a conduit for the poison you failed to digest. That blight on my arm is your treason, Cain, not my wound."

Cain’s eyes, blazing with humiliating self-recognition, narrowed. “I saw exactly what I needed to see,” he countered, his voice a low, lethal hum. “I saw the devastating cost of a fragile Dyad. Your suffering, Ophelia, proves that my mission is compromised when my asset is damaged. You are a tool, and only I can break you.”

“You risked the balance,” I stated, ignoring the pain. “You risked the full, unmanageable collapse because you refuse to acknowledge the danger that does not originate from you. You are arrogant, Cain.”

“Your arrogance is your sentimentality! It is a betrayal I will not tolerate!” he roared, the raw sound ripping through the silent barrack. “You will never look at me with pity again! You will never touch me unless commanded! You are my tool, and you will obey my will!”

The rage was a smokescreen for his shame. He seized me, not with the cold control of the Death-Touch, but with the desperate hunger of a drowning male.

"He’s about to break, Oph. Look at his face. The Void is leaking."Poppy’s mental warning was a cold jab of fear in my mind.

“You dragged me out of Aeternia against my will and risked political annihilation just to turn me into your personal emotional filter,” I spat, my voice tight with unadulterated rage. My hands clenched at my sides, nails digging into my palms, desperate for a tangible focus other than the male before me. “But you don't realise I'm still fighting back.”

Cain moved slowly, his frustration manifesting as deliberate cruelty. “Fighting back is merely a spasm of the weak, Ophelia. It doesn’t change your utility. I brought you here because you provide silence. And silence is the only law in my life.”

“Silence? You live in a torrent of other people’s screams! You have no silence!” I screamed, the raw force of my voice compounding the painful Empathy I still felt for the city’s populace. “You think you consume pain? You just recycle it! You are a broken boy who kills flowers to feel something, Cain, and I see every piece of it!”

His eyes narrowed, and a terrifying, cold calm descended over his features, the silence of a stretched wire about to snap. “You confuse sentimentality with sight. You see nothing. You are a Life-Wielder who clings to a pathetic Aenite boy who couldn’t defend you at the altar. I should have killed him, just to show you what true annihilation feels like.”

My breath hitched, a gasp of pure horror and fury. The mention of Caspian, the brutal comparison, struck me deeper than anyphysical threat. “You only wish you had the courage to feel that much love! You’re jealous of a feeling you’re too much of a coward to accept!”

That word,coward, shattered his final thread of control.

Cain moved with the swift, predatory precision of a nightmare. His hand shot out, his cold, granite fingers wrapping instantly around my throat, pinning my body savagely to the crumbling brick wall. The air pressure changed, thick and heavy, as the raw power of his Death-Touch magic pulsed around his hand.

The pressure wasn't enough to kill, but it was enough to deliver a devastating, agonising promise of annihilation.

Cain’s voice was a low, dangerous growl, his face mere inches from mine. “I will teach you the meaning of fear, Ophelia. And you will learn the consequences of insolence.”

I felt the emptiness within him, a vast, desolate Void that threatened to consume me whole. He was a black hole, and I, with my Empathy, was a star. The collision was inevitable. The sudden surge of raw human emotion he had been suppressing slammed into my core, compounding my terror and my fury.

His eyes dropped, scanning my body, lingering on the soft curves pinned against the wall, then returning to my lips. I felt a terrifying heat pool low in my stomach, my body’s primal, unwelcome response to the intense physical threat. I felt myself quiver faintly beneath his dominant weight. It was a humiliating, agonising betrayal; the body, completely separate from the mind, responding to the raw presence of power.

Cain noticed. A slow, cruel smile twisted his lips, a predator sensing weakness. His silver gaze glittered with triumph as my physical response betrayed my internal resolve.

“Look at you,” he whispered, his voice a silken, venomous tease. “Your defiance is screaming, but your body is already begging for the opposite. It is almost a pity we are enemies. I suspect you would be a talented submissive between the sheets. You have a natural, filthy aptitude for yielding to a stronger hand. You’re a quick study, little Aenite. And I haven't even given you a reason to feel guilty yet.”

The crude assessment, the open taunt, fuelled my rage past the point of fear. I felt my face burn, humiliated by my body’s betrayal.

Guilty?” I spat, the word laced with venom, my breath strained beneath his grip. “I am not a thing to be mastered! Caspian treated me as an equal in all things that mattered! He never degraded me by demanding I yield—he offered me reverence, not this barbaric need to conquer! I’ll feel guilt when I look at his lips and remember the cold, dead taste of yours! I will always remember a softness and a love you couldn’t possibly fathom!”

My breath hitched, and before I could utter another syllable of defence, his mouth crashed down on mine.

It wasn't a kiss; it was an annihilation.

It was pure, savage destruction, a violent attempt to break my will and possess my soul with the sheer, crushing force of his need. His lips were bruising, demanding, hot with fury and cold with magic. I felt the terrifying magnetic pull of the Void hooking into my core, threatening to drag my light into his darkness and swallow it whole.

I tried to shove him away, to bite him, to scream—but then, the magic shifted.

As his mouth moved against mine—devouring, relentless—I felt the sharp, jagged edges of my agony begin to dissolve. He wasn't just kissing me; he was siphoning. I felt the necrotic throb in my shoulder and the ice in my marrow being pulled upward, drawn into his own Void. He was drinking my suffering like wine, creating a sudden, violent vacuum in my nervous system where the pain used to be.