Page 42 of His Eternal Claim

She reaches for me again.

This time, I catch her wrist. Not hard enough to break. Just enough to remind her I could. She gasps.

My voice drops into something inhuman.

“Tell me something.” I lean closer.

“So I know whether to bury one parent tonight…” Her pulse jumps beneath my fingers.

And mine… didn’t move at all. “Did you know?”

Thunder explodes outside. The chandeliers trembles. Her lips tremble.

Her eyes fill with tears. She looks away.

That… that was all the answer I needed. I released her like touching her burned. She stumbled back.

“I had to… he said, he’ll hurt you.”

“And you decided Selene was a good trade? That if she marries another, I’ll be Father’s lapdog and do as he says? What is he planning? What the fuck is he trying to prove, sending Corvin to ask for her hand?!”

A sob tears from her throat. “I just…”

“What did you do, Mother?”

She sobs harder. “I lied.”

I turn toward the double oak doors at the end of the corridor. I’ll deal with her later.

Behind me, my Mother’s broken voice follows like a ghost. “If you walk through those doors…”

I stop.

My hand curls around the brass handle. Her voice cracks.

“There’ll be no coming back.”

I look over my shoulder and smile. It’s probably dead.

“Mother…”

Thunder split the sky.

My fingers tighten. “I stopped coming back…” I push the doors open. “…the moment you made her believe I did not love her.”

She’s livid, crying hysterically, but I do not fucking care. The moment the door opens, the ground slips beneath me and the world has stopped spinning.

’Cause there are so many things I can expect. But not this.

Never this.

Because across the room… sits the devil. And beside him sits betrayal, wearing a familiar face.

Rain drips from my hair onto the marble.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

My Father stands between her spread legs like he owns the fucking universe, one hand wrapped around a glass of brandy, the other resting against her bare thigh.