Page 89 of His Eternal Claim

I slide my hand from her chin, my fingers tangling into the silk of her hair, tilting her head back just enough to expose the delicate line of her throat again. My gaze darkens as I look down at her gown, still dipped dangerously low. The need to consume her roars in me, but the sight of the unshed tears in her eyes makes me hold back. I don’t want to just take her body. I want to heal the fractures, even if I’m the one who caused them.

“Let me make it better,” I whisper against her lips, the command softening into a desperate plea. “Tell me how to fix it. Tell me what you need, and I will tear it out of the earth for you.”

“You can’t bring him back,” she chokes out, a single tear spilling over her lashes, tracking down her cheek. “You can’t change what happened.”

I swallow the venom down. I brush the tear away with the pad of my thumb.

“No,” I concede. “I can’t. But I can give you a future. I can give you this.”

I close the final fraction of an inch between us, pressing my lips to hers. It isn’t the brutal, possessive clash I’ve been fantasizing about all this week. It is slow and deep, and intimate, like a devotional promise sealed with sin.

I drink in her soft gasp, my tongue sliding past her parted lips to taste the sweetness of her, teaching her body exactly how it feels to be thoroughly worshiped.

She whimpers as her fingers tighten, clutching at the fabric of my shirt instead of pushing me away. The subtle surrender nearly snaps the last vestige of my restraint. I shift my weight, pressing her deeper into the cushions of the couch, letting her feel the heavy reality of my body over hers.

When I finally pull back, just an inch, our breaths mingle in the dark. Her lips are flushed, swollen from my touch, and her eyes are beautifully dazed.

“I will be home every single night if that’s what it takes to make you believe me,” I swear against her skin, my lips trailing down to her jawline, leaving a chain of burning kisses. “Just give me a chance to make you forget the pain. Let me be the only thing you feel.”

Chapter 30

Vow

THE REQUIEM | Past

Lately, the headaches have been brutal. But the small white pill works miracles. Within an hour of swallowing it, the edges of my mind blur and the sharp corners of my grief round out until they feel euphoric.

It makes the changes in the house easier to digest. Because something is wrong with Zagreus.

He is home. Not just occasionally, or for a tense, silent dinner, but always. He has kept his promise with a terrifying devotion. Every single morning, he is sitting at the end of that ridiculously long dining table, drinking his black coffee, waiting for me. He eats breakfast with me, tracks my movements with those dark, unblinking eyes through lunch, and sits opposite me at dinner.

The strangest part isn’t his presence; it’s the lack of friction. A few days ago, I lingered at the doorway of his study, expecting him to order me out. Instead, he looked up from his papers, his features softening, and gestured to the leather couch.

“Stay,” he had murmured. “Read. Do whatever you like. This room belongs to you as much as it does to me.”

So I stayed. Now, the silence between us is our secret language. He even noticed the charcoal smudges on my fingers. The next afternoon, a massive wooden easel arrived, accompanied by dozens of heavy, expensive canvases and jars of oil paints.

Yesterday, while the rain lashed at the windows, I painted the sea, and strangely, it was not the angry, violent waves I usually watch, but a calmer, deeper blue. I hadn’t realized he was standing behind me until his breath warmed the bare skin of my nape.

“You’re magnificent,” he had whispered, his hands hooking loosely around my waist, just enough to let me feel his heat without forcing me into his space. “I knew you had magic in your fingers.”

I hadn’t pulled away. And that night, the headache had returned, and I realized my heart was learning his touch. The heart doesn’t have a memory for names or political allegiances; it only remembers warmth. And Zagreus is a sun that refuses to let me freeze.

“He’s chipping away at you,” Mama says, her voice snapping me out of my thoughts.

The fire in her bedroom crackles, casting long, dancing shadows across the heavy velvet drapes. I am sitting on the edge of her bed, my head resting against her knee while she strokes my hair. It’s a ritual now. I spend my nights here, in her room, fleeing the vast emptiness of my own.

“He’s being kind, Mama,” I whisper, my voice thick from the pills she gave me twenty minutes ago. My eyelids feel heavy. “He brought me paints. He stays for dinner. He… he doesn’t touch me unless I let him.”

Elena had even defended him subtly this morning while changing my linens, mentioning how the master hadn’t smiled in all her years of service until I began sitting in his study. But Mama’s fingers tighten in my hair, her grip just sharp enough to pull me back from the edge of sleep.

“Kind?”

Mama lets out a cold, humorless laugh that makes my skin prickle. “A wolf doesn’t become a lamb just because he feeds you from his palm, Stina. He is starving you out. He is letting you think you have a choice so that when he finally takes you, you’ll thank him for the privilege.”

I frown, shifting so I can look up into her hollow, elegant face. “I know what he did, Mama. And I will never forgive him for that. He said he doesn’t have a mistress. It’s just… there’s something. I don’t know what it is, but I feel like there’s more to him than he shows.”

“Of course, he doesn’t show his true colours. Why would he want a cheap mistress when he has the prize trophy locked in his tower?”