Page 95 of His Eternal Claim

I’ve tried. God knows I’ve tried to play the siren. I’ve forced myself to step into his personal space, letting my fingers linger on the lapel of his jacket, or tilting my head to look at him. I’ve tried to mouth the words of a woman who wants him.

But he sees through me every single time.

The moment I try to fake an allure I don’t want to give, his dark eyes narrow, catching the microscopic tremor in my hands or the tight, unnatural tension in my jaw. He knows what real desire from me feels like… he remembers the girl who used to melt into his touch without an ounce of pretense. This hollow version of intimacy is an insult to his intelligence, and the mocking tilt of his lips tells me he knows exactly what game I’m trying to play.

It leaves me stranded in a wretched, impossible limbo.

If I don’t seduce him, if I don’t find a way to break through his defenses and bring him to his knees, I am betraying my Mother. The solemn vow of vengeance I made to myself. To fail here is to prove that I am weak, that I am letting the monster win simply because I am too cowardly to use the weapons at my disposal.

But to go through with it? To surrender my body to the charade, to let his hands trace the skin I scrub raw every morning, feels like an even greater betrayal.

Because whenever he touches me, I don’t hate it enough.

Days pass, followed by weeks. The house falls silent now and then, but this silence is not deafening. I do not hear voices whispering in my head when he’s near. As if he puts my demons to sleep.

Most afternoons I hide in his study. I’ve come to like the scent there: cedar wood and the tingly aroma of old books.

No one can disturb me here, which is precisely why I like it.

I am halfway through a book when someone places a cup beside me. I look up to find Zagreus standing there, the sleeves of his dress shirt rolled up to his elbows, exposing the veins in his forearms.

“Your tea.”

I frown. “I didn’t ask for tea.”

“No. But I thought you might need it because you’ve been staring at the same page for twenty minutes.”

I immediately glance at the page. He is right. I hate that he is right.

“I was thinking.”

“Dangerous activity.”

“Go away.”

He sits down across from me. “Make me.”

I narrow my eyes as he opens his own book. The nerve of him.

He sits back, crossing one long leg over the other, at ease in my hostile territory. I glare at him, waiting for the smug smirk, the arrogant tilt of his head, anything to give me a reason to snap at him. But it doesn’t come. He turns a page, letting me be.

An hour passes. Neither of us speaks.

The silence should feel awkward. It should feel like a battleground. Instead, it feels… comfortable. The steady sound of his breathing grounds the space around us. And that unsettles me more than any threat ever could.

My gaze drifts from my book, catching the line of his jaw.

The harshness that usually defines him softens in the amber glow. He looks less like the mafia king who commands empires with a flick of his wrist, and more like… just a man.

Monsters aren’t supposed to have quiet afternoons.

They aren’t supposed to notice when you’re stuck on a page, or bring you tea exactly how you like it, or sit with you for hours just to keep the darkness at bay. They are supposed to be loud, violent, and easily hated. But Zagreus is rewriting the rules, and in doing so, he is dismantling everything I thought I knew about him. About us.

I look at the tea; it’s cold now. There’s no steam; the only thing left is the stillness. He didn’t order a servant to bring it. He brought it himself. Those hands, which I know have held weapons and drawn blood, had carefully steeped tea leaves just because he noticed my mind was wandering.

Is it possible for a monster to possess a human heart? Or worse—is it possible that the man I loved isn’t entirely dead, but trapped inside the beast he had to become?

I hate myself for the softness expanding inside me. I hate that the constant, screaming static of my nightmares is silent whenever he is in the room. He is my enemy, my captor, the target my Mother expects me to destroy. But right now, looking at him, the line between my hatred and my longing is blurring into something dangerously close to peace.