Chapter 63
SIXTY-THREE
Iam fraying.
Not at the edges, not in any visible way—but in the deepest places no one can see. At the seams of my soul, where once there was heat and harmony and golden humming light… now there’s only static. Like a broken connection. Like a song I can’t quite remember, stuck behind walls too thick to breach.
Zepharion doesn’t chain me. He doesn’t need to. He plays a longer game.
He feeds me—power like honey, thick and slow, dripped from his fingers with decadent precision.
Meals spiced exactly to my taste, drawn from memories I don’t remember sharing.
Baths scented with things I once loved. He clothes me in silk and satin, lavishes me in illusion and luxury, and wraps his indulgence in a bow of false freedom.
“Control is yours,” he says, every time he gives me something I didn’t ask for.
He calls me queen as if it’s sacred. As if it’s the only name I’ve ever deserved. And maybe, if I were weaker—more broken than I already am—I’d believe him.
But I know better. Or… I try to.
The bond—the bonds—have been muffled. Not severed, not really. Zepharion thinks he’s cut them, but he hasn’t. They’re bruised, muted, like breathing through silk or screaming underwater. Dimmed to embers, but not dead. I feel them still. Aching beneath my skin like phantom limbs.
Cassiel’s is the warmest, though.
A low, silvery glow that settles in the hollow of my ribs. Soft, steady, whispering. I don’t let Zepharion see how often my hand drifts there, fingertips pressing gently as if to cradle it. To protect what little is still mine.
But every time I touch it, I feel the press of the necklace around my throat—cool metal that looks like a gift, but fits like a noose.
It hums softly, like it’s listening. Like it’s feeding.
I don’t know what kind of spell he laced into it, only that it smothers me.
Mutes the magic inside me until I can barely hear it sing.
I try to channel, to call the energy buried in my blood, but it’s like reaching for something through a thick pane of glass—always there, never close enough to grasp.
Like reaching from the bottom of a lake, lungs collapsing, vision blackening, always just shy of breath.
Zepharion shows me palaces made of illusion. A garden that blooms in the shape of desire. A library where every book knows what I want to read before I open the cover. A bedroom carved from obsidian and flame, veiled in velvet shadows that shift with my breath.
Here, I can be anything. Anyone. Everything is beautiful here…
and wrong. The angles don’t sit quite right.
The light is too perfect. The walls too smooth.
It all feels like a dream I once had and forgot—too bright, too clean, too still.
A place built by someone who’s only heard of desire but never felt it.
I don’t ask questions. I’m not that naive. But when I’m alone, I speak to the silence.
Bastion. Deimos. Cassiel.
When I whisper Cassiel’s name, a flare of warmth ignites behind my breastbone. His bond. Still alive. Still listening.
My chest tightens. My lips lift. Just barely. Just enough to feel like me for a moment.
I am not lost. Not yet. But I’m starving.
Not for food, or rest, or even the magic that pulses through this place like poisoned honey. No, what I crave is connection. Touch. The spark of magic braided with meaning. The electric pulse of bonds that once beat through me like second heartbeats.
Zepharion says this is mercy. That what he’s doing is healing.
But he’s lying.
There are no chains here. No visible restraints. Just comfort so seductive it chokes you with softness. I lie in the silkiest bed imaginable, one slow unraveling thread at a time. He calls it freedom. He calls it love. But he never touches me.
That’s the cruelest part.
Not his distance—but his awareness. He knows. He feels the hunger building in me, the ache coiling low and hot and desperate. He knows what I am. A succubus born to feed on pleasure and intimacy, on soul-deep surrender and connection. To be without it is to unravel.
And Zepharion watches me break and calls it patience.
He doesn’t try to seduce me. He doesn’t have to. His weapon is silence. Indulgence. The illusion of choice in a kingdom built entirely to strip me of it. He lets me want—and then he withholds. Again. And again.
Until tonight. Tonight, he wants a performance.
I’m led into a throne room dressed like a garden. Illusions shimmer beneath my feet—roses blooming and vanishing with every step I take. The air is thick with sweet magic, the scent of night-blooming jasmine curling around my skin.
The walls pulse with moonlight that doesn’t belong to any sky.
It should be beautiful. And maybe it is—but I’m crawling out of my skin.
Zepharion waits at the far end, sprawled across a throne, his robes draped carelessly open to expose the smooth lines of his chest. His hair is damp. His eyes burn like embers. His smile is slow and curved like a scythe.
“Petal,” he murmurs, voice deep and honeyed. “You came.”
“Didn’t realize I had a choice,” I say, voice flat—but breathy, too. Weak. Hungry.
He tilts his head, expression almost pitying. “You always have a choice. I’ve never touched you. I’m not the monster you’ve made me.”
I don’t answer. I don’t trust what will come out.
He studies me a moment longer, then shifts—leaning back in that too-large throne, one arm draped lazily across the armrest, the other sliding lower. His fingers skim across his own skin.
The movement is slow. Calculated. And I realize, with a flush of shame and fury, what this is.
He isn’t here to feed me. He’s here to feed himself and make sure I feel every second of it.
I recognize them the moment they appear, though I don’t know their names. I don’t need to.
Two women, draped in silver and smoke, glide across the illusion-bloomed floor like whispers summoned by want.
Zepharion doesn’t look at them. He doesn’t need to.
They come willingly. Eagerly. Their magic hums like wine, thick with adoration and lust. They kneel before him with bowed heads and beating hearts, their pleasure already blooming open like bruised petals.
The air goes tight, then thinner, as if the room is holding its breath. So am I.
One of them rises, untying her robe with the reverence of a ritual. The other leans forward and kisses his stomach, soft and slow. Zepharion exhales, lazy and pleased, and finally, his eyes return to me.
“You’re welcome to stay,” he says smoothly. “Or leave. This is your home, petal. I don’t bar the doors.”
It’s not true. None of it is true. And we both know it. He doesn't need locks. Not when he's already made a cage of me. Of my body. Of my mind.
So I stay. Because I can’t leave. Because if I move, I might scream. Because I don’t want to give him the satisfaction.
Instead, I take a step back, pressing my spine against one of the obsidian columns lining the throne room. I dig my nails into my palms. I bite the inside of my cheek. I anchor myself in pain because it’s the only thing he can’t steal from me.
And I watch.
They touch him as if he’s holy. As if they worship the skin he walks in. One kneels between his legs while the other straddles his lap, her robe falling away as she begins to ride him with slow, practiced rhythm.
His hands stay at his sides, relaxed. He lets them do all the work. Let them serve him. Let them feed him.
And through them… I feel it.
A secondhand pulse of ecstasy. Dim. Diluted. Like licking sugar from someone else’s mouth and pretending it’s a feast. My skin prickles. My thighs clench. I ache.
Not for him or them. But for connection. For something real.
For the braiding of pleasure and meaning, magic and love. The kind of bond that fed me like light. That chose me. That saw me as more than hunger.
Cassiel.
His name beats against the back of my teeth. I don’t dare say it aloud. Not here. Not while Zepharion watches me with half-lidded eyes, drinking me in even as he sinks into the bodies of others.
He knows what he’s doing. He’s making me starve. He’s reminding me I am what I am and what I’ll never have again.
The woman in his lap moans, head thrown back, eyes fluttering. Magic ripples through the air, laced with climax and dark desire. It hits me like smoke. Like poison. Like a memory I never wanted.
I could feed.
I could take what I need from them. Just a brush of my magic against their pleasure, and I could drink it down like water. Succubi are built for this. To skim ecstasy from the air, to spin it into sustenance.
So I try.
I reach with the thinnest thread of myself, letting my magic slip from my skin, seeking the pulse of climax in the air, the trembling cry spilling from the woman’s throat. For a moment, I taste it—sweet and sharp, like sugar melting on my tongue.
And then the choker tightens.
Cold metal clamps against my throat, invisible hands pulling the band tighter and tighter until I gasp, clawing at it. The taste vanishes. The magic recoils. The power I almost held crumbles into ash in my mouth.
The collar hums, satisfied, like it knew what I was trying.
I sag back against the column, breath ragged, my vision swimming. My nails scrape uselessly over the metal, but it doesn’t loosen. It never does.
I am starving.
So I watch. I endure. I let the ache hollow me out as they tremble and cry out for him, as he tips his head back and sighs—beautiful and cruel and smug in his satisfaction.
And I take nothing. No sustenance. No relief.
Only the sharp ache of want, sharpened to a knife’s edge.
And when the second woman climbs onto him and begins again, when the throne pulses with the weight of their ritual and I feel his gaze still locked on me, unwavering, unmoved, I realize—
This isn’t about pleasure. This is punishment. He knows I’m dying.
And he wants me to know I’m dying because of what I chose. Because I dared to love someone else. Because they dared to love me back.
The second woman cries out, arching like a wave breaking, and Zepharion lets her. Lets her moan and shake and weep. And when he finally follows—groaning low, hand tangled in her hair, eyes still locked on mine—I break.
Not out loud. Not visibly. But something in me splits.
Silently. Cleanly. A crack across the heart of who I am.
And when it’s over, when the women collapse on either side of him like satisfied dolls, when he strokes their backs with lazy affection, he speaks again.
“See, petal?” His voice is molten. Mocking. “There are other ways to live.”
I don’t answer. Because if I do, I’ll scream.