Chapter 67
SIXTY-SEVEN
The food tastes like nothing. I chew. I swallow. I pretend.
Across the table, Zepharion holds court with two of his generals, droning on about troop movements and allegiances that mean less than ash to me. All I can feel is the hollow ache in my bones, the way hunger gnaws its claws up my throat, stretching me thin and brittle.
I sit rigid in my gilded chair, fork to plate, eyes lowered. A picture of composure. A mask stretched over a scream.
And then—
A flicker. A tug.
So soft I almost miss it. Like breath on my chest. Like fingers brushing the edges of a dream.
Cassiel.
My hand freezes. My spine locks. My breath snags, sharp and panicked. For one wild moment, the fire in my blood surges—not from hunger, but from hope.
“My Temptress.” His voice slips through my mind like silk over flame. “Can you hear me?”
The fork nearly falls from my hand. My chest tightens—pain, need, joy all strangling together in one brutal knot. I can’t look up. I can’t react. I stare at the meat on my plate like it matters, features schooled, breath shallow.
“I’m here,” I whisper inside. “I feel you.”
“Good,” he answers, tension straining his tone, though there’s a gentleness threaded through it. “I’m working on strengthening our bond. For all of us. So we can feed you. Keep you strong. Keep you alive, Lillien. Until we can—”
“No.” Panic rises fast, drowning. “Don’t. Please. Don’t risk it. If he finds out—if he takes you from me—I’ll shatter.”
A pause. Heavy. I feel him weighing the truth between us.
“He won’t,” Cassiel promises. “You won’t lose us. And we won’t lose you. Not again.”
Relief cracks me open—until his voice shifts, rougher, sharper, guilt bleeding into fury.
“But you shouldn’t have left us.”
The words cut like iron through my chest.
“I thought—” My throat burns. “I thought I was protecting you. Protecting all of you.”
“We don’t need protection,” he growls. The bond quivers, heat edged with grief. “We needed you with us. Not there. Not chained. Not his.”
My hand presses against my sternum, right beneath the necklace Zepharion forced on me. The gem pulses like a leash, red light thrumming against my skin. I can’t feel the others through it, but somehow—gods, somehow—Cassiel got through.
A trembling smile ghosts my mouth—until I hear the scrape of a chair.
“Problem, pet?”
His voice slices the air, smooth and sharp.
I look up. Zepharion’s golden eyes are narrowed, his mouth curling like a viper baring its fangs. I blink, my body scrambling to obey before my mind can catch up. “No—no problem.”
“You haven’t touched your food.”
“I’m hungry,” I murmur, pushing food around the plate. “Just… not for this.”
His laugh is low, displeased, dark as a blade dragged across stone.
“Oh, I know.” He leans forward on one elbow, voice curling into my ribs. “But you’ll have to wait. A few more days. Until our wedding night.”
The words coat my skin like oil. My stomach heaves. My soul rejects it so violently I almost gag.
Cassiel… I reach again—desperate—but he’s gone. The bond drops into silence.
And I am alone. Again.
Something twists inside me. A scream, a blade, a spark. The fork slips from my hand, clattering against the plate.
“We both know I’ll never be yours.”
The words tear out before I can leash them. A whisper of fire riding on their backs.
Zepharion stills. Too still. Then, slowly—deliberately—he stands. He moves like a predator circling prey that dared to bite.
“No matter what you do,” I say, louder now, though my fingers tremble against the tablecloth, “no matter the bonds you sever or the ring you put on my finger, or the leashes around my neck—I will never belong to you.”
The silence after is thick, viscous, deadly. And then… he smiles. A serpent’s delight.
“You’re still new to being a succubus,” he purrs, circling the table. “So young. So full of fight.”
He stops behind my chair. Leans down. His hand slides around my throat—gentle, but claiming. Threatening. His thumb presses into the pulse hammering there.
“You have no idea,” he whispers against my ear, “how rabid your kind becomes when truly starved. How desperate. How feral.”
I go rigid, but I don’t look away. I won’t.
“Perhaps I should let you feel it,” he murmurs. “Lock you away. Starve you. Silence your bond until your body begs for mine.”
He straightens and snaps his fingers. Two guards materialize like shadows called to heel.
“Take her to her chambers,” he says coolly. “Seal the door. No contact. No food. No pleasure.” His voice hardens, amused. “She can scream all she wants. I’ll come for her on our wedding night.”
The guards close in. My heart hammers, but I don’t cry. I don’t beg. They drag me from the hall, heels scraping against obsidian.
Because I know one thing now: Cassiel is still with me. They all are.
And if I can feel him—then they can still find me. And when they do, I’ll burn this place to the ground.
The door slams. The lock clicks—final, merciless.
I stand in the dark silence, frozen, waiting. Listening. Hoping. But there’s nothing. No warmth. No voice. Just the necklace thrumming like a second heartbeat, stitching me to him like a leash.
I stumble to the bed and fold onto its edge, legs curling beneath me. My hands tremble in my lap. I stare at them like they belong to someone else. Some thing else.
I try to breathe. I try not to. It all feels the same. Useless. Empty.
“Cassiel,” I whisper into the void. “Can you hear me?”
No answer.
“Deimos? Bastion?”
Nothing.
Tears sting, searing hot. I choke them down. My throat burns, my chest splintered wide open and bleeding air.
I know they’re trying. I know. But knowing doesn’t stop the loneliness seeping into me like rot.
I curl onto my side, knees tight to chest, clutching the memory of Cassiel’s voice like a talisman.
You shouldn’t have left us.
The words tear me apart. But beneath them, his vow lingers—We won’t lose you. Not again.
I cling to both: the blade and the balm.
Because I’m locked in a tower, chained by silence, starved by a man who thinks he owns me. He believes he’ll mold me into something obedient and desperate.
He thinks I’ll beg. Crawl. Break.
He doesn’t know me. He doesn’t know the fire I carry.
And yet—gods help me—I am starving. Not just for touch. For pleasure. But for them. Their voices. Their warmth. The bonds that once cradled me even in sleep.
My skin feels too tight, my body overheated. I roll onto my back and stare at the ceiling—stained with shadows, carved with symbols I don’t understand.
Still… a thread pulses faintly in my chest. Thin. Faint. Flickering. But there. Cassiel’s bond. A ghost-light in the dark.
I reach for it carefully, desperately, like cupping a fragile flame.
“I miss you,” I whisper, knowing he can’t hear me now. “Please come soon. I’m trying to be strong. Trying to be everything you believed I could be.”
A flicker answers. So brief I might have imagined it.
But it’s enough. Enough to let the tears fall, slow and silent. I don’t wipe them away.
Because tomorrow I’ll be stronger. Tomorrow, I’ll be fire.
But tonight… tonight I’m only the girl still holding on. The girl who still believes in bonds that can’t be severed, in love that crosses planes, in the boys who swore they’d come for me.