Chapter 3 Lord Imas
LORD IMAS
The heavy oak doors of my private study slam shut, sealing out the damp draft of the corridor and the prying eyes of my household. The silence that follows is immediate and thick, smelling of old parchment, dry ink, and the metallic tang of the wards woven into the stone floor.
I release the girl’s arm.
She does not fall. A lesser creature would have collapsed, legs turned to jelly by the sheer proximity of a Khuzuth lord in his sanctum. But this one… this scrap of human refuse stumbles only once, catching her balance with a grace that seems alien to her jagged, starved frame.
She backs away until her shoulders hit the bookshelves. She does not cower. She watches me.
Now that we are out of the rain and the mud of the market, I can see what I have purchased.
She is a wreck of a thing. Her tunic is little more than rags, gray and stiff with grime, hanging off a body that is all sharp angles and hollows.
I could snap her collarbone with two fingers.
Her hair is a tangled mess of dark silk, matted with the filth of the pens, clinging to a pale neck that pulses with a frantic, rabbit-quick rhythm.
But her face…
It is deceptively fragile. High cheekbones cut sharp lines beneath skin the color of milk, leading down to a mouth that is currently pressed into a thin, white line. There is a tiny scar on her lower lip, a permanent mark of teeth biting down on words that dared not be spoken.
And then there are her eyes.
Sapphire blue. Not the dull, watery blue of the sky over the ocean, but the deep, resonant blue of a gem formed under crushing pressure. They are large, framed by thick, dark lashes that sweep against her cheeks as she blinks, clearing the rain from her vision.
They are defiant. They are terrified. And they are utterly mesmerizing.
I feel a stir in my gut—not affection, certainly not lust in the way a man desires a woman. It is the hunger of a predator spotting prey that might actually offer a chase. It is the anticipation of cracking a geode to see the crystals inside.
I touch my fingers together, tapping the pads against one another as I walk slowly toward her.
"Do you know where you are, little thing?" I ask. My voice is soft, a velvet shroud over a blade.
She watches my hands. Her gaze tracks the movement of my fingers as if they are vipers poised to strike. "A cage," she whispers. Her voice is hoarse, unused, but steady.
"A cage implies you are an animal to be kept," I correct her, stopping three paces away. "You are not an animal. You are fuel."
She presses her spine harder against the books, but she lifts her chin. "I am Leora."
"Names are for things that have a future," I say dismissively. "You have a purpose. There is a difference."
I circle her, my movements fluid. I can smell her fear. It has a scent—acrid, like nature before a storm, mixed with the damp, earthy smell of the rain clinging to her. But beneath the fear, there is something else. A strange, quiet static that prickles against my mental shields. It feels… dense.
Most humans are open books, their minds leaking simple, loud emotions like a sieve. Hunger. Pain. Lust. Fear. But this girl is a fortress. She is holding something back, clamping down on her terror with a will that should not exist in a species so short-lived and frail.
Perfect.
"My patron is The Serpent," I tell her, my voice dropping to a murmur. "He is the God of Pain. Of Misery. He does not feast on the body, Leora. He feasts on the mind. He drinks the scream that dies in the throat."
I raise my right hand. The obsidian ring on my index finger flares with a sudden, violet light. The frigid air in the room drops ten degrees in a heartbeat. Frost patterns bloom on the windowpanes.
"Let us see what you are hiding behind those sapphire eyes."
I do not touch her. Don’t need to. I reach into the well of Chaos within me, pulling on the dark threads of the Aether. Usually, this requires effort, a mental flexing of muscle. Today, with the girl so close, the magic leaps from me, eager and violent.
I cast a phantasm.
The shadows in the corners of the room detach themselves from the walls.
They elongate, twisting and writhing, taking on substance.
They slither across the floorboards, silent as death, transforming into heavy, coiling vipers the size of tree trunks.
Their scales are black oil, their eyes burning with the same violet light as my ring.
They circle her. One rears up, its hood expanding, jaws opening to reveal fangs dripping with liquid shadow.
I wait for the scream. I wait for the dam to break. I need her to shatter. I need that explosion of pure, unadulterated terror to flood the room so I can channel it into the ring, so I can feed the hunger that has been gnawing at my bones for weeks.
Leora gasps. Her hands fly up to cover her mouth. Her body trembles so violently I can hear the rustle of her rags.
"Look at them," I command, my voice echoing with magical amplification. "Look at your death."
She squeezes her eyes shut.
"Open them!" I roar, pushing a pulse of will into her mind.
Her eyes snap open. But she does not look at the snakes.
She looks at me.
Her pupils dilate. The sapphire blue is swallowed by a tide of black, until her eyes are void-dark mirrors.
I expect a plea. I expect hatred.
Instead, something slams into my mind.
It is not a word. It’s not a sound. It is a sensation so foreign, so violently abrupt, that my breath hitches in my chest.
It feels like swallowing a mouthful of warm syrup laced with arsenic. It is a cloying, suffocating heat that rushes through my veins, scalding the cold, structured darkness of my soul. It tastes of salt water and soft skin. It feels like… sorrow.
But not her sorrow.
Mine.
She is looking at me, and she is not seeing a monster. She is seeing a man standing alone in a cold room, desperate for power he cannot hold. She is pitying me.
The sensation hits my stomach like a punch. Bile rises in my throat, hot and acidic. Pity is the antithesis of The Serpent. It is a weakness. It is a corruption. To feel it—to have it forced into me by a creature beneath my notice—is a violation so profound it makes my vision blur.
"Stop," I choke out.
The warmth intensifies. It wraps around my heart, squeezing, softening the edges of my rage, dulling the sharp, beautiful blade of my cruelty. It feels like drowning in feathers. It feels like being smothered by light.
The noise softens… then it stalls. It fizzles to nothing.
My concentration shatters.
The giant snakes dissolve into harmless wisps of gray smoke. The violet light in my ring sputters and dies, turning the obsidian to dull, lifeless stone.
I stumble back, clutching the edge of my desk to keep from falling. My skin feels feverish, my stomach churning with the phantom taste of her empathy. It is poison. I can feel it lingering in my blood, a foreign contaminant trying to rewrite the laws of my existence.
She stands there, chest heaving, her eyes still those twin pools of endless black. She doesn't seem to realize what she has done. She looks exhausted, drained, as if she has just run a marathon.
Rage, hot and familiar, rushes in to fill the gap where the magic used to be.
I lunge.
I cross the distance between us in a blur of motion, slamming her back against the bookshelves. Books tumble to the floor with heavy thuds.
My hand closes around her throat.
I do not squeeze to crush; I squeeze to hold, pinning her in place. Her skin is warm under my cold fingers. Her pulse flutters frantically against my thumb, a hummingbird trapped in a fist.
"What are you?" I snarl, leaning in until our noses almost touch. I can see the flecks of terror in her eyes now, but beneath it, that damnable softness remains. "What curse did you speak? What poison did you slip into the air?"
She claws at my wrist, her nails digging in, futile against my strength. She tries to speak, but my grip is too tight.
I need to punish her. I need to reassert control. I need to burn this softness out of her and out of me.
I reach for the magic again. I mentally grasp for the chaos, trying to summon a lash of pain, a spark of lightning, anything to show her that I am the Lord here, and she is the slave.
Strike her, I command the power. Burn her.
Nothing.
There is no hum in the ring. There is no answering coil in my gut. The connection to The Serpent is not just quiet; it is absent. It is as if a heavy, wool blanket has been thrown over a fire, suffocating the flames.
I stare at her, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs—not from exertion, but from a sudden, icy dawn of horror.
“My magic is gone,” I whisper in shock.