Chapter 10
LEORA
The lock on the bedroom door clicks open, but it is not the smooth, practiced sound of the key turning. It is jarring, hasty, as if the hand holding it is shaking.
I am sitting by the hearth, my knees pulled to my chest, staring into the dying embers.
The room is cold. The heavy velvet drapes are drawn tight against the morning light, trapping the shadows inside.
I have been waiting for hours, listening to the silence of the estate, trying to decipher the shifting currents of emotion bleeding through the walls.
Imas enters.
He looks as if he has been fighting a war in his own mind and losing.
His platinum hair is loose, wild around his face, and his skin has a gray, sickly pallor that makes the sharp angles of his cheekbones look like blades.
He has discarded the simple tunic he wore earlier; he is bare-chested, wearing only loose black breeches, his feet bare on the stone floor.
He shuts the door and leans his forehead against the wood for a long moment, breathing hard.
I stand up slowly, pressing my back against the mantel. The energy in the room changes instantly. The calm I have been carefully maintaining fractures under the sheer weight of his distress.
It slams into me like a physical wave—a tangled, screaming knot of panic, longing, and a terrifying, hollow emptiness. It feels like standing on the edge of a sinkhole that is widening by the second.
"My Lord?" I whisper.
He spins around. His eyes are wide, the violet irises burning with a feverish light. He stares at me, but it feels like he is looking through me, searching for something invisible.
"Do it again," he rasps.
He stalks toward me, his movements jerky and uncoordinated. He stops three paces away, raking a hand through his hair.
"Do what?" I ask, my voice trembling. What is going on? Did something happen?
"The silence!" he shouts, the sound cracking in the room. "Bring it back. Make it... absolute."
He paces away, toward the window, then spins back. He is manic.
"The noise is gone," he mutters, speaking more to himself than to me.
"But the connection... the thread... it's still there.
Dangling. Empty. It's worse than the screaming.
It's a phantom limb itch I can't scratch.
" He grips the back of a chair, his knuckles turning white.
"I feel Him, Leora. I feel The Serpent waiting in the dark, watching me starve.
But I can't hear Him. I can't feel the power. "
He looks at his hands, turning them over as if they belong to a stranger.
"I am hollow," he whispers. "I am nothing."
"You are not nothing," I say, stepping away from the hearth. "You are just... quiet."
"Quiet is death!" He lunges, crossing the distance between us in a blink. He grabs my shoulders, his fingers digging into my flesh. His skin is freezing, burning with that unnatural cold.
"Teach me," he demands, shaking me slightly. "Show me how you do it. Show me how you consume the Chaos."
"I don't know how," I cry, wincing as his grip tightens. "It just happens. It's not a spell. It's... it's just me."
"Liar!" He leans down, his face inches from mine.
I can smell the stale wine on his breath.
"You are Purna. You are a witch. You rewrite reality with a thought.
Teach me the mechanism. If I can learn it.
.. if I can replicate it... I can control it.
I can filter the noise without losing the power. I can have both."
He is desperate. He seems… terrified. He is a man who has built his entire identity on being a vessel for a god, and now that the vessel is sealed, he is crumbling.
"I can't teach you empathy," I say, my voice remaining steady despite the fear hammering in my chest. "I can't teach you how to feel."
"I feel too much!" he roars. "I feel everything! I feel your fear. I feel your pity. I feel the rotting wood of this house and the damp in the stone and the ambition of every traitor in this city pressing against my skull!"
He releases my shoulders only to cup my face, his hands hard and desperate. He forces my head up, staring into my eyes.
"Look at me," he commands. "Do it. Push it into me. Fill the void."
I try to pull away, but he holds me fast. I look into his eyes, and the connection snaps into place with the violence of a thunderclap.
The feedback loop is instantaneous.
I feel his terror, sharp and metallic. I feel his confusion, a swirling gray fog. But beneath it all, buried under centuries of ice and cruelty, I feel a hunger.
It isn't a hunger for magic. It isn't a hunger for pain.
It is a hunger for connection.
He is lonely. He is so profoundly, agonizingly lonely that it makes my chest ache. He has lived his life in a crowded room of screaming voices, never once hearing his own name spoken with kindness.
And now, he sees me. He sees the only living thing that has ever touched his mind without trying to break it.
The realization hits him at the same moment it hits me.
His expression changes. The panic bleeds out, replaced by a sudden, intense focus. His gaze drops down to my mouth.
"You," he breathes.
The air turns heavy, charged with static. My pupils dilate, the Purna blackness swallowing the blue as my magic rises to meet his need. But this time, I don't push calm. I push heat. I push the sudden, shocking realization that I am not just a tool to him.
I am the only thing that is real.
"Leora," he groans.
He kisses me.
It is not a gentle kiss. It is an explosion. It is a desperate, starving thing. His mouth is hard on mine, his teeth grazing my lip. He tastes of despair and dark wine.
I should fight him. I should push him away. He is a monster. He is my captor.
But the emptiness in him calls to the fullness in me. My hands rise of their own accord, tangling in his long, platinum hair. I pull him closer, deepening the kiss, opening to him.
A groan tears from his throat, a raw, animal sound. His arms wrap around me, crushing me against his bare chest. His skin is cold, but where we touch, there is fire.
He lifts me, his strength effortless. I wrap my legs around his waist, instinctively seeking more friction, more contact. The magic flares between us—violet sparks dancing in the air, shadows curling around our bodies like possessive lovers.
He pulls back for a breath, his forehead resting against mine. His eyes are black holes, devoured by lust and confusion.
"I hate you," he whispers, his voice wrecked. "I hate what you do to me."
"I know," I whisper back.
He kisses me again, harder this time, a punishment and a prayer. He carries me to the bed.
He doesn't lay me down. He throws me.
I land on the velvet mattress, bouncing slightly. Before I can scramble back, he is over me, a looming shadow of muscle and intent. He pins my wrists above my head with one hand, his body pressing me down into the soft bedding.
"You took my god," he snarls against my neck, his teeth scraping the sensitive skin there. "So now... I will take you."