Chapter 11
What in the great abyss was that?
I stood in the bathing chamber, barely aware of the heat rippling from the water behind me, my heart was pounding in my chest like some fevered beast clawing to break free.
It wasn’t supposed to go like that. I was supposed to put the fear of the gods in her; to teach her a lesson she’d never forget for the rest of her short, reckless life.
That was what I’d intended, what I’d promised myself since the moment she appeared on the battlefield.
By a supernova’s curse, the moment she stepped onto that field, I could have killed her.
My blade had been a breath from her throat; my aura had been raging too hot to tell friend from foe.
Even now, I was still reeling from that instant, still hearing the phantom slice of steel through the air, still seeing her wide mortal eyes staring up at me, alive by nothing more than chance.
Fear.
The word rattled through me like a foreign tongue, sharp and ugly. Fear was for mortals. For children. For those without power. I had never known it. Not in a thousand battles. Not even when entire legions of Mmuhr’Rhong clawed from the Abyss.
But in that moment—seeing her stumble into my line of fire, fragile flesh one heartbeat from my blade—I had felt it. A bolt of ice down my spine, so absolute it stole the air from my lungs. My hand faltered, my heart lurched, and for a sliver of time, I had been undone.
And it twisted me.
The thought of her lifeless at my feet, her blood staining the ground by my hand, hollowed me out in a way no war ever had. The thought of losing her… It was unbearable. Maddening. Like staring into a future I could not, would not, allow.
May the gods help me, I didn’t know what terrified me more, that I had felt fear for the first time in my long life… or that I could already no longer imagine existence without her in it.
So instead of answering my question, I’d let her shatter me.
Let her pull the mask off my face and see the monster underneath, and rather than recoiling, she’d drawn me closer, like she was daring me to break her.
She’d provoked me, mocked me, but then the moment my mouth was on hers, she’d come apart so quickly and so honestly that I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to devour her or protect her from the entire damn universe.
I’d thought I knew how to want someone. I had centuries of experience bending bodies to my will, teaching obedience with my hands and tongue and cock until they melted.
But that had always been a transaction: a hunger, swiftly sated.
With Ella? It was like starving. The longer I held myself back, the more desperate and savage the urge became.
I wanted to conquer her, yes, but I also wanted to watch her unfurl, to see what new chaos she would spill each time I pressed her to the edge.
That edge—for the first time in my memory—felt razor-thin. Before today, I’d never slipped, not once. Since I entered this Abyss and set foot in this world, I’ve never lost myself. Not to drink, not to rage, not to desire. Most of all, never to a female.
But her? She’d undone me with a single whimper.
I tightened my grip on the cold stone at the lip of the bath, trying to anchor myself in the now.
My cock throbbed, angry and insistent, so hard it hurt, and I wanted nothing more than to march back to my room and finish what I’d started.
It was the memory of her face—her flushed lips, her eyes glassy with shock and heat—that made me hesitate.
She’d wanted it, yes, but she hadn’t known what she was inviting.
And gods, I was too close. Far too close to a line I’d sworn never to cross.
I tried to slow my breathing, to will the storm beneath my skin into something smaller and manageable.
I had entire drills for nights like this—centering, channeling, letting the aura run like a creek rather than a wild river—but they were useless.
The exercises had been written for battle, for rage you could aim at an enemy. They were not written for wanting.
Everything about her hit like an assault.
Her scent—salt and sweat and something sweet and feral—filled the bathing chamber and turned my head.
I could still taste her: the memory of her mouth, the way she had broken under me.
My hands trembled with a dozen urges at once: to protect, to possess, to press her so close the world narrowed to the heat between us.
Those were urges I knew how to act on. The other urge—the fissure yawning under the surface, the one that made the black crawl out from its edges—terrified me.
My aura was not a passive thing. It braided with my thoughts until it felt like a single creature: mind-aura-body, each informing the other.
If I let the black rise, it consumed rational thought first. It made hands quick and merciless, mouths hungry, vision tunneled.
I had seen it before in other fights, Arkhevari who’d let the void take them and turned into something brutal and remorseless.
I had never wanted to become that, especially not for her.
Standing there, with the steam curling around my shoulders, I realized how fragile the barrier between control and ruin really was—knowing that fragility made my fingers clench until nails bit into skin.
I had never once doubted myself in my existence: decisions, commands, executions—all had been known quantities.
Now there was doubt, and it was poisonous.
I hated her for it, but in the same breath, I wanted to embrace her.
And I hated myself more for wanting.
If I took her now—if I gave in to the animal in me without restraint—would the black splice into my fury and make me anything but careful?
Would I harm the thing I swore to keep? The idea of waking to her pale face at my feet, or worse, the thought of blood on her skin because I had misjudged my own hunger, unmoored me.
I had seen what losing the line between mind and aura did to others.
The possibility of inflicting that on her made my gut twist with something like nausea.
Muttering to myself, I imagined the Council seeing her, and the anger at that image spat fire through me.
Part of me wanted to clench and claim, to herd her away from them and into my vault where none could touch her.
Another part—the part I could not yet name—whispered to be cautious, to school my desires into a kind of protection.
“Drekken,” I told the empty chamber, and the sound came out ragged.
Fear, I discovered, was not just an abstract concept.
It was a needle under the skin, a red line that made even my jaw muscles ache.
I had felt immortal boredom, unending war-weariness, numbness—but not this fragile, terrible fear.
I was suddenly painfully aware of how much she mattered, and that awareness unraveled everything I thought I stood on.
I considered leaving her untouched until I learned how to be less dangerous.
The thought was practical and cowardly at once.
I could lock the door, post sentries, and refuse the pull until I had tempered the black.
But there was a darker truth: the things that made me want to hold her also made me want to break the world to keep her.
It was not simply hunger. It was ownership.
It was a need braided with tenderness and fury. That mix was volatile.
For the first time in eons, I did not know with certainty what I should do. The not-knowing flared the black like bellows. I loathed the admission. I loathed that she had made me doubt my discipline, my iron. I hated how much wanting her had already loosened me.
And yet, beneath the loathing and the fear, there was a stubborn, raw vow forming, not a vow to possess, but to protect.
If the black threatened to take me, then I would bind myself first. I would set rules.
I would teach myself to breathe her scent without being undone.
If that failed, I would rather exile myself from her side than risk being the cause of her ruin.
I sank to the edge of the pool, palms pressed to the warm stone, and tried to make the black small with nothing but breath and will.
It did not disappear. It only waited, patient and hungry.
The choice—keep her safe by keeping her close, or keep her safe by keeping my distance—thrummed inside me like the pause before creation decided whether to become light or darkness.
I did not want to choose, and damned if knew which would make me less monstrous.
The only thing I was certain of was that either choice would hurt.
. The terrible thing was that either choice would hurt.
The last time I’d felt like this, it had ended with me blacklisted from the celestial gate for a century. Not that Ella was as fragile as those idiots who had earned my wrath, but I doubted she could hold her own if I really lost control. She’d be lucky if she could walk the next morning.
A laugh escaped me—bitter, biting. She’d like that, I thought. She’d smile in that sharp, challenging way, and then she’d try to one-up me. Maybe she’d even succeed.
Gods-damn her for making me want it.
I pressed my forehead to the wall, sweat and steam slicking my skin, and tried to recall the lectures from my father: control is strength, discipline is survival—yeah, and see where it had gotten him.
Without an Aelyth and dying. Still, I’d lived by those words for so long that they were more natural than breathing until now.
Until one slip of a girl with too much spirit and not enough sense had made me crave something so raw it threatened to tear me apart.
Yet, the memory of her taste clawed at me. Sweet and bright, but also smoky beneath, like something wild and untamed. I could have stayed there all night, feasting on her, drinking down every noise she made until she collapsed in my arms.
I slammed my fist against the stone, just hard enough to hurt, to jar myself back into my body. It worked, for a heartbeat. Then the image of her, panting and open and close to tears, reeled me in again.
If anyone else saw me like this, they’d laugh me off the field. The Praetor of Nox Eternum, reduced to a lovesick idiot, fighting himself in a bathhouse like some untried youngling. They’d never believe it.
I barely believed it myself.
But that was the truth of it. I wasn’t sure I could keep pretending, or keep resisting, and the thought of letting go—letting her see me, all the ugly and desperate parts—I didn’t know if it was a threat or a promise.
Maybe both.
Either way, I needed to get my head straight before I saw her again. If I didn’t, I was going to ruin everything whether I wanted to or not.
But even as I told myself that, I knew I’d already lost the fight.
By the great Abyss, I was drunk on her already.
And I hadn’t even claimed her yet.