Page 48 of Taken By Touch and Torment

The man I’d once loved.

You’re dead to me.

You are the most pathetic, useless human I have ever wasted my time on. You deserve everything you’ve gotten. You belong here.

I’m glad you’re with them. Look at you. Ruined. Used. Worthless.

Consider yourself unclaimed. You are nothing to me. You never meant anything to me at all.

All the cruel words, all the heartbreak, all the torture and the anger and the betrayal and the crushing, ruthless depths of despair, and when I looked at Rune—all I saw were stars.

I was still that naive, lovesick girl, foolishly yearning for the man who’d forsaken her.

“She didn’t leave me,” Rune said calmly, leaning back in his chair.

Everyone at the table was silent. Kole’s features flashed in surprise, looking at me with new eyes—even more interested than he’d been before.

I held my breath. Did Rune somehow know the truth? Did he know that I’d been taken against my will?

Say it. Please, someone say it. Stupid tears threatened to form, my stomach in knots. I wanted someone at this table to tell the truth, to acknowledge what had happened to me.

“I let her go,” Rune finished, his features utterly bored. “Now, can we please return to discussing matters of substance?”

My heart shattered. Tears finally welled. I wanted to go back to feeling nothing. I wanted that ridiculous spark of hope to finally die for good.

“Such as your continued acts of treason and terrorism that threaten both Valentin and all of Ravenia,” Mason said.

Rune’s eyes fell to mine just one more time, for the briefest of seconds. His features were blank, and he looked away.

But before I could shut down completely and return to a blissful numbness, a gate opened in the space between us. A familiar heat erupted on the back of my neck. A dam broke.

And I felt it all.

Rune’s tsunami of desire slammed into me. I lost my ability to breathe. Never before had I felt such intensity, such yearning. He desired me like no one had ever desired another. He bled for me.

It wasn’t lust. Sexual hunger was a faded hum in comparison to the symphony of craving that lit up my every nerve, squeezed my heart in the strongest shadowed grip. I was back in the room of music, laying side by side with Rune as we stared up at the cosmos. I was sitting outside a café reading his recommended poetry, or even better, his own achingly beautiful prose. I was in his arms, once the safest place I’d ever known.

Wave after wave racked against my psyche—brushstrokes of rich color, melodies that spanned centuries, and the indescribable, undeniable feeling of something that transcended desire itself.

I jolted as if I’d been slapped, audibly gasping.

Durian halted speaking. I hadn’t heard a word anyone had said, nor did I understand how much time had passed. All I knew was that everyone at the table was now staring at me.

Durian’s grip on me tightened, fingers digging into my wounds. I winced.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered on instinct, even if I still couldn’t focus, couldn’t breathe.

My stomach seared as Durian dug deeper. I only stared at Rune.

“As I was saying,” Durian said, a note of anger leaking into his voice for the first time during the meeting.

It had a cold chill traveling down my spine, knowing I was the cause.

Rune didn’t dare look at me. The waves began to lull now that I’d acknowledged and fed from them, their strength like no power that had ever surged in my veins.

“I did not direct any of my devotees to commit acts of terror in Aristelle,” Durian said, his focus shifting from Rune to Kole. Kole finally pulled his perplexed gaze off me. “My people are starving, impoverished, and living as second-class citizens under the tyranny of the turned. It is not hard to understand why they may feel they have been pushed to their breaking points, forced to live in direct opposition with their true nature.”

Kole scratched his chin, and Uriah rolled his eyes. The two turned men on the other side of Rune appeared equally irritated, though they concealed their emotions better.

---