Page 91 of Warlord's Plaything

The climax hits me like a tidal wave, crashing over me, pulling me under. I scream his name, every nerve alight, every thought obliterated.

He follows me over the edge, his movements stuttering, his breath ragged against my skin as he spills himself inside me.

When it’s over, we’re both breathless, trembling, ruined.

He collapses beside me, his chest heaving, his eyes still burning with that same intensity. His hand finds mine, fingers intertwining, and nobody speaks.

We don’t need to.

30

XYRON

The summons had come in the dead of night—urgent, clipped, laced with something unspoken.

Something wrong.

I should have gone sooner.

I should have felt it—the shift in the air, the tightening noose.

But I had been elsewhere.

I had been with her.

The door looms ahead, tall and carved from onyx.

The guards outside step aside too easily.

Too quickly.

A warning flashes in my mind, sharp and cold.

I push open the doors.

And then—the world tilts in its axis.

Xiva is collapsed in his chair, body slack, skin paler than I have ever seen it.

His eyes, once so sharp, so unwavering, are dulling.

Fading.

A slow, quiet death.

One that has been happening for days.

For weeks.

And I never fucking saw it.

"No."

The word rips from my throat.

I am at his side in seconds, dropping to a knee, hands reaching—for what?

To shake him awake? To pull him back from the abyss?

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