Page 59 of Claimed In Darkness

Not as a prisoner.

Not as a pawn.

But as mine.

Her lips are still painted red.

I take them anyway.

21

NAIRA

The blood is gone.

But it doesn’t truly go away.

I press my hands against my thighs, curling my fingers into the silk of my dress, but it doesn’t matter. No matter how hard I scrubbed, burned, clawed at my own skin, I can still feel the warm, wet slick of it between my fingers.

It sprayed on my body.

He gasped under me.

His body jerked.

The stench of blood clings to the back of my throat like a ghost of rot and metal, thick even beneath the perfumed oils that still cling to my damp skin.

I shift my gaze to the mirror before me.

I do not recognize the woman staring back.

Her hair falls in damp, tangled waves, curling over her bare shoulders. Her collarbones are sharp ridges, her lips slightly parted, still swollen from something she shouldn’t have allowed.

Her eyes.

Too dark.

Too hollow.

I exhale, pushing away from the vanity.

I shouldn’t be here.

I shouldn’t still be in his room, in his space, in the same fucking orbit as Zephiran Zacria.

Yet here I am.

I did not run.

I let him touch me.

I let him claim something I should have never fucking given.

The corridors are silent, the halls of his estate stretching out before me like a gilded cage.

I know where the exits are.

I know where the guards stand post, where the hidden tunnels weave beneath the estate, where the weak points in his security could let me slip away into the night.

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