Page 47 of Claimed In Darkness

I should not fucking care.

But the way the court watched him, the way Orvian smirked like he knew Zephiran had just made a fatal mistake?—

I shake my head. Irrelevant.

There’s still time.

I can still get out.

The halls are mostly empty, draped in flickering torchlight, shadows pooling in the corners. I know how to move unseen. I know how to avoid patrols, where the guards stand post, where Zephiran thinks I am too afraid to wander.

He is wrong.

He has always been wrong about me.

My bare feet whisper against the floor as I slip past the grand staircase, through the narrow servant corridors, the ones that smell of wax and damp stone, the stench of bodies that aren’t meant to be seen.

A door.

Half-cracked. Leading to the alley beyond.

The sharp bite of night air rushes over my skin, lifting the hem of my silk dress, pulling at my hair as if the wind itself is desperate to take me away from him.

I step forward?—

Then I stop.

A sudden, vicious lurch in my stomach.

A reminder.

I haven’t taken the antidote.

The poison still lives inside me.

One month.

That’s all I have. One month before it eats me from the inside out, hollowing me out like a fucking corpse. And he has the cure.

Zephiran.

That bastard.

My fingers twitch at my sides, curling into fists, nails biting into my palms.

I should keep going.

I should.

Yet, I linger, my breath turning shallow.

Because it's not just the poison.

Something is wrong with him.

I don’t know what.

I don’t know why I even care, but I do.

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