Page 53 of Claimed In Darkness

It doesn’t matter.

This is not over.

19

NAIRA

The taste of him still lingers on my lips when we enter the High Council’s chambers.

I loathe that it does.

I abhor that my body remembers, that my breath still hitches when I think of the way he felt against me—unrelenting, devouring, as if he had been waiting for that moment as much as I had been dreading it.

I still feel his fingers in my hair, the bruising press of his grip against my throat, the way he stole that moment from me before I could stop it.

Most of all, it destroys me that I let him.

The way I fucking kissed him back.

My hands clench at my sides as I push the memory down—deep, buried beneath the sharp edges of my fury.

I can’t afford to dwell on this.

Not when we are standing in the heart of the High Council’s lair, surrounded by monsters in silk and shadows, their predatory gazes scraping against my skin like the blade of a dull knife.

Zephiran walks ahead of me, posture pristine, arrogant, exuding the same dark confidence he always does, but I’m of what lies beneath.

I see it.

The tension in his shoulders, the way his fingers twitch at his sides, how his breath isn’t quite steady.

Whatever happened between us back in the corridor, it left a mark on him too.

That is dangerous.

If I am beginning to see the cracks in him—how long before he starts seeing mine?

The chamber doors groan open before us, revealing the High Council seated at their elevated thrones.

The room is massive, lined with black marble pillars, silver banners bearing the sigil of the ruling houses, torches casting long, flickering shadows against the obsidian walls.

At the center, on a dais above us all, sit the ones who hold the true power in Protheka. In Orthani.

The King with his council.

The ones who decide who lives.

Who dies.

Who suffers.

Their eyes land on me first.

Of course they do.

I am the anomaly in the room.

The human.

---