Page 33 of Owned

The mist wound tighter around my chest, each loop squeezing the fight from my lungs. The grimoire’s whispers throbbed in my mind like a second heartbeat, and every pulse pushed my anger closer to the surface.

“I didn’t ask for this— I don’t want it!” I cried.

“Oh?” His eyes narrowed with interest, as though curious to see how long the fragile creature before him would resist. “And what is it you want then, Avril?”

With a flick of his wrist, my feet left the floor, and the mist lifted me into the air until I hovered at eye level with him. I let out a gasp as Lucian stepped closer and dragged a long finger down the line of my jaw.

“Freedom.” The words were raw from my throat, almost a sob.

“Freedom,” he mused, rolling the word on his tongue as if tasting it. He leaned closer, and his lips were close enough to brush against mine. I closed my eyes tight and turned my face away. “So dramatic.”

The dark strands of vapor coiled across my ribs, tighter than before, and choked back any defiant words I might have yelled at him.

“What if I refuse to let you go?” he murmured.

I wrestled against him as rage and desperation flared through me in equal measure. “I—”

I knew what I wanted to say.

I wanted to tell him that I would destroy him for what he’d done to me. I wanted to tell him that his sons would help me do it.

I wanted him to know how much I wanted to see him crawling on the ground at my feet as his blood spilled over the stones in the courtyard, or how I wanted to watch it soak into the dirt in the estate’s gardens.

But I couldn’t say anything.

My tongue was frozen in my mouth and the red mist that wound around me constricted my breath and held me suspended in midair in front of my tormenter.

Lucian’s smirk softened into something unreadable—a flicker of emotion that threw me off guard before dissolving back into cruel amusement as he bent to scoop up the fallen papers. “You’ve been very busy this evening.”

I kicked against the mist’s restraint with everything I had left in me, and when it didn’t give, tears stung at my eyes.

He stood and held one page before him like a prize. His gaze could have burnt holes in me. “Don’t you see? You’re mine, Avril— You always have been.”

Lucian’s wordswere razors dipped in poison as they burrowed under my skin and clawed their way into my bones.

I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move as the red mist of his magic choked me and crept into the cracks of my mind.

The crimson orb throbbed in the air nearby, pulsating with Lucian’s power. It hummed with an insidious life and vibrated with the whisper of dark enchantments. I thrashed against its hold on me and struggled to free myself— but the red mist wound tighter, holding me like a vise.

My thoughts tangled with panic, wild and desperate, and I searched for an escape.

The grimoire whispered in my mind—urging me to use my power. Urging me to fight against Lucian… but I couldn’t.

I couldn’t show him how much the grimoire had changed me—he would only use it to manipulate and control me…

No.

You are stronger—

I wanted to scream, but the sound died in my throat, swallowed by the suffocating mist.

I couldn’t let it happen, couldn’t belong to him.

I fought against the terror and tried to think through the chaos, but my own thoughts echoed weakly in my mind.

You can fight this. You have to fight this.

But I couldn’t.

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