Page 18 of Darkest Oblivion
His dark hair was slicked back, his jaw sharp as a blade under the chandeliers. He looked like a god of war dressed for the coronation of hell itself.
And his eyes—those glacial, merciless eyes—were locked on me. From the moment I entered, as though he’d been waiting.
As though the entire hall, the entire spectacle, was nothing more than a stage set for this moment.
My pulse stuttered, confusion lacing with dread. Where was his bride? Why had he summoned me?
I moved toward a row of seats, praying to dissolve into the silk-draped crowd, but the air shifted.
His voice cut through the music, sharp, echoing against the vaulted ceiling.
“Penelope.”
My heart froze, my body rooted to the spot as every eye turned to me.
The orchestra faltered mid-note, the silence swallowing the hall whole. A hundred gazes bore down on me—mafia bosses insilk ties, their lieutenants with dead eyes, their jewel-encrusted wives clutching champagne flutes like daggers.
I wanted to vanish, to sink into the polished marble floor, but Dmitri’s stare held me captive.
His eyes were glacial, burning through the crowd and fastening me to the altar as if no one else existed.
“What?” I stammered, my throat raw, the word barely a whisper but loud in the suffocating hush.
Dmitri’s lips curved, not into a smile but a blade of mockery.
His voice carried, low yet resonant, every syllable coiled with menace.
“Didn’t you promise to marry me at twenty-five... or did you think I’d let you forget?”
My breath caught like a snare tightening around my lungs.
He remembered?
After everything—the monster he’d become, the horrors whispered of him killing his own parents, burning their remains as ash and legend—I’d thought all traces of the boy I once knew had been obliterated.
Yet here he was, dragging a childhood promise into the light, binding it to me like chains on my 25th birthday.
Laughter, bitter and mocking, rippled through my memory—the way he’d teased me under the lemon trees, asking if I’d marry him when I was grown. I’d laughed, cheeks hot, fifteen and naïve.
A joke, a fleeting thing. And now... a sentence.
I stood dumbfounded, the weight of his words pressing down, my mind clawing for an escape, a response, anything.
What did he expect me to say?
That I’d been waiting?
That I still loved the boy who’d vanished ten years ago?
That I’d forgive the monster he had become?
The answer was ripped from me before I could speak.
A shadow detached from the crowd, moving with predatory grace.
Scarred cheek, pale eyes—it was him. The brute who had dragged me to Dmitri’s tent.
He stopped at my side, looming, his breath cold against my ear.
