AELIA REVA
The bread is softer than I expect, the crust still faintly warm from the oven. I tear off a second piece almost without thinking, more for something to do with my hands than from hunger. The scent of roasted meat, spiced roots, and sweetened berries clings to the air, thick enough that it's almost another presence in the room.
I glance up only once, and that's enough to catch him watching me.
He lifts it in an unhurried motion, takes a sip, and sets it down without breaking eye contact. His expression is unreadable, but there's nothing casual in it. It's the steady, patient kind of attention that feels less like an observation and more like an assessment.
The quiet between us folds in on itself, heavy and expectant, as if it might decide the lack of words is an answer all on its own.
I finish the bite and lower the remaining piece onto my plate. Under his eyes, the motion feels less like eating and more like a move in a game I don't yet understand. "Do you always stare like this," I say finally, "or am I a special case?"
His head tilts fractionally, as though weighing the question on some private scale. "Special," he says at last, the word landing with no more emphasis than if he were naming the weather.
I wait for more. He offers nothing more.
"Special enough to be dragged halfway across… wherever this is?" I press.
"You make it sound as though you were stolen," he replies, not unkindly, but with a faint thread of amusement. "I brought you to the place you belong."
The heck!! The place where I belong!!!??
This leech!!
The fork in my hand pauses halfway to my mouth. "Belong," I repeat. "That's a generous word for kidnapping."
"Kidnapping," he says, almost tasting the syllables. "A crude term. It assumes you were safer where you were."
The question slides between my ribs before I can brace for it. My jaw tightens. "I was safe. That's not the point here."
"It is precisely the point," he answers, not raising his voice. "You think of what has happened to you as a displacement. I see it as correction."
Correction! This di-
Calm down Lia Calm down.
"Correction for what?"
The faintest trace of a smile edges his mouth, but it's the kind that says he isn't going to give me what I want. "You'll know when you're ready to see it."
I set the fork down harder than necessary. The soft chime of metal against porcelain feels too loud. "You speak like you've planned my whole life out."
"No," he says smoothly. "Only the part that matters."
The muscles in my shoulders draw tight, but I force myself to lean back, matching his composure. "And what if I don't want your version of what matters?"
"Then you will waste time." His fingers trace the rim of his goblet in a slow, absent circle. "Time is a resource you will not recover."
The calm certainty in his voice is almost worse than outright threat. It gives no foothold for argument, only the choice to push harder or let it stand.
I decide to push.
"You sent that boy for me," I say, watching for the smallest shift in his face. "First on the train, then at the lake."
"Yes."
"That's it? No justification? No—"
"You saw him at the train because I ordered him," he interrupts, though his tone is too even to be called a correction. "The lake was necessary. You were meant to be here, does not matter if force was used."
My fingers tighten on the edge of my plate. "And you decided that for me?"
He does not blink. "Who else would?"
Heat prickles at the base of my neck, creeping upward in a slow, deliberate crawl. "You talk like you own the ground I walk on."
"I do," he says simply, as if naming a fact as obvious as the color of the walls.
For a heartbeat, I forget how to breathe. "You don't."
His gaze sharpens, though his posture never changes. "You say that as though your belief alters its truth."
The steadiness in his voice, the way it neither rises nor falls, grates at something raw in me. It is the kind of control that makes me want to see it break.
I lean forward slightly, the chair legs scraping against the polished floor. "If you think I'm going to sit here and accept whatever this is–"
"You already are," he says, and the words drop like stones into the space between us.
My chest tightens. "You're impossible."
"I am patient," he corrects, though the faint gleam in his eyes says he knows the difference is academic.
That patience feels like a wall, and I can feel myself starting to throw myself against it without caring how much it will hurt. My voice sharpens before I can stop it. "Do you think you can keep me here forever?"
"If I choose," he answers without pause.
"And if I choose to leave?"
His mouth curves again, the shape of a smile that never reaches his eyes. "Then you will find the walls taller than your will. Here...every single thing moves at my will."
The pulse in my ears is loud enough that it almost drowns out the soft crackle of the candles between us. My hands flatten against the table, fingers splayed, the wood warm beneath my palms. "You don't get to decide what my will is."
"You mistake decision for recognition," he says, voice lowering, not in threat, but in something more dangerous. "Your will is already written in you. I am only here to read it."
The air feels too thin. My hands press harder into the table. "Stop talking like you know me!"
"I do know you," he says, and for the first time there is something in his voice that doesn't feel like control....something closer to hunger.
It snaps something in me. My palms slam down onto the polished surface, the sound sharp enough to echo in the vaulted ceiling.
The first curl of heat is so sudden I don't realize what it is. Then it blooms...fast, fierce spreading from beneath my skin to the space around me. A bright, living roar tears up the center of the table, chasing the platters and goblets in a wave of fire. The scent of scorched bread and searing meat fills the air in an instant.
I jerk back, my chair skidding across the floor. Flames leap along the carved edges, racing toward the high-backed chair at the far end.
The lord does not move.
The fire paints his features in shifting light, the golds and reds licking across the sharp planes of his face.
For the first time since I've seen him, his expression changes...not with anger, not even with surprise, but with something startlingly pure. Excitement.
A slow smile curls his mouth. "Magnificent," he says, the word rich with something that sounds dangerously like approval.
Before I can move, he lifts one hand and snaps his fingers.
The sound is sharp, but the effect is immediate. Shadows ripple along the ceiling, pulling themselves into the shape of heavy clouds that form directly above the burning table. They swell, dark and full, before breaking open in a sudden rush of rain.
The water hisses against the fire, steam rising in thick, twisting ribbons as the flames vanish under the downpour. In moments, the table is bare again, save for the blackened remains of what had been laid there.
The rain doesn't stop when the fire does. It keeps falling, drenching the table, the floor, my hair, my dress. The cold soaks through to my skin, sharp enough to cut the leftover heat from my palms.
He watches me through it all, water running down his face in rivulets, his blackened eyes lit with the same unwavering fascination.
I stare back, breath caught somewhere between my ribs and my throat, the steam curling between us.
The rain slows, then stops, leaving the hall in a strange, heavy quiet broken only by the faint drip of water from the table's edges.
❦︎ To Be Continued ❦︎