For three days, Selene avoided him.
Adrian felt her absence like a wound that would not clot. He saw her at dinners, at gatherings in the garden, at the endless feasts where laughter curled like smoke—but she never turned her head toward him. Never once. Her amber eyes slid past him as if he were no more than a servant carrying a tray, or worse, a ghost cluttering the air.
He laughed to himself, bitterly, in the privacy of his chamber. Was he not a man of name, a noble with the memory of honor still clinging to his blood? Was he to be humiliated, ignored like some half-drunk boy at the door of a brothel?
And yet, when he tried to approach her, his courage melted. He found excuses to linger near her in the corridors, waiting for her glance. But Selene only walked by, her perfume lingering like a cruel caress, her hand brushing the fabric of her dress, the faintest smile tugging at the corner of her lips—not for him, never for him.
Each night Adrian lay awake, consumed. His body remembered her—the kiss in the corridor, the fever of her lips, the gentle scrape of her nails at his neck. It was not love he craved, no; it was something baser, darker. But her silence transformed that desire into torment.
At last, one evening, when the lamps burned low and shadows pressed close to the walls, Adrian saw her alone in the corridor. Her hair caught the candlelight like strands of black fire. She did not look at him.
He approached, breathless, his hand trembling at his side.
"Selene." His voice cracked. He cleared his throat. "Selene, why do you torture me with this silence?"
She did not stop. She moved past him, her shoulder grazing his arm, her face composed into that serene, mocking calm.
He seized her wrist. Desperation made his grip fierce. "Enough!" His whisper was hoarse. "Do you think me blind? Do you think me some plaything to be discarded when your amusement ends?"
Finally, she turned her eyes on him. And how cold they were! No hatred, no fire—only a calm, sharp indifference, as if she gazed not at a man but at a coin on the floor.
"You are loud, Adrian," she said softly. "Too loud."
His heart pounded. "Loud? I— I burn for you. Do you not feel it? Do you not remember?"
Selene's lips curved, not into a smile, but into something crueller. "I remember. And yet—so what?"
Her words struck him harder than any blade. His grip slackened, but he did not let go.
"You cannot treat me thus," he muttered, shaking, his voice breaking into anger. "I will not be mocked."
"Then do not mock yourself," she answered, her tone calm as the grave.
Adrian's body trembled. Rage and desire crashed together, boiling his blood. He pulled her closer, reckless, his mouth brushing hers, forcing her to feel the hunger in him. For one brief, fevered instant, she let him kiss her. His lips pressed to hers with desperation, his hand tangled in her hair.
But when he drew back, breathless, waiting for her surrender, Selene laughed. Low, sharp, merciless.
"Poor boy," she whispered, her breath hot at his ear. "You mistake your weakness for love. And your hunger for power."
His face burned, his heart thundering so hard it hurt. He wanted to strike her, to curse her, to throw himself at her feet all at once. But she pulled away, her wrist slipping free like silk sliding from a hand.
And with a glance that was neither cruel nor tender, only detached, she turned and walked into the shadows of the corridor, leaving him shuddering, his fists clenched, his lips still burning with the taste of her.
He leaned against the wall, his whole body trembling. Shame gnawed at him. He felt like a fool, a puppet dancing on strings he could not see.
Yet beneath the shame—beneath the fury—his desire only deepened. Her silence was not absence; it was a challenge. A cruelty he could not live without.
In that moment Adrian understood something terrible: he was no longer free. His body, his heart, his soul—all were bound to her silence, her mockery, her indifference. And though he hated her, though he swore at that moment to tear himself free, he knew he would return to her. Again and again.
He staggered back to his chamber, laughing bitterly, the sound half-choked, half-mad. He whispered to the mirror:
"Selene… you will not destroy me. No—you will complete me."
And the mirror, cold and merciless, reflected back the face of a man already half-destroyed.