Chapter-6: Chains of Desires
The candles had burned halfway down, filling Lucien's chamber with the mingled scent of rosemary and lavender. Shadows danced across the walls in rhythm with the flickering flames.
Maria stood pressed against the cold stone, unable to move, unable to speak. 'I can't—my tongue is frozen. Why can't I answer him?'
Lucien leaned closer. One hand found her waist, fingers settling there with possessive certainty. The other traced up her neck, thumb brushing her jawline with almost clinical precision. The wall behind her offered no escape.
His lips found her neck first—soft, deliberate kisses that made her breath hitch. Then his teeth grazed her earlobe, and she gasped at sensations she'd never known existed.
"Prince..."
The first tie of her bodice came undone. She didn't resist. Couldn't resist, even if some distant part of her mind screamed that she should. His hands moved beneath the fabric, mapping skin that had never been touched this way, leaving heat in their wake.
His fingers trailed along her inner thigh, moving higher with patient inevitability until they reached her core. Her body responded without permission, welcoming him like a flower opening to sunlight.
She pressed her mouth against his shoulder to muffle the sounds escaping her throat. "Mmmph—"
And then he stopped.
Maria's eyes flew open as Lucien stepped back, already retying the loosened threads of her bodice with practiced efficiency. His expression was calm. Detached. Like he'd been conducting an experiment rather than seduction.
"Did you get your answer?" he asked.
She stared at him, flushed and breathless and completely unmoored. "What—why did you stop?"
"I already emptied myself in someone else earlier." He adjusted her bodice, smoothed her disheveled hair with the care one might show arranging flowers. "You should be grateful I gave you this much."
Maria fled.
She walked through the hallways in a daze, body still burning with unfinished need, mind spiraling .'Why would someone with all that power restrain himself? What does it mean? What was he testing? Did I fail? Did I pass?'
The questions chased her all the way back to the servants' quarters, where sleep would not come easy.
---
In another part of the palace, Geilla prepared a late meal with trembling hands.
'I don't know if I should even bring this to him,' she thought, arranging food on a silver tray. 'But he makes me feel things I've never felt. Like I'm the only woman in the world when he looks at me.'
Her thoughts masked the time she spent to reach the doorstep.
Her thoughts shifted, darker now. 'But I love my betrothed too. If I get pregnant with the Prince's child, I'm ruined. My family is ruined. Everything is—'
"You should come inside."
His voice cut through the closed door like he'd been reading her thoughts through the wood itself.
Geilla entered to find Lucien standing near the window, hair already mussed, his bare torso gleaming with a faint sheen of sweat despite the cool night air. Every line of his body seemed carved from marble—pale, perfect, inhuman in its beauty.
"Prince Lucien..." She set the tray down on the nearby table, hands shaking. "What would happen if I became—if I got—"
She couldn't finish the sentence.
Lucien crossed to her in three strides and pulled her back against his chest, one arm wrapping around her waist to hold her there. His warmth bled through her clothes.
"You should leave that to me," he murmured against her ear.
"Ahh—" The gasp escaped before she could stop it as his lips found her shoulder, as his hands began their exploration beneath her clothing. The ties of her bodice gave way easily—he'd done this before, knew exactly how the fabric would surrender.
Her back was bare now. Heated. Vulnerable.
Lucien lifted her with effortless strength and carried her to the bed, laying her down gently. He stood and pushed his remaining clothes down without shame or hesitation. His body was otherworldly—the kind of masculine beauty that belonged in paintings and myths, not in flesh and blood.
'If only I were his,' she thought through the haze of desire. 'If only—'
He settled between her legs, violet eyes holding hers as his hands worked with that same careful precision he brought to everything. Stimulating. Preparing. And then—
She bit down on the bedsheet to muffle her cries as he entered her, as his mouth found her breast, as his hands moved to the back of her knee and then her spine, playing her body like an instrument he'd long since mastered.
The night stretched on.
---
Across the lake, in Nurin Castle, Duke Shrita Marian lay awake wondering what game the Serpent Prince was truly playing.
In the state barracks, Death Knight Ethelia De Colisson practiced forms in the moonlight, blade singing through empty air, trying to outrun dreams that would not stay buried.
And in the palace chambers perfumed with rosemary and lavender, Prince Lucien Aurevane took his pleasure with the detached efficiency of a man who felt nothing at his core.
Who used bodies the way other men used chess pieces.
Who understood that the most effective chains were the ones people forged for themselves, link by link, out of desire and desperate hope.
The candles burned lower.
Dawn was still hours away.