He tilts his head, expression almost pitying. “You always have a choice. I’ve never touched you. I’m not the monster you’ve made me.”
I don’t answer. I don’t trust what will come out.
He studies me a moment longer, then shifts—leaning back in that too-large throne, one arm draped lazily across the armrest, the other sliding lower. His fingers skim across his own skin.
The movement is slow. Calculated. And I realize, with a flush of shame and fury, what this is.
He isn’t here to feed me. He’s here to feed himself and make sure I feel every second of it.
I recognize them the moment they appear, though I don’t know their names. I don’t need to.
Two women, draped in silver and smoke, glide across the illusion-bloomed floor like whispers summoned by want. Zepharion doesn’t look at them. He doesn’t need to. They come willingly. Eagerly. Their magic hums like wine, thick with adoration and lust. They kneel before him with bowed heads and beating hearts, their pleasure already blooming open like bruised petals.
The air goes tight, then thinner, as if the room is holding its breath. So am I.
One of them rises, untying her robe with the reverence of a ritual. The other leans forward and kisses his stomach, soft and slow. Zepharion exhales, lazy and pleased, and finally, his eyes return to me.
“You’re welcome to stay,” he says smoothly. “Or leave. This is your home, petal. I don’t bar the doors.”
It’s not true. None of it is true. And we both know it. He doesn't need locks. Not when he's already made a cage of me. Of my body. Of my mind.
So I stay. Because I can’t leave. Because if I move, I might scream. Because I don’t want to give him the satisfaction.
Instead, I take a step back, pressing my spine against one of the obsidian columns lining the throne room. I dig my nails into my palms. I bite the inside of my cheek. I anchor myself in pain because it’s the only thing he can’t steal from me.
And I watch.
They touch him as if he’s holy. As if they worship the skin he walks in. One kneels between his legs while the other straddles his lap, her robe falling away as she begins to ride him with slow, practiced rhythm.
His hands stay at his sides, relaxed. He lets them do all the work. Let them serve him. Let them feed him.
And through them… I feel it.
A secondhand pulse of ecstasy. Dim. Diluted. Like licking sugar from someone else’s mouth and pretending it’s a feast. My skin prickles. My thighs clench. I ache.
Not for him or them. But for connection. For something real.
For the braiding of pleasure and meaning, magic and love. The kind of bond that fed me like light. That chose me. That saw me as more than hunger.
Cassiel.
His name beats against the back of my teeth. I don’t dare say it aloud. Not here. Not while Zepharion watches me with half-lidded eyes, drinking me in even as he sinks into the bodies of others.
He knows what he’s doing. He’s making me starve. He’s reminding me I am what I am and what I’ll never have again.
The woman in his lap moans, head thrown back, eyes fluttering. Magic ripples through the air, laced with climax and dark desire. It hits me like smoke. Like poison. Like a memory I never wanted.
I could feed.
I could take what I need from them. Just a brush of my magic against their pleasure, and I could drink it down like water. Succubi are built for this. To skim ecstasy from the air, to spin it into sustenance.
So I try.
I reach with the thinnest thread of myself, letting my magic slip from my skin, seeking the pulse of climax in the air, the trembling cry spilling from the woman’s throat. For a moment, I taste it—sweet and sharp, like sugar melting on my tongue.
And then the choker tightens.
Cold metal clamps against my throat, invisible hands pulling the band tighter and tighter until I gasp, clawing at it. The taste vanishes. The magic recoils. The power I almost held crumbles into ash in my mouth.
