NSFW WARNING: Mature Content
This chapter contains explicit sexual content, psychological manipulation, and emotionally charged intimacy. The depicted scene involves non-romantic sex used as power assertion, with undertones of emotional displacement and obsession. Reader discretion is strongly advised.
If you're sensitive to scenes involving toxic relationship dynamics, angry sex, or emotional infidelity, please proceed with caution or skip this chapter.
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Caelan moved fast. Three steps to the balcony rail, one fluid motion over the side. His boots found purchase on the decorative stonework below.
"Same time next week," he said, voice low. "Different location."
Seraphina leaned over the rail. For a heartbeat, their hands almost touched. Almost.
"We finish this conversation then," she said.
He was gone before the knocking came again.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
"My lady?" Thomas's voice, respectful but urgent. "May I speak with you?"
Seraphina pulled her robe tighter and opened the door. The estate's head steward stood in the corridor, still in his day clothes despite the late hour.
"Thomas. What is it?"
"Lord Vessant was called on urgent business, my lady. He won't return until morning." His expression was carefully neutral. "He wanted you informed so you wouldn't worry."
Relief flooded through her, but she masked it as concern. "Urgent business? At this hour?"
"Yes, my lady. Something requiring immediate attention."
She let worry creep into her voice. "I hope nothing serious has happened."
"I'm certain it's nothing that can't be handled, my lady."
Seraphina glanced down the corridor, then back at Thomas. "Was Lady Evelyne escorted home safely? She seemed... unwell during dinner."
Thomas hesitated. The briefest pause, but she caught it. His knuckles whitened against the doorframe.
"Oh yes, my lady. Much earlier. Before Lord Vessant even departed."
Liar. The hesitation, the knuckle-white grip, the slightly too-smooth delivery, the way his eyes didn't quite meet hers. Thomas was protecting his master's secrets, which meant Evelyne hadn't gone home early at all.
"Good," Seraphina said. "I was concerned about her traveling alone so late."
"Lord Vessant is always careful about such things, my lady."
"Of course. Thank you for letting me know, Thomas."
"Sleep well, my lady."
She closed the door and leaned against it. Thomas's lie confirmed what she'd suspected from the balcony. Alaric and Evelyne had left together, not separately. Which meant they were somewhere together right now.
The question was where.
The shouting could be heard from the street.
Evelyne's estate sat behind high walls and manicured gardens, every luxury paid for with D'Lorien money. Alaric's second home. His mistress's prison.
"Send me away for two weeks so you can play devoted husband?"
Evelyne's voice carried through the marble halls, sharp with betrayal. She stood in the center of the main parlor, still in her dinner gown, fury radiating from every line of her body.
"Two weeks, Alaric. I counted every day."
Alaric loosened his cravat with sharp, angry movements. "You know why it was necessary."
"Do I? Because from where I sat tonight, it looked like you enjoyed fawning over her."
"It's called strategy." He threw the cravat onto a chair. "Something you seemed to forget when you threw yourself at Branthorne like a common whore."
Evelyne's face went white. "How dare you."
"In front of me." Alaric's voice dropped to something dangerous. "You fluttered your eyes and touched his arm like I was invisible."
"I was being charming. Social. The way women are expected to be at dinner parties."
"Charming." He stepped closer. "Is that what you call it when you lean in close enough to count a man's eyelashes? When you hang on his every word like he's reciting poetry?"
"You're being ridiculous."
"Am I? Because I watched you work whatever spell you were weaving, and Branthorne looked ready to propose marriage by the end of the evening."
If only he knew how literal that was. But Alaric didn't understand magic beyond the basic tricks everyone learned. He felt the effect of her charm work but couldn't identify the source.
"Marcus Branthorne controls more wealth than half the noble houses combined," Evelyne said, switching tactics. "If I can influence him properly, we control everything he touches."
"We?" Alaric's laugh was bitter. "Tonight it looked like you were planning to control him all by yourself."
"Everything I do is for us. For our future."
"Our future." He was close enough now that she had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes. "While I spend two weeks pretending to be smitten with my wife, you spend your exile plotting to seduce the richest man in the empire."
"I wasn't plotting anything." The lie came smoothly. "But if you want me to ignore opportunities when they present themselves..."
"You don't touch other men. That's not what we agreed."
"And you don't send me away for weeks while you play house with that pathetic little mouse."
They stared at each other. Two predators circling, looking for weakness.
"I need her willing," Alaric said finally. "Compliant. Two weeks of gentle handling, and she's becoming exactly what I need."
Another lie. The truth was more complicated. Seraphina wasn't becoming compliant. She was becoming... interesting. The way she'd handled dinner tonight, navigating between Evelyne's barbs and Marcus's attention with surgical precision. There was intelligence there he hadn't expected.
"Just a few more careful moves, and she'll be completely broken in," he added.
Evelyne's smile was sharp. "And when she is? What then?"
"Then we take everything."
"Including Branthorne's fortune?"
"If you can manage it without making me look like a fool."
"I can manage Marcus Branthorne."
The way she said his name made Alaric's jaw tighten. Too familiar. Too satisfied.
"See that you do."
He reached for her, but it wasn't her he was reaching for.
His fingers tangled in Evelyne's hair as his mouth crashed against hers, hard, bruising, hungry. But even as his lips claimed her, his mind had already splintered elsewhere. It was anger, yes. Possession, yes. But the need that drove him wasn't for what stood in front of him. It was for something cool and steady and slipping beyond his reach.
Seraphina.
Still.
Unbothered.
Undefeated.
He kissed Evelyne harder, dragging her close like he could force her body to match the fire Seraphina had lit in his blood.
Evelyne responded with equal violence, nails digging into his shoulders, her moan sharp as glass. This was how they fought. How they made up. How they reminded each other who they belonged to. But she thought he was fighting for her.
He wasn't.
He slammed her against the wall, hands rough on her gown, silk tearing in his grip. She gasped, legs wrapping around his waist as he lifted her, the familiar choreography of bodies desperate for dominance. Her voice broke against his neck, high and breathless. He tasted blood where her lip had split against his teeth.
But in his mind, Seraphina was still seated at dinner. Regal. Composed. Cutting down Evelyne with a smile and a single well-placed glance. She hadn't lifted her voice. She hadn't lifted a finger. And she'd won.
"Harder," Evelyne gasped against his ear.
He complied, driven not by Evelyne's voice, but by Seraphina's silence.
He drove into her, fast and brutal, hips slamming into her thighs with punishing rhythm. She clung to him, body writhing, lips chanting his name between cries. But all he could hear was Seraphina's even tone at the table. The way she'd said my lord like it was both an honor and an indictment.
His grip tightened. Evelyne's head hit the wall with a soft thud, but she didn't complain. She thought she'd broken through his restraint. That this was for her.
But it was the memory of Seraphina's mouth, firm, unreadable, controlled, that made him lose control now.
Her dignity. Her distance. That flicker of challenge in her gaze when Marcus spoke too closely.
Not flirtation.
Not fear.
Just quiet, deliberate command.
He thrust harder. Deeper.
Evelyne cried out, shaking from the force of it, nails leaving welts on his skin. She didn't see the way his eyes glazed over. She didn't feel how far away he really was.
He was chasing a woman who hadn't touched him.
And somehow, that made it worse.
They moved to the bed for the second round. Slower this time, but still angry. Still claiming. Evelyne arched beneath him, making the sounds she knew he liked, back curving in practiced invitation. Her hands tangled in his hair, her mouth searching for his.
But he didn't kiss her.
His hands mapped her skin, his thrusts deep and rhythmic, but his gaze was somewhere else entirely. He was seeing Seraphina again. Not in bed, but across the table. The measured blink when Alaric spoke. The subtle angle of her shoulders when she deflected a question. The intelligence behind her stillness.
Evelyne moaned louder, fingers trailing down his chest, breath warm at his throat. She thought he was unraveling because of her. But he was unraveling because he couldn't stop imagining what it would feel like to have Seraphina's composure break. To see her lose control. To make her gasp his name.
"Look at me," Evelyne demanded.
He did. But behind her flushed face and dark lashes, he saw Seraphina's eyes. Calm. Analytical. Waiting.
Waiting to be surprised.
The third round was desperate. An attempt to burn away whatever was growing between them and everything else. Sweat slicked their bodies, tangled the sheets. Evelyne gave him everything, arched, begged, gasped until her throat was raw.
But Alaric was chasing something he couldn't name. He thrust into her like he could erase the image of another woman, like he could stamp his body over this one hard enough to forget the difference.
It didn't work.
Even as Evelyne cried out beneath him, even as his body found release with a shudder that felt like surrender, his mind was elsewhere.
Seraphina. Always Seraphina.
When it was over, they lay back to back, not touching. The room smelled of sex and expensive perfume and something rotten underneath.
Evelyne stared at the ceiling, already planning her next move with Marcus. The charm magic had worked perfectly tonight. A few more careful applications, and she'd have him completely under her control. Then she'd see how devoted Alaric was to their partnership when she controlled more wealth than he did.
Alaric stared at the opposite wall, but he was thinking about dinner. About Seraphina's strategic mind working behind those careful smiles. About how she'd looked at him across the table, not with the submission he'd expected, but with evaluation.
Like she was planning something.
Neither spoke. Neither moved to touch the other.
For the first time in their partnership, they both understood they were keeping secrets. Important ones.
The first crack had formed. Soon, it would become a chasm.