Chapter 2: Lucien Thorne Vaelric
The doors opened with a sound like splitting bone.
Elira stepped into the chamber on legs that threatened to betray her. She kept her chin high, but the manor's cold seeped into her bones. The room she entered was a study, vast and dimly lit. The scent of burning cedar curled in the air, mingling with something older, something metallic.
The fire in the hearth crackled softly. Shadows leapt along the carved moldings of the ceiling like restless spirits.
And there — seated behind an obsidian desk, one long finger tracing the rim of a delicate glass — was Lord Thorne Vaelric.
She froze.
He looked as if he'd been sculpted from winter itself.
Sharp cheekbones cast hollow shadows beneath silver eyes — not pale blue, but true silver. Glacial. Ancient. Too still. His dark hair was tied loosely, a strand escaping to graze his cheek, and his black coat was embroidered with threads of crimson that looked like veins pulsing faintly in the firelight.
He did not rise. He did not speak.
He simply watched her.
Her pulse thundered in her ears.
Elira had known fear before — the kind that came with hunger, with hiding, with sacrifice. But this... this was different. Thorne Vaelric didn't simply look at her — he touched something inside her with that gaze. Something she hadn't even known could tremble.
"Closer," he said at last. A whisper, yet a command.
She obeyed, each step slow, deliberate. The hem of her dress whispered across the polished stone floor.
When she was three paces from him, he stood.
Gods.
He was tall. Too tall. His presence seemed to fill the room, even before he moved.
He came toward her without hurry — and as he passed the fire, the flames dimmed.
"You are smaller than I expected," he murmured.
She swallowed. "I'm stronger than I look."
A glimmer of something flickered at the corner of his mouth — not quite a smile. A twitch, like amusement chained to cruelty.
"Are you now?" He circled her like a predator.
Elira didn't dare turn her head, though she could feel the brush of his gaze down her spine.
"Let me look at you." His voice dropped an octave, velvet and dangerous.
He stepped in close — too close.
She could feel the cold coming off him in waves. And yet, the moment his gloved fingers lifted a lock of her hair from her collarbone, her skin heated like a brand had touched it.
He didn't pull away.
Instead, he leaned in, his breath grazing the shell of her ear.
"You smell like borrowed bravery."
The words weren't cruel. They were intimate. Intolerably so.
Elira forced herself to meet his eyes. "And you smell like old blood and arrogance."
For a heartbeat — a single heartbeat — the corners of his lips curled.
Then it was gone.
His hand dropped, but he did not move back.
Instead, he reached toward her collar. She stiffened.
"Hold still," he said. His gloved fingers brushed the hollow of her throat, unfastening the simple clasp of the contract collar.
She gasped — but it wasn't undone. It tightened.
With a soft click, the metal re-formed around her neck, cold and alive, glowing faintly crimson beneath his touch.
She felt it — a pull, a thread of something unseen weaving through her pulse, linking her to him. To this place.
"What did you do?" she whispered.
"I bound it more... intimately," he murmured.
His fingers lingered at her pulse. He didn't need to touch her skin. The air between them was electric — static and shadow and something that felt like temptation.
"You're mine now, Elira," he said. "Not by your name. Not by your oath. But by your breath."
She shivered.
"You are not to call me Master," he continued, eyes tracing the curve of her throat. "That word is too common."
He finally pulled away. The air cooled again. She felt the loss of his nearness like a slap.
"I prefer Lord. And you..."
He turned.
"You are my pet."
Elira's lips parted, breath caught, heart slamming against her ribs.
"No," she whispered. "I'm not a thing to be owned."
"Then don't behave like one," he replied without pause.
He crossed the room to the mirror, tapping the frame.
"Come."
She approached warily. The mirror reflected her — pale, wide-eyed, the collar glowing faintly like an open wound. But what chilled her was not the sight of herself.
It was his reflection behind her — solid, motionless, too sharp for a man, too vivid for a ghost.
"You will stay within the manor unless summoned," he said. "Speak only when addressed. Obedience will keep you alive. Disobedience will amuse me."
He reached around her from behind — their reflections overlapping — and whispered at her nape:
"Run, and the walls will find you."
Elira felt it again. That awareness. The house shifting, listening.
She looked up — into his eyes in the mirror — and saw no cruelty.
Only possession.
And that was somehow worse.
He turned away, already finished with her.
"You may go."
She didn't move.
"Elira," he said again, softly this time. "This is your only grace. Take it."
And she did — walking out of that room like someone leaving a cage they hadn't realized was inside their own mind.