CHAPTER 134: ONE HUNDRED & THIRTY FOUR

It feels like the Summit of the Three all over again. Only this time, there are no humans and I’m seated on the wrong side of the table, with the wrong hands on me.

The grand hall has been set up for a dinner too lavish for four. Lilith, Rafael and I on one side of the table. And Lucien solely seated directly opposite of me on the other side.

We were dressed lavishly as well. Rafael had me cleaned up. But it was no different from another parade. Another sheer dress worse than anything he’s ever had me in. It is silver and shimmers as if drenched in water. It doesn’t fall around me freely. No. It hugs to my curves, while revealing that have nothing underneath. The neckline takes a desperate plunge, exposing the raw red skin where ’UNCLEAN’ is branded across the mark in bold letters. My hair is swept into an updo, my face, painted once more.

There is no fire in the hearth tonight. It is so unbelievably cold in here and I’m dressed like we’re in the thick of the summer, goosebumps prickling my skin and my nipples pebbled through the material from the chill.

Lucien has not stopped staring at the brand.

He has stared at nothing else but the brand since I was brought in.

His expression is glacial, disinterested, as if carved from the same ice that lives in his blood. For the first time since we were torn apart, we are in the same room, breathing the same air... and yet, I feel nothing through the bond. No warmth. No spark. Just that vast, oppressive darkness that always rolls off him. The smell of power restrained and the kind of danger that never announces itselt.

He looks like he could kill everyone in this room without rising from his seat. And gods help me, he has never looked more beautiful.

He looks colder, crueler, and infinitely more alive. Every inch of him radiates control, and every breath he takes feels like a gift. That I get to see this again. Him.

My heart is beating itself to death, and all I want, all I can think, is to touch him. Just once. To bury my face in his neck and feel his pulse, his skin.

But Rafael’s claws dig into my thigh beneath the table, a reminder of how quickly things can go south.

He does an exaggerated sweep across the banquet--platters and basket of food, pastries, cured meats, fruit garlands, and wine. So much of it. "Does our palette not entice you, King Lucien? Or does your kind indulge in rawer, darker things? Perhaps some freshly killed lamb from the butcher?"

The insult doesn’t seem to make a dent.

My gaze travels across the table again. Lucien’s skin is so pale, he looks frozen. Even his crushing violet gaze look like chips of ice as they remain fixated on my neck. "The bargain," is all he says.

"What’s the hurry?" Rafael muses, snapping his fingers twice at the maids in the corner. "Pour him some wine."

They do. But Lucien doesn’t touch the wine or the goblet. His elbows rest against the arms of the chair, and it doesn’t matter that he’s in armor from head to toe, he looks as lazy as he does when he’s wearing a bathrobe.

He tips a single finger forward, spilling the wine across the table. But as it migrates from the goblet, it becomes reddened ice.

Rafael’s shoulders tightens in alarm, the guards in the room drawing their swords, and from the ceilings, I hear the twang of bows.

Lucien murmurs dryly, unfazed by the men in the room, "I strongly suggest you get to it, pup."

Lilith rises slightly, hands braced on the table. The ice melts instantly, the wine hissing into steam. A drop falls, scalding my thigh. I gasp, jerking, but Rafael’s grip holds me still.

"You’re not the only lethal one here, Majesty," Lilith croons.

Violet gaze drop from my neck to where Rafael holds my thigh with bruising strength, before flicking to Lilith momentarily. "Ah," he murmurs dryly. "Forgive me. You have so little presence, I forget you exist until you speak."

Lilith’s amusement dims. Her green eyes run over the length of his shorter hair, faded on the sides in the same haircut he’d worn in my dreams. Down those eyes go, practically ogling him, the shadow of stubble formed under his chin, connecting to a shadowed moustache. Further down the colomn of his throat and the tunic underneath the armor stretched tight on his arms. Shameless desire flashes in her eyes. "Again, you seem to forget you are surrounded."

Elegant fingers tap against the table. "You must have your numbers screwed up. But again, you never were the smart Blackspire."

Ignoring her bristle at the insult, he makes a point in the general direction of the castle’s entrance. "I have your kingdom teeming with men, a tide of soldiers waiting to drown you. Compared to them, your force is a laughable cluster. Unless you have another woman within your ranks, who might be willing to risk her life to crush the ’ice’ underneath the foot of my legion, I don’t see how you make it out of here alive. Which is why I assume you have called for this meeting, using your cheap underhanded methods, as usual. Get on with it and do not bore me with your theatrics."

The table falls silent.

Rafael’s claws dig into my thigh beneath the table, sharp enough to draw blood, yet his smile doesn’t waver. Then he laughs softly and lifts his goblet, breaking the thick, brittle air. "You assume I care whether I walk out of here alive," he says easily. "But whether I live or die, my legacy remains. Another will rise in my place, and your kind will still be hunted. Killed. Perhaps I fall tonight, but so will you. And Valka."

He turns his head slightly toward me, voice dropping into something almost tender. "So if I die, I die without regret... save for one."

He reaches out and presses a palm, deceptively gentle, against my stomach. "That I never got to meet my heir."

The air changes. Lucien’s ice-hard mask fractures, the frost in his eyes replaced by a dark form of confusion that comes from denial. I feel his eyes burn holes into me, but I can’t look away from Rafael’s smug, poisonous smile.

The lie lands like the weight of an executioner’s axe, cutting through the room. And I remember what he told me earlier, in my chambers, when he’d come to outline my part in tonight’s "performance."

"He’s agreed to come for you even knowing it’s a trap," Rafael had said, lounging in my couch as though it were his throne, a pleased smile crinkling his eyes. "There are only a couple of ways this may go, Valka. The grand hall has been fashioned into a death trap for all who set foot inside. I don’t intend to let him leave alive. But if you do exactly as I say, perhaps--perhaps--I’ll strike a bargain that ends this war before it consumes us all."

"The last time I believed your lie, you gave the order to kill him anyway." My teeth gnashed together. "All you do is fucking lie."

"Maybe," he’d said with a smile. "But you don’t have another choice, Valka. You’ll sit. You’ll obey. And when it’s over, you’ll decide: stay, or leave with him. Just remember. If you choose to leave, we all die in that hall together."

Now, Lucien says my name. "Val?"

Just one word. Rough, low, and enough to undo me completely.

But I drop my gaze to the table. I can’t. I need him to trust me. To see past this. To know. To remember that he’d have felt it if I--

No. He wouldn’t have. The bond between us is a hollow ache, a line still fractured. If I can’t feel him from across this table, he must not have felt me in weeks either.

It all comes down to trust and I hope we’ve built something close to that in the last couple of months--the last century--that he’d understand what this is.

Maybe he wanted to. But when I finally lift my gaze and speak the lie Rafael wants me to with a steady, absolutely detached tone, something deeper than the bond between us fractures.

"We’re expecting."