Page 76 of Sold to the Nalgar
She nearly choked on a bite of something red and tender.
“Why?” she demanded. “What’s so different about me?”
“You fight me,” he said simply. “Even when you’re afraid. You’re clever. Calculating. I canseeyou looking for weakness, even now.”
She said nothing. He wasn’t wrong.
“And,” he added, “you’re beautiful. Not just to look at—but here.” He tapped his chest. “You interest me. You wear my mark. You’ve accepted the change.”
Cecilia’s eyes narrowed.
“You forced that on me.”
“Yes,” he said. No apology. “And now it is done.”
She gritted her teeth. Her hands clenched under the table.
“Then you’d better make it worth my while,” she muttered. “If you don’t want me to stab you again, give me something to keep me interested. Let me learn. Let melive. I won’t rot in a cage.”
Zarokh studied her for a long, unreadable moment.
“My people are violent,” he said. “We are always fighting. It is our nature.”
She snorted. “So are humans.”
He raised a brow. “I find that hard to believe.”
“It’s true,” she said. “We’re constantly at war. Petty, brutal, senseless wars. Maybe our species aren’t so different after all.”
He seemed to consider that. “Perhaps.”
They ate in silence for a time.
Cecilia caught herself watching him—studying the curve of his mouth, the way he held his chalice, the angle of his jaw in the light. How utterlybeautifulhe was. The sheer presence of him.
It was… dangerous. Addictive.
Her fingers itched to touch him.
She hated that she was falling for him. That he was becoming more than her captor. That something in her—something feral and changed—craved him in ways that had nothing to do with logic.
This was madness.
And yet, madness had never tasted so good.
CHAPTER 39
The hall breathed stillness as he entered, a deceptive calm in a place where stone whispered of power and the ghosts of war lingered. The scrape of armor as his warlords snapped to attention, the rustle of silk as dignitaries shifted, it was a symphony of anticipation, and he reveled in it.
Zarokh ascended the obsidian steps to his throne, a god surveying a domain forged in his own image. Divinity was a claim others made for him; his power was carved from blood and bone, from the wreckage of those who dared challenge him.
He sat.
The throne was cool beneath him, a shard of Anakris's volcanic heart, laced with veins of metal that thrummed with a faint light in his presence. It was a monument, a stark declaration to all who entered: here, power reigned, embodied in form, voice, and name.
"Lord Zarokh," the chorus echoed as his subjects bowed, but his attention was a captive thing.
Beside him, she stood. Cecilia.
