Page 28 of Claimed By Stone
He pulled me closer to him. I was used to the orc hands being gentle and loving, not bruising and painful. My head and heart were a jumbled mess.
"Why are you in the war room during the feast?" he growled at me.
He clearly thought I was an intruder; maybe I was, but all I knew at that moment was that I needed Thavros. “Wait—no—please, I can explain?—”
But the guard didn’t listen. He only shouted for backup, like I was some intruder, as if I was still the weapon someone had sent here.
"Please, get Thavros. He will tell you! Please get Thavros!"
They called for Khuldruk instead.
And then everything began to unravel.
I barely had time to scream before the guards seized me. My bare feet scraped against the stone as they dragged me through the winding tunnels, too shocked to resist and too frightened to speak. I didn’t understand what was happening—why they were treating me like an intruder, a threat.
"I belong here!" I shouted, twisting in their grip. "I’ve been here! Ask Thavros! He’ll tell you!"
They didn’t listen.
Of course, they didn’t.
No one ever listens when your voice shakes.
They tossed me into a cell like I weighed nothing. My body hit the stone floor hard, my elbow scraping against rough rock. I scrambled to my knees, breath heaving, eyes wild.
The door clanged shut.
Darkness closed in.
I reached for the bars, the metal biting into my palms. “Please. I don’t know what’s happening. Just get Thavros. He’ll explain everything.”
But they were already gone.
I didn’t know how long I sat there—just that my skin was trembling with too much awareness. I was real. More real than I’d ever been. And somehow that made this worse.
Footsteps echoed. Heavy. Deliberate. And when the door at the end of the corridor opened, I knew who it was before I saw him.
Khuldruk.
He was broader than Thavros. More imposing. The kind of presence that didn’t require volume to dominate a space.
He stopped just outside the bars and looked at me, not with rage, but calculation. It was worse.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
I hesitated.
He narrowed his eyes.
“Seraphina,” I said. My voice cracked, but I didn’t flinch.
“And what are you, Seraphina?”
I swallowed hard. “A Godling. I think. I—I don’t remember everything yet. But I didn’t break in. I’ve been waking in the war room. With Thavros.”
His brows lifted at that.
"With him. Alone?"
