Chapter 3

Another journalist climbed to their feet. "Miss Voss, care to elaborate?"

"Oh, allow me." Vivienne's voice sliced in, honeyed and razor-edged at once.

She angled toward me, wearing a smile that stopped well short of her eyes.

"Elara, I want to express my gratitude for keeping Damien company these past few years. While he and I were separated, it eased my mind knowing someone was looking after him."

The way she phrased it — as if I were a hired caretaker she'd left behind to mind the house.

"Of course, blood-fated souls always find their way back to one another, don't they?" She gave Damien's hand a tender squeeze. "Damien and I were raised together. We survived our first bloodlust at sixteen, our first hunt through the old cities. Certain bonds are etched into the very marrow."

I caught Damien's jaw tighten. "Vivienne, that's enough —"

"I'm merely clarifying." She addressed the reporters, all wide-eyed innocence. "I wouldn't want anyone to form the wrong impression. Elara is a friend of the coven. That's all she's ever been."

A friend.

Three years, and I amounted to a friend.

The photograph in my pocket seared like a brand, burning through the fabric straight into my skin.

"Actually —" I rose to my feet. Every lens in the room pivoted toward me.

I drew the photo out and held it beneath the stage lights.

"This photograph was concealed inside a picture frame in the penthouse Damien and I shared. Perhaps Miss Ashford is correct — what Damien Ravencroft and I had barely qualifies as a relationship."

I let the photo fall toward the press row, my voice eerily level. "But allow me to clarify one thing — we didn't part ways three months ago. Whatever existed between us died the moment he told me his first lie."

"I wish you both eternal happiness."

I turned and walked off the stage. Behind me, questions detonated in a barrage, camera shutters cracking like rapid gunfire.

I didn't look back. Not once.

At the far end of the corridor, I sagged against the wall, fighting to slow my pulse.

Footsteps approached behind me. I didn't need to turn — the air had thickened with the scent of aged cedar and cold iron, the kind of pheromone signature a High Lord couldn't suppress when his composure fractured.

"Elara." Damien's voice was low, measured, and lethal. "We need to talk."

"There's nothing left to discuss."

"The hell there isn't." He closed the gap, one palm striking the wall beside my head. "What you just pulled in there —"

"What did I pull?" I met his eyes at last. "I spoke the truth. That's all."

"You're torpedoing the Ravencroft name —"

"I don't care!" My voice snagged in my throat. "All I know is that I've been deceived for three years."

His jaw clenched. "This situation is far more layered than you understand."

"There's nothing layered about it. You're binding yourself to her. You lied to me. That's the whole story."

"Vivienne is a coven arrangement —"

"Stop repeating that!" I shoved him hard, though he barely shifted. "You've known each other since you were children. You survived your first bloodlust together, your first hunt. This isn't coven diplomacy, Damien — she's the consort you want. Not me."

His entire frame went taut, his throat working around a swallow.

"Elara, hear me out." He moved closer, his hand lifting toward my face. "Give me two years. The binding is strictly for the alliance. After two years, I'll dissolve the covenant. We can —"

"Two years?" My eyes widened. "So this union was decided ages ago. You had every detail mapped out."

"You won't go without anything. A residence, personal security. I'll still —"

"Still share my bed while you go home and play the devoted immortal couple with your childhood sweetheart?" I laughed — a raw, splintered sound. "That's your proposition? Making me your kept woman?"

"Don't call it that —"

"Then what should I call it? Secret paramour? Plaything?" Tears finally broke free, scalding against my cheeks. "You'll seal the blood covenant with her at the Crimson Chapel, then slip into my sheets under cover of darkness. Every solstice gathering, every coven ritual, I'll have to disappear — you're negotiating the terms of your mistress like a merger, Damien."

Silver blazed through his irises. "I'm trying to construct a future for us —"

"You're trying to possess both." I evaded his reach. "Her alliance. My devotion. Congratulations, Damien. You very nearly succeeded."

"Elara —" His grip locked around my wrist.

I reached across with my free hand to peel his fingers away. He leaned forward, pressing me flat against the wall with his weight.

"You don't get to simply vanish —"

That was when his phone vibrated.

I watched him glance at the screen. I watched something shift behind his eyes.

He released my wrist.

"I'll come by tonight." He stepped back and adjusted his cufflink. "We'll talk properly."

"Don't trouble yourself."

He didn't respond. He turned and answered the call. "I'm on my way."

Of course he was.

Margot drove me back to the penthouse. I hauled a suitcase from the closet and began packing my belongings.

Last, I opened the nightstand drawer and lifted out a slim velvet case. Inside lay a single dark vial — a few drops of Damien's blood, freely given.

It was from last winter's longest night. He'd drawn a blade across his own palm in the Crimson Chapel and let the blood pool into crystal. Then he'd pressed the sealed vial into my hand and pulled me against his chest. "Keep it," he'd murmured. "So you'll carry part of me wherever you go."

I'd asked him then: "Does this count as a kind of bond?"

His silver eyes had been impossibly gentle in the candlelight. "Yes. I'm yours for eternity."

He'd said eternity too...

I snapped back to the present, pressed my lips into a thin line, and tipped the vial into the wastebasket. I wheeled my suitcase to the living room and sat down.

Since I'd resolved to end this, I wanted to do it cleanly — a proper farewell, face to face with Damien.

But he never returned that night.

The following morning, I was ripped from sleep by my phone buzzing relentlessly.

The gala had erupted overnight — though not in the direction I'd anticipated.

#DelusionalEx was trending at number one.

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