Page 21 of His Emotional Support Snack

I shatter.

A violent, shuddering climax rips through my body, my muscles seizing as the release crashes over me in waves. My legs shake, unable to hold my weight, kept upright only by the mantelpiece and the unyielding bracket of his hands.

He drinks the pleasure from my skin until the worst of the trembling subsides.

Slowly, Zuirvih rises back to his full height. He hooks his long fingers under my chin, forcing my head back against the marble mantelpiece to look into his face.

"Look at what I do to you," he whispers, his breath hot against my bruised lips. "A mere whisper of magic, and you are entirely undone. You can pretend to hate me, little rat, but your body knows exactly where it belongs. It belongs to me. Every shudder, every drop of this sweetness is my property."

I slump against the marble mantelpiece, my chest heaving, my lips bruised and swollen. My legs tremble, barely supporting my weight. The raw, aching arousal pooling in my core is a humiliating, devastating reality.

Zuirvih stares down at me. His chest rises and falls in rapid hitches. The flawless mask of the Deceiver is nowhere to be seen, replaced by a dark, consuming hunger. A single drop of my moisture glistens on his lower lip.

I look at the hand braced against the marble near my head.

His long, silver-ringed fingers are shaking.

A violent, visible tremor he cannot hide.

14

ZUIRVIH

The high council chamber of Vhoig hums with the terrified, suffocating silence of absolute submission.

I stand at the head of the obsidian table, adjusting the gold cuffs of my midnight-blue tunic. Purple static arcs lazily between my knuckles, a careless, deliberate display of the lethal magic I command. The toxin is dormant. Erased. I project a terrifying, unyielding vitality that suffocates the air in the room.

My uncle, Lord Zatori, sits three chairs down. His serpentine eyes narrow, fixing on the flawless skin of my face. The sickening green glow of his Serpent magic flickers weakly, drowned out by the crushing pressure of my restored core.

"The trade routes through the Lowtown belong to the Tagnadaet house." I purr the decree, my voice vibrating against the stone walls. "Any interference from the Serpent faction will be met with immediate, catastrophic violence."

Zatori’s jaw clenches. He does not argue. The political maneuvers he spent the last ten years orchestrating—the slow, calculated vultures circling my supposed deathbed—are reduced to ash in a single afternoon. I am untouchable.

Yet, as the council adjourns and the nobles scatter like frightened vermin, the victory rings hollow. The political supremacy of Vhoig, the power I bled a decade to maintain, suddenly tastes like ash on my tongue.

My thoughts do not linger on trade routes or executions. They drift, with treacherous, agonizing inevitability, back to the western wing of my estate.

They drift to her.

Over the past two months, the feral human from the slums has staged a quiet, ruthless coup within the walls of my own home. She does not wield magic. She does not issue decrees. She simply exists, and the gravitational pull of that existence drags me relentlessly into her orbit.

I return to the estate hours before the sun dips below the harbor line.

I do not summon Commander Jarek. I bypass the study and walk directly to the sweeping glass archways overlooking the private courtyard.

The afternoon light catches the spun-glass petals of the carnivorous blossoms, throwing fractured rainbows across the crushed pearl stones.

Esme sits on a stone bench, the hem of her emerald silk gown pulled up over her knees. Kalan scrambles through the manicured grass, his hair a bright flash against the dark green. Vesper, the vicious Batlaz trained to rip the throats from intruders, rolls onto his back, allowing the boy to bury his small hands into the thick black fur.

I brace my hands against the glass, my breath ghosting over the pane.

She laughs. It is a rare, unguarded sound that cuts through the sterile, ancient silence of my estate. A genuine, bright note of joy as Kalan tackles the Batlaz.

A strange, unfamiliar warmth blooms in the middle of my chest. It is not the burning agony of the Marrow-Rot, nor the volatile heat of power. It is a tight, aching pressure that constricts my lungs and makes my hands tremble.

The obsession is a living, breathing parasite, and I am a willing host.

I require her blood to keep the necrosis dormant. A few drops a day, a clinical transaction of survival. That was the logic I used to justify keeping her locked in the master suite.