Lucien's vision dimmed—not from magic, not from fury, but from something more primal.
A single, foreign thought eclipsed the calculated storm of his mind:
I want to tear him apart.
The sensation crawled beneath his skin like embers under silk—intimate, savage, intoxicating. It was not anger. Lucien had known anger since birth. This was different.
This was the urge to maim.
To desecrate.
To feel flesh split beneath his hands.
To gouge out those insolent black eyes that stared through him. To rip that smirking mouth from his face, one arrogant syllable at a time. To peel the truth from his tongue and leave the carcass of audacity behind.
'How dare he speak to me like this.'
The blood in Lucien's veins no longer ran—it seethed.
No noble had dared. No foreign emissary. No court scholar or imperial senator. Even his father had never heard this voice from below and let it go unpunished.
And yet this—
