Arastella POV
Ever since that horrific afternoon in the garden, a cold, persistent dread lived right beneath my skin. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't breathe properly. Every time Kiono appeared, my pulse spiked into a frantic, erratic rhythm. With the heavily enchanted dampening bracelet locked tight around my wrist, I was completely powerless—a defenseless ghost in my own skin. He could slip into my mind, override my body, and pilot me like a puppet whenever he pleased, leaving me with blank gaps in my memory and no way to fight back.
He was subtle. He would pass me notes in the hallways or whisper instructions into my ear while pretending to pour my wine. His entire plan was moving into place: he was deliberately building a bloodthirsty rebellion on the outside while simultaneously flooding Castel's mind with visions of the rising threat. It worked frighteningly well. Castel became so obsessively fixated on the impending revolt that he never once thought to search for Astelion.
Yet, despite his growing madness, Castel kept every single word of his promise to me.
Every week, vast shipments of food, medicine, and magical resources were funneled directly into the Void to sustain my surviving family. He was protecting my bloodline while the rest of the world screamed for his head.
Slowly, I began to open the heavy doors of my heart to the tyrant who held my cage. I found myself laughing at his dry, cheesy jokes over quiet dinners. I fed him grapes from my own fingers while he sat slumped with exhaustion on the edge of the mattress. I let him rest his heavy, head in my lap, listening as he talked about his horrific past while I quietly shared sweet, distant memories of my own childhood. I cuddled against his broad chest in the dark, feeling the warm, steady thrum of his heartbeat beneath my palm.
He was letting his guard down. The terrifying, Mad King was softening under my touch, exposing the broken, lonely boy hidden beneath the armor.
And it terrified me, because my own mind was becoming a chaotic battlefield. I was trapped between two unbearable paths: did I really want to proceed with this tragic revenge, or did I want to bury the pain, stay by Castel's side, and build a real family with the man who was actively locking mine away? I craved his presence. I found myself staring at his sharp jawline, his broad shoulders, his long fingers—desperately aching for him to pull me closer, to touch me, to burn away the cold horror of Kiono's games. But I was too afraid to voice the storm raging inside me.
Until the afternoon the dam broke. We were standing in his private quarters, the heavy silence between us thick with unspoken words and months of dangerous, suffocating tension. Out of nowhere, Castel stepped into my space, cupped my face in his large, warm hands, and pulled me into a deep kiss.
Electric shockwaves tore through my nervous system. I didn't pull back. I didn't hesitate. I wrapped my arms tightly around his neck and kissed him back with a fierce, ravenous hunger that made my knees go weak.
Before I could even process the sudden shift, I was sitting on his dick feeling every inch of him deep and hard within me, my dress bunched above my hips as I rode him, my head thrown back in pure bliss. Castel's face was buried deep in the crook of my neck, his lips pressing hot, kisses against my skin while his large hands gripped my waist, lifting and driving me down onto him with a steady rhythm.
"Arastella..." he growled into my skin, his voice thick, rough, and dripping with desire.
"Castel—god, Castel!" I gasped out, my fingernails digging ruthlessly into the muscle of his back, drawing blood through the fabric of his shirt as the overwhelming pleasure crashed over me in hot, unrelenting waves.
He was so big, so possessive, completely filling the hollow void inside me until nothing else existed. The sheer power of his release fused with mine, triggering his magic to flare out of control. The entire castle began to violently tremble.
Frniture lifted off the floor, crystal goblets shattered, and heavy stone archways groaned under the crushing weight of his aura. Shrieks of terror echoed from the guards and maids down the corridor as floating objects spun wildly through the halls. But inside the room, locked in each other's arms, the world could have ended and neither of us would have cared.
I thought I would be able to stop myself after that first time. I thought it would satisfy the itch. But I was utterly wrong.
That one taste was all it took to turn a quiet ember into an all-consuming addiction. I craved him with a terrifying, desperate fever. Over the days that followed, we were completely insatiable, tangled in the sheets, pressed against the cold stone walls, losing ourselves in a wild, wicked fog of skin, sweat, and breath. We couldn't stop.
During those blur of days, I saw less and less of Kiono. But the truth was, my mind was too cloudy, too intoxicated by Castel's touch, to care where the shadow man was or what dark plots he was spinning. I couldn't even think straight about my family in the Void.
I was drowning in Castel. And as I laid against his chest in the dark, watching his chest rise and fall while my fingers traced the sharp line of his collarbone, a sickening wave of realization hit me.
I finally understood exactly how Astelion had felt. I was falling for the enemy—just as fast, just as hard, and just as hopelessly.