Chapter 58 Blood And Power

• The morning light bled into the room, casting long, jagged shadows across the marble floor. The silence that had settled between Damien and Ivy the night before was like a weight, heavy and unyielding, pressing down on them both. They hadn’t spoken much since their confrontation by the window, and though their bodies had barely touched, the air between them crackled with a volatile energy—an energy that could only come from two souls bound in conflict, and yet irrevocably tied to each other.
• Damien was already awake, sitting at his desk, his back to her. The cold glow of the laptop screen lit his sharp features in an eerie light, but Ivy couldn’t focus on that. Her mind was still racing from the night before—the things he had said, the things she had confessed. She had opened herself up to him, made herself vulnerable in a way she hadn’t intended. And now, as the first light of morning filtered through the heavy curtains, she wondered if she had made a mistake.
• “Why don’t you just kill me?” she murmured, her voice thick with the remnants of unshed tears and unspoken anger. The words escaped her lips before she could stop them, as if her heart had burst open without her permission.