Chapter 5
The Serpent's Counsel
Lilith, Lucien's cunning advisor, observes the growing fascination with Evan. She senses an opportunity to exploit this perceived weakness and further her own ambitions.
The silence in my throne room was usually a weapon, a tangible entity that pressed down on any who dared to breathe its name. Tonight, however, it felt… different. Thinner. Stretched taut, like the skin on a drum about to split. My gaze drifted, as it often did now, to the figure seated in the shadowed alcove across from me. Evan Aris. He was a sliver of light in this domain of perpetual twilight, and the thought irritated me more than a thousand tormented souls screaming in unison.
He sat with a quiet stillness that was both unnerving and, I admitted to myself in the deepest recesses of my being, captivating. His hands were clasped loosely in his lap, his back straight, and his eyes, the color of a storm-tossed sea, were fixed on some unseen point beyond the obsidian walls. There was no fear in them, not the kind I was accustomed to seeing. There was a profound, almost aching, curiosity. A question that echoed the one gnawing at my own core.
Lilith’s voice, a silken caress laced with the subtle venom of a viper, broke the fragile peace. "He is… a peculiar specimen, wouldn't you agree, my Lord?"
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