Chapter 3: The Unbearable Hunger (Caspian’s Point of View)

I should not have followed her.

I should have let her words slide off me like I had done with every other noblewoman who thought she could hold my interest for more than a fleeting moment.

And yet—

I stood in the dimly lit corridor just beyond the ballroom, my hand curled into a loose fist at my side, breathing in the faintest trace of her perfume lingering in the air.

Patience.

She had said it as though it were something I lacked. As though it were something she could teach me.

The audacity.

The sheer, intoxicating audacity.

No woman had ever turned from me with such effortless detachment. Even those who claimed to despise me could not help but linger, waiting to see if I would chase.

But she—she had left without hesitation.

And worse still—I had let her.

I exhaled sharply, forcing my muscles to relax, smoothing a hand over my gloves to dispel the restless energy coiling beneath my skin.

I needed control.

And yet my mind betrayed me, replaying the way she had looked at me—not with lust, not with the coy, calculated flirtations I was accustomed to, but with something infinitely more dangerous.

Curiosity.

She was studying me. Not as a woman studies a man she desires, but as a predator studies something it intends to break.

A shiver traced the length of my spine, pooling at the base, hot and unwelcome.

I should have been furious. I should have resented the way she had dismissed me, the way she had spoken to me with quiet, effortless authority.

But fury was not what burned in my veins.

No.

What burned was something else entirely.

A slow, creeping hunger that I did not yet understand.

I had always been the one to set the terms, to decide when and where a game ended.

But for the first time in my life, I felt it.

The unbearable weight of wanting.

And worse still…

The terrifying realization that she already knew.