Chapter 6: The Breaking Point Creeps Closer (Main Character’s Point of View)

Caspian was unraveling.

It was not obvious, not to the casual observer, but I saw it.

I felt it.

In the way his presence loomed closer at every gathering, how his patience—once his greatest weapon—had begun to fray at the edges. He no longer merely watched.

He lingered.

He waited for me to give him something.

A glance. A word. Anything.

And each time, I gave him nothing.

Not because I wished to torment him aimlessly—no, this was far more deliberate.

A lesson.

A slow, careful descent into craving.

He needed to understand what it meant to be denied.

To ache.

To desire so thoroughly that it left him breathless.

And so, I made certain that he never had enough.

We existed in a careful dance, invisible to all but the two of us. I would step into a room, and he would turn instinctively toward me. I would brush past him at an engagement, and his breath would catch, but he would say nothing.

He had not yet cracked.

But he was dangerously close.

The next fracture came at the opera.

It was an event of elegance and pretense, filled with people who cared more for who was in attendance than the performance itself. I arrived fashionably late, ensuring all eyes turned toward me as I entered.

I did not seek him out, but I knew he was there.

And when I took my seat in the private balcony, the velvet curtain only half-drawn, I saw him below, seated with a group of noblemen.

He should have been speaking with them. Laughing. Feigning interest in their idle talk.

But he wasn't.

He was staring at me.

He had abandoned all pretense of restraint.

Our gazes locked across the distance, and for the first time, I saw it.

The anger.

Not rage. Not fury.

Something deeper. Something helpless.

He did not understand what I had done to him.

He only knew that he was trapped in it.

The performance began, but he did not look away.

And neither did I.

I let the moment stretch, taut and breathless, until at last, I smiled.

A whisper of amusement. A silent acknowledgment of his suffering.

And then—I turned away.

Not abruptly. Not cruelly.

But with the slow, deliberate grace of someone who knew he could do nothing to stop me.

I did not look at him again.

But I did not need to.

Because I had already won.