Chapter 21: Sweet Poison

Anne had convinced herself that she should hate him. After all she had endured, after every lie, every manipulation disguised as affection, she would have to be repulsed by Lucian.

But then, he would speak. He would look at her with those dark eyes full of intensity, with a tenderness that seemed to exist only for her. And Anne would fall again.

-You have no idea how special you are to me," Lucian whispered one night, his fingers caressing her cheek with a softness impossible to associate with a man like him.

Anne closed her eyes. She wanted to believe him. She wanted to cling to those words as if they were true, as if he hadn't been the architect of her confinement, of her suffering.

But worst of all, a part of her already had.

Lucian enveloped her in his world with unsettling skill. With sweet gestures, with promises that sounded too beautiful to be false. He would bring her books he knew she liked, watch her when he thought she didn't notice, as if her every breath mattered to him. Sometimes, in the moments when he held her in his arms and murmured things in her ear, Ana felt like the world could shrink to that instant.

And that was terrifying.

For though he wasn't keeping her in chains, though he wasn't beating her or raising his voice to her, Lucian was binding her with something far more dangerous: his love.

-You're everything I've ever wanted, Ana," he said one night, his lips barely brushing her ear. I'm not going to let you go.

Ana shuddered. A part of her knew those words were a sentence. And yet, when he kissed her, when he held her with the gentleness of a man in love, she knew it was too late.

Lucian was poison. And she had drunk it to the last drop.