Page 14 of Breaking Ophelia

To Rhett next. His teeth are perfectly white as he grins down at me; he mouths something filthy, but I don’t hear it over the blood thundering in my ears.

Bam is last before Caius. He gives me a solemn nod, and for a second, I sense something almost like respect.

Julian takes my hand as I move to him. He bends close, lips a half inch from my ear. “Last one,” he whispers, breath like an ice pick down my neck.

Caius.

I turn and face him. He doesn’t move an inch. He just looks at me from his throne, arms folded, one brow cocked in lazy expectation.

I drop my chin, but keep my eyes on him the whole time. I refuse to look away.

A moment stretches between us, elastic, painful. I feel my knees wanting to buckle, but I lock them straight. My breath rasps, but I don’t make a sound.

Something flickers in Caius’s face—a narrowing of the eyes, a twitch in the corner of his mouth. He raises his glass and drinks. The spell breaks.

The room erupts in mixed laughter, some real, some desperate.

But the thing they want most—tears, brokenness, the crack in the armor—they don’t get.

I stand there, heat blazing in my cheeks, eyes dry as bone. I refuse to touch my face, refuse to show even the ghost of a tremble.

Behind the mask, I’m boiling, humiliated, furious.

But outside, I’m all angles and stone.

I walk down to my table with slow, deliberate care, as if I’m not about to pass out or throw up. My boots hit the floor with a solid thump. I move back to my seat, refusing to look at anyone, not even the girl with the sapphire ring who now stares at me with something that almost resembles awe.

As I settle, I see, just for a moment, the way Caius’s fingers white-knuckle his glass, how his eyes track every line of my body, how he’s leaning forward now, shoulders hunched like he’s about to leap from the table and tear out my throat.

But he doesn’t.

Not yet.

The ritual is over. For tonight.

I eat the rest of my food. Every bite tastes like assholes and sand, but I finish the plate anyway.

It should be over. I should be allowed to shrink into myself, become air, or at least an afterthought. The hall has begun itsslow shift back to normal, plates clattering, forks gnawing at slabs of red meat, voices rising in the relief of an ordeal survived.

But he hasn’t let me off the hook.

I suppose I didn’t please hishighness.

Caius stands.

The act is so simple—just pushing back from the table, setting his glass down—but the effect ripples down the length of the room. Every conversation shudders into silence. Even the servers pause, halfway through pouring cream or clearing crumbs.

He moves with absolution, every step measured, the heel of his shoe hitting the marble with a sound that doesn’t echo but instead erases. He doesn’t look right or left, not at the girls who clutch their napkins, batting their eyes at him. Not at his own friends who track him with hungry, expectant eyes.

Just at me.

My spine tries to contract. I make it stay straight.

He stops a pace away and leans down, his hair falling over his face, his breath hot on my cheek, and for the first time I see him right up close, the edges of his beauty sharpened into something almost inhuman. His suit is immaculate, the fabric so dark itdrinks the light from the air. Up close, he smells like cedar and snow.

A shiver crawls down my spine as I resist the urge to bury my face in it.

“Ophelia,” he says. The sound of my name over his tongue does forbidden things to me and my eyes flicker close. I’m trying desperately to hold in the sudden lust hitting me like a ton of bricks.