Page 16 of Queen

“You talk like I broke you,” I whisper, sharp as glass. “But you’re the one who begged me to sign my soul away.”

He lifts his hand, slow, as if to brush hair from my cheek. I catch his wrist midair, fingers clamping tight. His pulse is steady beneath my grip, infuriatingly calm.

“You don’t get to touch me like that,” I snap.

He smiles. Not cruel. Not warm. Just certain. “I already did.”

My nails bite into his skin before I release him and step back. Rage burns through me, but he’s still unreadable, still standing like a wall I can’t knock down.

“This is the last time I play nice, Zina.”

“Then stop pretending,” I shoot back.

The silence that follows is heavy. Full of ghosts, unfinished wars, and years of unsaid truths.

“You’re mine now,” he says finally.

“I’m nobody’s.”

A long beat.

“You’ll be safer if you stop lying to yourself.”

My jaw tightens. “And you’ll be safer if you remember I don’t belong in a cage.”

He drains the rest of his glass in one swallow, then turns his back. Dismissal. Or retreat.

I walk to the door. My hand lingers on the knob. I should leave. I should save the last word. But I don’t. I throw it at his back, sharp as a knife.

“Play your game, Emiliano. But I bury kings, too.”

The Necklace: His First Claim in Public

The room hasn’t changed. Neither have the men lining the far wall, pretending they aren’t eavesdropping on every look, every word.

But something has shifted.

The air feels heavier. Charged. Like static before a storm.

Emiliano stands beside the hearth, backlit by flames like some dark king in his cathedral of violence. He lifts one hand in the smallest of gestures, and immediately a soldier approaches—a man with a scar cutting down his cheek, eyes polished and dead like steel. He carries a black velvet box as though it weighs the world.

It does.

My world. My freedom. My leash.

Emiliano takes it without looking at him. Doesn’t thank him. Doesn’t even acknowledge the man exists. The box opens with a quiet hiss of hinges, and inside lies the collar. Thin white-gold chain, tiny diamonds glittering like the teeth of a trap. Subtle. Refined. Cruel.

Not jewelry. Branding.

“This isn’t a gift,” Emiliano says, his voice slicing through the room. “It’s proof of loyalty.”

The men shift slightly, waiting—expecting my refusal, my humiliation. They want to watch me choke on it. He’s putting me on display like a prize he’s dragged back from the battlefield. Like property.

My nails dig crescents into my palms. Pride burns up my throat like bile. I want to spit, to laugh, to tell him to shove his diamonds down his throat. But then I glance at them—three soldiers watching me with calculating eyes, waiting for the queen to falter.

I can’t falter. Not here. Not now.

So I lift my chin, steady as steel, and I say, “Put it on me, then.”