Read Sample of "Throne and Collar": A Dark Romance of Psychological, Obsession Between a Duke and His Assassin

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Chapter 53

The siege had left marks on everything, but inside the silk chamber, the atmosphere was thick with a different kind of aftermath.

Scorch lines ran up the east wing's outer stones where the magics had burned hot and fast, and three windows were still boarded over with raw timber. Dante stood at the window, staring past the ruins of the courtyard. He wasn't looking at the splintered doors or the pale morning light; he was looking at his hands.

They were clean. He had washed them twice—once in the immediate rush of the aftermath, and again an hour ago when he woke from the first real sleep he'd had in weeks. The skin was pale, the knuckles unmarked. The raw, red chafing from the manacles in the hidden room had miraculously closed overnight, leaving only a faint, ghost-white memory around his wrists.

He pressed his right thumb into the center of his left palm, feeling for the phantom ache of the weight he’d been suspended by.

Behind him, the bed rustled. Dante didn't turn.

The sheets made that particular sound—the whisper of expensive linen that he had learned to recognize during the long hours of his confinement. He had learned a great many things about this room while he was bound within it. The way the candles on the left burned faster because of a draft from the northeast wall. The exact creak of the third floorboard. The quality of light at this hour, amber and low, which usually signaled the end of his "sessions" and the beginning of his recovery.

He had been here long enough for the silk to feel more like skin than the skin itself.

He pressed his thumb harder into his palm, seeking a sharp bite of pain to ground him. The bed shifted again. Bare feet hit the floor. He heard the soft sound of Lachlan moving through the room—not the deliberate, theatrical tread he used when he was holding the lead, but something looser. The unhurried movement of a man in his own space before he had put on the persona of the Master.

Dante watched his own reflection in the window glass. Lachlan's reflection appeared behind his, a dark silhouette against the morning glow.

Lachlan stopped a few feet back. He didn’t reach out to touch the lingering marks on Dante’s throat or the tension in his shoulders. He was just present, giving Dante the full, heavy awareness of his proximity without demanding the submission that usually came with it.

They stayed like that for a long moment, the silence heavy with the scent of spent incense and cold stone.

"The east wing assessment came back," Lachlan said, his voice morning-rough and intimate. "Structurally sound. The fire didn't reach the load-bearing sections."

"Good," Dante rasped. His throat felt tight, a somatic reflex from the collar that was no longer there.

"The library doors will need replacing," Lachlan continued, stepping an inch closer, close enough that his warmth radiated through Dante’s thin silk shirt. "Aldernon says three weeks. I’ve told him the privacy of this wing is the priority. I won't have workmen near your door."

Dante closed his eyes.

"Dante," Lachlan murmured, his reflection leaning in until his breath stirred the hair at Dante's nape. "Look at me."

"Mm."

Another silence.

Dante’s reflection watched him. He looked, he thought, approximately like himself. Same face. Same posture, shoulders pulled back by twenty years of training, a rigid discipline that had become part of his skeleton.

But his wrists felt too light. After the hours of weighted tension, the absence of the cuffs felt like a phantom limb.

"You've been awake for two hours," Lachlan said.

"You were watching."

"I was aware."

Dante turned his thumb over in his palm. The faint warmth from the amber seal was still there—had been there since the hidden room, since the moment he had pressed his hand against Lachlan's and felt the magic flare. It was a brand, invisible but searing, marking him more deeply than any physical restraint. He kept checking for it the way a man checks for a wound, seeking the comfort of the ache.

He dropped his hand to his side. "You knew," he said, his voice low. "When I came through the garden wall the first time. You knew who I was."

"Yes."

Lachlan moved then. It wasn't the unhurried drift of a man waking up anymore. It was the deliberate glide of the Master. Dante heard the soft clink of leather and rope being gathered from the bedside table.

"How long before that?" Dante asked, refusing to flinch as the heat of Lachlan’s body settled directly behind him.

"I became aware of your specific contract approximately six months before your first attempt," Lachlan said. He reached around, grabbing Dante’s right wrist. He didn't yank; he simply guided it behind Dante's back with a strength that brooked no argument. "I had a general awareness of your existence before that."

"General awareness."

"You were—notable. In certain circles." Lachlan’s other hand caught Dante’s left wrist, bringing it to meet the right. The rough texture of a silk cord began to bite into his skin, winding in a complex, expert figure-eight.

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