Damien stood behind her, his arms a familiar, heavy weight as he pulled her back into the hollow of his chest.

Mia watched the fireworks blooming across the sky, the vibrant bursts reflecting in her soft gray eyes. For a heartbeat, she felt the world tilt into a hallucination. She wanted time to crystallize, to stop exactly here.

The words she had been harboring finally escaped in a quiet, melodic breath.

"Ancient times were better," she murmured. "Time moved so slowly it almost felt stagnant. For one woman, a war like Troy could drag on for ten years. From a certain perspective, trading a decade of blood and fire for ten years of entanglement... that's a breathtaking luxury."

Damien, with his Ivy League intellect and his razor-sharp perception, heard the subtext immediately.

"You think," he said, his voice flat and devoid of its usual mockery, "that we aren't even capable of ten years?"

Mia didn't answer him directly.

A heavy silence settled between them, broken only by the distant crackle of the pyrotechnics. Finally, she called his name.

"Damien."

"Yes?"

"I heard a rumor," she began, her tone candid, as if reciting a dark fairytale. "They say that before you were ten years old, you had already tasted the ten most lethal narcotics on earth. Is it true?"

Damien's profile remained still. He looked down at her with a look of dark, playful curiosity. "And who told you that?"

"The rumors are endless," she said. "It's impossible to separate the myth from the monster."

Damien didn't deny it. He shrugged with a languid indifference, a small smile playing on his lips. "I was young and undisciplined. I was just... playing."

Mia let out a soft laugh and shook her head.

"...You don't strike me as the type of man who has ever truly played."

Damien's eyes darkened with interest. He leaned down, burying his face in the crook of her neck, his lips grazing the pale skin of her shoulder.

"...Then what do you think I was doing?"

Mia didn't pull away from the heat of his desire. She stood her ground, offering him the truth he never expected.

"Self-control."

Damien paused. He lifted his head, his pale gray eyes locking onto hers with a predatory, dazzling intensity.

"Oh?"

"You weren't playing," Mia said slowly, meeting his gaze. "On the contrary, you were being far too disciplined. To know your enemy is to win a hundred battles, but for a man with your resources, knowing the enemy is easy. The only difficult part is knowing yourself. You needed to find your limits. You needed to know exactly what could make you lose control—find it, and then formulate a plan to defeat it."

She smiled, but the expression was weary, an admission of her own powerlessness.

"A ten-year-old child with that much calculated malice... it's a terrifying thing to imagine."

Damien's grip on her waist tightened. He spun her around in one fluid, violent motion until she was forced to face him. He leaned down, his face inches from hers, his expression an agonizing mix of devotion and sharp, lethal focus.

"You have such a talented tongue, Mia," he whispered, his lips hovering over hers. "Do you have any idea... no one has ever dared to say those things to me."

Mia saw the frightening light beginning to burn in his eyes, but she didn't flinch.

"I'm not trying to dissect you," she defended softly. "I'm only trying to find a reason for my own existence in your world."

Damien's fingers dug into her waist, the force of his possessiveness bordering on pain.

"Tell me your purpose, Mia. Say it."

"Am I the eleventh poison?" she asked, her voice trembling. "The one you're using to test the final limits of your self-control? Something to be tasted, mastered, and then... quit?"

She admitted it to herself: she had a purpose. She wanted one true word from him. She asked for so little—just a single sentence of truth—but it was the one thing the Sovereign never gave.

"There are usually reasons for loving someone," she said, her eyes filling with a profound, quiet grief. "But with you, there are none..."

He had claimed her the moment they met. His feeling for her was a deep, trackless abyss—a gravity so heavy that a single touch meant an instant, catastrophic fall.

She could only think of one explanation. He had tried everything in this world that was addictive, except for sentiment. She was his final experiment. Once he proved he could love her and still remain the Sovereign, he would cast her aside.

Damien straightened his posture.

He offered no defense. He simply smiled, the wicked, flamboyant mask fading away to reveal a rare, unsettling purity. He reached out, tucking a lock of her dark hair behind her ear, his voice turning into a low, velvet rasp.

"After the New Year... if you want to go out and work, you should."

Mia's head snapped up, her eyes wide with shock.

He never allowed her past the gates. The idea of him letting her work independently was unthinkable.

Damien didn't explain himself.

"One condition," he murmured, his thumb grazing her cheek in a gesture of icy indulgence. "You must be home by six o'clock. If you aren't, my people will retrieve you immediately. Don't violate the terms, Mia. You know that for me, finding a person is not a difficult task."

Mia stammered, "I... I didn't say those things to complain. I wasn't saying you treat me poorly. I just wanted a reason..."

"I need you."

The fireworks erupted above them, a magnificent, violent bloom of light. Under the kaleidoscopic sky, she finally saw a glimpse of the real Damien Lancaster.

"I need you. Is that reason enough?"

The display was beautiful. No—there were two displays. One in the heavens, and one on the earth. It blurred the lines between the celestial and the carnal, leaving her lost in a haze of intoxicated desire.

From that night on, Mia Clarke would always remember the way the moonlight looked—so bright it felt fraudulent. She would remember the sky, so clear it felt empty, and the scent of spring begonias, so seductive it felt desolate.

She would always remember the heat of Damien's body through his silk shirt, radiating into her heart until every other source of warmth in the world felt like ice.

And she would always remember his voice, arriving at her ear like a hypnotic spell, a curse that ensured she would never want to wake up.

I need you.

Because of those three words, Mia Clarke would spend the rest of her life believing that the world would never end, and their shadows would never part.