Wicked Obsession

Chapter 1

Lilith

Darkness stretches in every direction, thick and suffocating, pressing in with the history of too many unspoken horrors. Beneath me, cold stone drinks the last of my body’s warmth, a greedy leech sucking away my strength. My wrists burn where the shackles bite, ancient metal thrumming with dark enchantments that sink their hooks deep beneath my skin. They don’t just restrain—they drink. A slow, insidious drain, siphoning whatever scraps of power my cursed blood might muster.

I am not alone.

Footsteps. Measured. Unhurried. The deliberate pace of a man who has never known fear, who walks through the abyss as if he carved it himself.

I lift my head, refusing to cower. My throat is raw from screaming—useless, foolish—but I will not whimper. I will not beg. The towering shape halts before me, shadow swallowing shadow, his silhouette barely distinguishable from the gloom that curls around him.

A flick of his fingers, and the torches lining the chamber walls sputter to life, reluctant and shuddering, their crimson glow licking at obsidian stone. The light paints him in shades of blood and fire.

Maelrik Drazharel.

His name is a blade, a whispered curse that lingers in the mouths of the damned.

He crouches, bringing himself to my level with a smooth, effortless motion, as though gravity itself bows to him. Silver eyes gleam like molten steel, dissecting me with a scholar’s detachment. Beneath the glow, thin veins of crimson pulse, alive, shifting—power coiled beneath his skin, slithering through his veins, waiting to be fed.

I don't move.

He reaches out. One long, pale finger traces the curve of my cheek. It’s a mockery of gentleness, his touch cool, deceptively soft, gliding over skin marred by days—weeks—of bruises, torn flesh, old wounds barely sealed. The pad of his thumb brushes my bottom lip, the nail pressing just enough to draw the thinnest whisper of pain. He watches it all with fascination, his expression a mask of detached curiosity, of cruel indulgence.

“My little anomaly,” he murmurs. The voice of a scholar, not a man. As if I am nothing but a subject in one of his tomes, an equation to be solved, a mystery dissected at his leisure. “How long have you been hiding, I wonder?”

I say nothing.

A lie would be pointless. The truth would be worse.

He shifts, slow and deliberate, his movements precise, honed by centuries of control. He is a creature of study, of calculation, of peeling things apart layer by layer until he finds what makes them bleed.

And I am bleeding.

He does not need to cut me to make it so.

“Your kind should not exist.” His head tilts, like a man admiring a painting with one flaw marring its canvas. “Half-human. Half-Vrakken. That should be impossible.”

He catches my chin between his fingers, tilting my face to the flickering light. The movement is casual, effortless, as if testing me, gauging my worth with something colder than indifference. His thumb drags across my jawline, lingering at the pulse in my throat.

I know what he’s searching for.

A reaction.

Fear.

I will not give it to him.

I let my lips curl into something that is not quite a smile. Not quite defiance. Just teeth.

“You want to know how I was made?” My voice is hoarse, my throat raw, but I force the words out, relishing the way his silver gaze sharpens. “So do I.”

A slow blink. Amusement flickers in his expression—real, this time. The smallest crack in his endless, suffocating control.

“Fascinating.” His fingers trace lower, along the line of my throat, the pulse he knows should not be there, the warmth that doesn’t fit for a creature like me. “You do not ask why I have taken you.”

I let my head fall back against the wall, feigning indifference. A dangerous game, but one I must play. “Would it change anything if I did?”

He chuckles. Low. Deep. A sound that slithers under my skin, curling in my spine like a coil of smoke.

“No.”

His honesty is worse than a lie.

I inhale, lungs heavy with the chamber, with the magic that clings to the air like unseen fingers, clawing into my flesh, my bones, my blood. The same scent that has followed me for days, weeks—his. Copper and ash, old magic, power that does not whisper but hums in the marrow of the walls.

His fingers leave my throat, trailing lower, pressing against the fabric of my tattered dress, the remnants of something once modest, now an afterthought. He grips a fistful of cloth at the sides, considering, as if debating whether it should remain.

I hold my breath.

He feels it.

A smirk—so faint I almost miss it—tugs at the corner of his lips.

He does not tear the fabric. He does not touch my skin.

He lets go.

The moment shatters, as swift as it came.

Maelrik rises, unhurried, stretching to his full height, casting his shadow over me once more. The torches flicker, bending toward him like starving creatures seeking the warmth of his power.

“This will be… entertaining.” His voice is a whisper of silk, a caress laced with venom. “I look forward to learning what makes you tick.”

My jaw tightens.

He turns, already dismissing me, his crimson-marked hands clasped behind his back as he strides toward the chamber doors.

I hate the way the absence of his touch makes my skin burn worse than his fingers ever did.

The chains hum, their enchantments tightening, whispering their hunger against my flesh. The moment the heavy doors groan open, two figures step inside—dark elves, clad in robes marked with Maelrik’s insignia, their gazes void of curiosity, of humanity.

“Take her to the lower chambers.” His voice does not waver. “Prepare her for the first phase.”

The first phase.

The words settle like ice in my gut.

I fight the hands that grab my arms, that drag me to my feet, but the chains siphon my strength, rendering me weightless, fragile.

I am not fragile.

I will not be fragile.

The last thing I see before the doors close behind him is the slow, deliberate flick of his wrist. A gesture of control. Of patience.

Of ownership.

Maelrik Drazharel does not need to break things.

He lets them break themselves.