Chapter 3: The Demon in Chains

ARIA'S POV

Waking with a start, she looked around the room to find herself in the medbay, all alone. Looking down at her arm, she frowns, remembering everything that lead up to this.

She got up to bandage her brand on her wrist and left the medbay. The halls were empty, except for the whispers lured her deeper.

Aria's bare feet carried her through the temple's lower halls, pass wards she had never been permitted to cross. The air grew colder, heavier, until each breath scraped her lungs like smoke. She knew she should turn back. She knew what the High Priestess would say--taint, corruption, damnation--but the voice inside her refused to let her go.

Witch. MIne.

Aria...

The iron door at the end of the corridor should have been impossible to open. It locks were carved with ancient runes, glowing faintly red as though they drank fire. But the mark on her wrist pulsed, hot and insistent. When she pressed her hand to the seal, the iron door shuddered like it recognized her. With a groan, it gave way.

A stairwell yawned beneath, steep and endless, plunging into the earth. She descended slowly, clutching her cloak around her shoulders. Shadows clung to the stone like living things. Every step echoed too loudly, as if the dungeon itself wanted to announce her arrival.

And then she saw him.

Chains glimmered in the torchlight--black iron veined with glowing runes--binding a figure to the far wall. For a moment, she thought he was carved of fire and shadow, a vision conjured by her own fevered mind. But when his head lifted, when molten eyes locked on hers, her nearly stopped.

He was... beautiful. Terrifyingly, impossibly beautiful. Board shoulders pulled taut against restraints, muscles shifting beneath skin faintly lit by fire running like veins. His hair was black as night, falling in ragged waves around a face too sharp, too perfect to belong to anything human.

The air grew hot, stifling, like every breath of his filled the crypt with flames. Aria's pulse stuttered. She should have screamed, should have run--but her eyes lingered. On the curve of his lips. The line of his throat.The chains biting into his skin.

"Witch," he said. His voice wasn't sound--it was touch. A velvet stroke inside her chest, sliding over her skin ike a lover's hand. The mark on her wrist blazed in answer, heat spirialing up her arm until she gasped.

She staggered back a step, clutching her wrist, but it didn't matter. The bond tethered her, pulling tighter the she resisted. His smile ws slow, predatory, as if he could feel her struggle.

"Do you feel it, little one?" he asked softly. "The fire? The hunger? That is the bond, little witch. You are mine now."

Her breath came fast, uneven. She wanted to deny it, to spit in his face, but her body betrayed her. Heat pooled low in her belly, an ache that terrified her. Every beat of the sigil sent a pulse through her veins that matched rhythm of his words.

"No," she whispered, but the word was weak, trembling.

His laugh rumbled deep in his chest, dark and rich, sending shivers up her spine. "Say what you like. Your body already knows the truth. Deny me, and you will burn for it."

The chains groaned as he shifted, the sound sharp as breaking bones.Sparks leapt across the runes, lighting his in a fevered glow. For a heartbeat, Aria swore she felt phantom fingers trail up her arm, curl around her throat--not choking, just reminding her that resistance was useless. Her breath hitched.

She backed away until her shoulders hit cold ston, heart hammering like a trapped bird. And still... she couldn't look away. HIs eyes held her, molten and merciless, promising danger and deliverance in equal meausre.

"Witch," he said again, voice lower, hungrier. 'You are my mate."

Her knees threatened to buckle. the crypt spun, heat and cold warring inside her. She pressed trembling fingers against the bandaged sigil seared into her skin.

The mark pulsed once--hard and final-- ansering him.