Marienne's life was completely undone when her village went up in flames. Badly burned and her eyesight lost, she awakes in a strange place, with no knowledge of how she arrived there. Her savior was the enigmatic and alluring Victor, the Lord of Az...
Author's Note: This chapter, you might notice, is a bit of a deviation from how the story has currently been going. I hope you enjoy the insight this chapter (and others like it, when they arrive) will bring into the story and Victor's character. Also, on 8/3/24 Eyes of Azyron received its first 100 votes! I know this isn't all that noteworthy, but it was still a milestone I was keeping an eye on. Thank you all for your amazing support!
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I strode out of the garden, determined to leave Marienne and the uncomfortable creeping heartache far behind me. I fought to swallow down my anger and frustration, but who did I have to blame but myself? Of course I couldn't expect her to throw herself into my arms willingly, forsaking every teaching that had been drilled into her since she was first old enough to sit in a pew by herself.
My steps echoed through the foyer as I charged towards the stairs. A maid-I can't recall her name-scurried out of my way, her face wide and open with surprise. I could hear the hammer of her heart as I passed by. I felt the familiar itch of thirst in my throat, and the jump of her pulse in her neck caught my eye. But it wouldn't do to feed off my staff, not now. I couldn't expect to keep her alive with this emotional turmoil clouding my head.
I did, on occasion, use them to slake my thirst. They never seemed to protest it, due to some misguided loyalty towards me. Perhaps it was the knowledge that I could kill them as easily as breathing, and they looked upon me almost as a god for not doing so on a whim. Had the maid known what I'd been thinking of doing to her just then, maybe she wouldn't feel so enamored towards me.
Slamming the door to my private chambers, Marienne's face drifted up out of memory again. Her raven dark hair, pulled back from her face and elegantly braided, and her eyes, the color of the sky on a rainy afternoon, left me breathless in a way I couldn't fully understand. I longed to run my finger across her delicate and well formed jaw, to feel its firm edge, and ask her whatever she had learned in her life that made her jaw set so stubbornly. I wanted to kiss the answer out of her soft, petal pink lips and feel their full shape against mine–
