✨ Bound in Dark Story One ✨ By E. Kane

The shadows felt her first.

They slithered along the obsidian walls of the Dark Court, whispering warnings in a language older than kingdoms. Torches guttered, their flames bowing toward the hallway as if the castle itself were kneeling in anticipation.

And then she appeared.

The Empress moved like midnight, given shape, each step deliberate, precise, commanding. Her gown rippled around her, threaded with silver sigils that pulsed faintly with her magic. Anyone else would have felt the weight of her presence like a blade against the throat.

But the male waiting in the throne room?
He felt it like a hand around his heart.

Nyx didn’t stand when she entered.

He dropped instantly to one knee.

The Warrior King of the Dark Court, horns curved, muscles coiled, control wound tightly around his body like a second skin, bowed with a reverence reserved only for her.

Yet those violet eyes… gods, they betrayed him.
Even in his kneel, they held fire. Challenge. Possession.
A promise that obedience and defiance were the same sin in his hands.

“Your Court whispers,” he said, voice gravel and velvet.
“They think you summoned me because you fear losing control of me.”

The Empress’s lips curved, a slow, lethal smile as she approached. The scent of her magic, starfire and storm, wrapped around him, calling to every ancient instinct in his bones.

“And what do you think, Warrior King?” she asked.

Nyx lifted his chin, the corner of his mouth crooking into a dangerous smirk.
“I think you called me because you missed the way I kneel.”

The audacity.
The honesty.
The truth she’d never admit aloud.

A single breath escaped her, quiet, sharp, undeniable.
His smirk widened.

She stopped before him, her fingers trailing along his jaw, forcing him to look up at her thoroughly. Her power coiled around his throat like an invisible leash, not choking, claiming.

“I summoned you,” she whispered, slow and deliberate, “because the shadows told me you were restless. And a restless king becomes a reckless king.”

Nyx rose without breaking eye contact, towering over her with a controlled, predatory grace. His shadows flared behind him like wings made of smoke and hunger.

“Then what will you do,” he murmured, voice deep enough to vibrate through her bones, “if I don’t let you tame that restlessness?”

A lesser ruler might have stepped back.

She stepped closer.

Close enough to steal his breath.
Close enough that her power slid over him like warm, lethal silk.

“Then I’ll drag you into the dark,” she said softly, “break the arrogance out of you, and rebuild you as mine.”

Nyx inhaled sharply, his chest rising with the effort it took to hold himself together.
Lightning crackled between them, silent, magical, intimate.

“Again,” he growled.
A plea disguised as a command.
A command disguised as surrender.

“You are mine,” she repeated, voice low and merciless.

The shadows quaked.

His knees nearly buckled.

But he didn’t drop, not yet. Not until she allowed it.
Not until the last of his pride burned out.

Nyx leaned in, his breath brushing her lips, his power coiling around hers in a storm of violet and black.

“You say it like it’s a threat,” he whispered.

“It is,” she replied.

And gods, it was.

Because loving her meant war.
Kneeling for her meant devotion that could topple realms.
Claiming her meant binding himself to something far more substantial than fate.

Nyx finally let his knees hit the stone, slowly, deliberately, intentionally.

Not obedience.
Not submission.

Devotion.

The kind that ruins empires.
The kind that saves them.
The kind that marks the beginning of a story whispered in every shadowed corner of the Court.

He bowed his head.

“Then command me, Empress,” he said.
“And watch how beautifully I obey.”

The throne room exhaled around them, shadows twisting like eager witnesses.

Because this was where it began,
not with love,
not with peace,
but with power, hunger, and a bond forged in pure darkness.