Bound by the Mark of Lies (BL)-Chapter 370 - 364: The Emperor’s executioner.

The hallway outside the ballroom was quieter.

Muted music pulsed against the marble walls, distant and echoing, dulled by the thick drapes and layers of imperial stone. It was enough to make it feel like a separate world, one where the rules bent, just a little, and breath could finally catch.

Irina stood beside one of the tall windows, a single-gloved hand resting on the carved sill, the other lightly trailing the edge of her fan. Her cheeks were still flushed from dancing, hair slipping loose around her temples in soft curls. And behind her, Alexander stood like a shadow unwilling to fall.

He had followed.

Of course he had.

"You’re scowling again," she said without turning. "It makes people nervous."

"Not you."

"No," she agreed. "I like it, even if it makes me look crazy."

She looked at him then, fully, head tilted in that way she always did when she was sizing someone up, not as prey, but as a possibility. He was handsome, dangerously so, but most people never noticed. Not beneath the authority he wore like armor, not beneath the silence that choked every room he entered.

He was tall, almost as tall as Damian, though leaner, sharper in outline. His eyes were a shade of blue that only existed in frozen rivers and dying stars—cold, steady, and impossible to look away from. And his hair, pale and ashen, fell neatly back, never a strand out of place.

Glacial. That was the word people whispered. Controlled. Unfeeling.

But Irina had seen more.

"I heard three people call you a ghost tonight," she said casually. "One called you ’the Emperor’s executioner.’ Another said you didn’t have a heart, just a rune shoved in your chest."

Alexander blinked. Slowly.

"And yet you danced with Christian."

"That was theater." Irina said, shrugging lightly.

"For whose benefit?" His voice was low and smooth, like silk stretched over iron, but with that undercurrent that sent generals to silence and made the bravest court sycophants forget how to breathe.

Irina just raised a single blonde brow, wholly unimpressed. "I didn’t know I was expected to report my movements to you."

He didn’t move, but she could feel the tension pull tighter.

So she tilted her head, graceful and deliberate. Fine, she thought, he wants the truth?

"It was Christian’s idea," she said. "Astana won’t make a move unless pushed. Christian’s trying to change that. And I told him I’d help."

There was a pause, Irina watching Alexander’s still face and his jaw slightly twitching.

"There’s nothing between us," she added. "Unless you count the mutual enjoyment of trapping my brother."

Alexander chuckled lightly, an uncharacteristic sound that softened his stance.

It wasn’t much. Just a breath of amusement shaped into sound. But from him, it might as well have been a declaration of affection.

Irina turned her head slightly, sharp blue eyes catching the glint of candlelight, her expression a mix of delight and disbelief.

"You laugh," she said, a smirk playing at the corners of her mouth. "I didn’t think you had the muscles for it."

"They don’t get much use."

"Clearly."

She was smaller than him, everyone was, but Irina carried herself like she was seven feet tall on principle. The top of her head barely reached his sternum, golden hair swept up in a braided twist now unraveling at the edges. One curl brushed her cheek, and she didn’t seem to care. Her dress was pale green, tailored within an inch of her spine, shimmering faintly like frost under firelight.

Alexander stood like a statue carved to intimidate, all lean angles and sleepless eyes. His shoulders were cut broad, his stance always grounded, like he was waiting for something to strike.

But this time?

He moved.

It was subtle, shameless in the way only someone like Alexander could be, deliberate and slow, without blinking. His hand lifted, fingers brushing the small of her back like a passing thought, like he could pretend it meant nothing if she turned, if she stepped away. He didn’t wait for permission. He waited for rejection. A flinch, a stiffening of her spine, any change in that perfectly straight posture that might tell him he’d gone too far.

But she didn’t move.

She kept talking.

Blissfully steady, perfectly composed, her voice smooth and amused and just slightly breathless from the last spin on the ballroom floor. She didn’t notice, or chose not to, the way the distance between them disappeared with her silence, the way his chest met her back when he stepped in fully, scent brushing across her skin like a storm front shifting overhead.

His scent was something cut from winter air and sharpened with the kind of metallic edge found only in a blade drawn too often. It settled over her, threaded through her hair and the silk of her dress.

She didn’t stop him.

Her head tilted slightly as she went on, unbothered, golden hair catching against the line of his jaw.

She was saying something about Astana, something clever, something cutting, and he was barely hearing it.

Not because it wasn’t worth hearing, but because it was her voice that was doing the damage, soft and bright and terrifying in a way no war had ever been.

"You’re not listening," she said eventually, half-turning, catching his expression with that blue gaze that never missed a damn thing.

"I’m memorizing," he replied, voice lower than before, just a thread above silence.

That made her pause.

"Dangerous habit," she murmured, like a challenge, like she already knew how that sentence would end.

He didn’t move his hand.

Didn’t pull back.

"I’ve survived worse," Alexander said, and for once, it wasn’t a warning.

He shouldn’t have moved again. freewēbnoveℓ.com

But he did.

Greedy, that was the word for it. The kind of greed that didn’t flinch, that didn’t apologize for wanting something and taking it the moment it was offered, even silently, even unknowingly. His hand slipped lower, settling at her waist, the silk under his palm warm from her body and impossibly soft, the curve of her frame delicate only in theory.

She didn’t stop him.

Didn’t even glance down.

If anything, she leaned into the touch, barely, but enough. Enough that the space between them felt like it never existed. Enough that he could feel the rise and fall of her breath when she exhaled, quiet and even, like none of this was unfamiliar, like it belonged to the rhythm they’d always had but never spoken of.

Alexander let himself have it.

Let himself pull her in, closer than court protocol would ever allow, both hands now resting on her waist. His thumbs brushed over the ridges of her corset, slow, as if reminding himself she was real.

And then, shameless and unhurried, he dipped his head.

Not to kiss.

But to lean, just slightly, against her shoulder. Not possessive. Just... there. Breath against the curve of her neck, skin to silk, the faintest press of his temple to her shoulder. A gesture so quiet it should’ve gone unnoticed.

And it might have.

Had her father not turned the corner at that exact moment.

Paul stopped like he’d walked into the edge of a cliff.

His eyes locked on them, taking in the position of Alexander’s hands, the proximity, the way Irina didn’t move, didn’t even look surprised, and the way Alexander, still as ever, slowly turned his head just enough to meet Paul’s gaze with the kind of cold, unreadable calm that should’ve come with a warning label.

He didn’t remove his hands.

Didn’t step back.

Didn’t even blink.

Irina, finally, glanced over her shoulder, her expression somewhere between curious and amused, blue eyes unbothered.

"Oh," she said lightly, as if she’d forgotten the rest of the world existed. "You’re early."

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