It wants my love.
Lucien.
I kneel before the candle, my reflection quivering in the wax pool. “You can’t have him,” I whisper. “I’ll die before I let you.”
The air shifts. Cold fingers graze the back of my neck. I don’t flinch. I learned to my nightmarish cost that my fear gives it strength.
“You forced me to harm him but he didn’t die,” I hiss. “So you will not touch him now.”
The flame gutters low, then steadies, as if mocking me.
In the silence that follows, I hear Lucien’s footsteps echo faintly somewhere beyond the hall. That measured, predatory rhythm I know by heart.
He’s stalking me like he always does, because we’ve never been able to stay apart from one another, no matter my request for privacy.
It’s only a matter of time before he comes, and if he finds me here, he’ll smell it…the taint, the shadow that clings to me.
And then he’ll do what he’s always done.
He’ll destroy first, question later.
He thinks jealousy is his worst sin.
He’s wrong.
His sin is his mercy and his weakness is his love.
And when he learns what I’ve brought into his home, what festers in my blood, mercy is the only thing that can save either of us.
I blow out the candle.
Darkness swallows everything but the echo of his name on my lips.
8
THE SHACKLE-SOUL
LUCIEN
Dusk comes again far too soon but I’m grateful for it as I rouse, even though it’s not fully nighttime.
The storm that blew out of nowhere has passed, but the air feels charged…alive, restless. Something stirs in it. Something wrong.
I feel it before I see her.
A ripple in the dark, a prickle beneath my skin. The same way I feel blood before I smell it.
Elara.
She moves through the shadows of my halls like she belongs here…because she does.
I love her barefoot, wearing one of my silk robes belted tight at her waist. Her hair is still damp from her bath, her scent flooding the air. But beneath the lilies, there’s something else.
Metal. Smoke. Cold.
Like something ancient breathing through her.
…something else crossed through with me when I fled.
