Istretched beneath the covers, my limbs heavy, my eyes still closed. The remnants of a strange dream clung to me—shadows, heat, a voice I couldn’t quite place. But as awareness crept in, something felt wrong. The mattress was too firm. The air smelled different—cooler, tinged with cedar and something darker.
I opened my eyes.
This wasn’t my room.
I shot upright, shoving the dark-blue blankets off me. A long gray shirt brushed my thighs— one I didn’t recognize. My pulse spiked. The wound on my leg, the one that should’ve taken days to mend, was sealed over, leaving only a pale mark. Whatever potion Lorik had used on me worked almost as well as magical healing, better, in some ways. Dragontails weren’t taught potions, certainly not ones most Aurorics couldn’t manage.
And why would he save me at all? He’d shown nothing but contempt for my family, and a cold, practiced indifference toward me.
But that thought slipped away when I turned toward the window, where the first shards of dawn shimmered through the glass.
And I saw him.
Lorik Draventh lay asleep on a futon across the room, bare-chested, one arm bent beside his head. He wore loose gray pants that clung just enough to show the long lines of his legs. In the pale early sunlight spilling through the windows, every muscle in his arms and abdomen stood out in quiet, effortless definition. His caramel hair had fallen over one eye, softening the sharp edges of his face. Even asleep, he looked carved by the God of the Moon.
The room was so still I could hear nothing but our breathing, slow, steady and the thunder of my own heart, each beat quickening with the memory of last night. The rush, the need, the want still lingering in my blood.
My throat tightened. What was I doing? How was my mind going there again?
I had almost been killed, healed by a potion I barely understood and somehow the most unsettling part was this desperate, aching pull toward a Moonveil. I had ingested an aphrodisiac potion, and it had dragged me straight toward him, of all people. A pull that was forbidden, dangerous… cursed.
My dress lay crumpled by the door, stiff with dried blood. He must have changed me into one of his shirts while I was unconscious. The realization hit hard, he’d seen me in my underwear. Heat rushed to my cheeks before I stopped myself. I peeled off his oversized shirt and forced the bloody dress backon. Better to explain blood than walking out wearing something of Lorik Draventh’s. If Dragontail hadn’t killed me yet, that certainly would. The Solenhart throne had executed males and females for less, and not even my mother could save me from that kind of offense.
But before I could leave, my gaze snagged on the table.
The book with the serpent on the cover lay exactly where he’d left it, the same volume he’d consulted yesterday to save my life. I hesitated. Touching his things again felt like a breach of privacy. But that serpent, coiled, crowned, inked in obsidian, was the same sigil tattooed along his arm. A mark I had never seen on any noble house. Not in any archive. Not in any record.
It could have been nothing, an artist’s choice.
Except it wasn’t. A secret pressed in plain sight.
Maybe this was my chance to start unraveling whatever he was hiding. In a breath, I was at his desk.
The book was heavier than it looked, bound in soft black leather, nearly two inches thick. I opened it carefully.
Blank pages.
Every single one.
I flipped through them slowly, fingertip tracing the edges, certain I must have missed some hidden script or runes burned between the fibers but there was nothing. No ink. No clues. I must have lost my mind yesterday in the pain; there was nothing in this book; it was a blank notepad.
I flipped through them slowly, my fingertip tracing the edges of each page, certain I must have missed some hidden script or runes burned between the fibers but there was nothing. No ink. No clues. Just emptiness.
Maybe I had lost my mind yesterday in the pain.
Because this book wasn’t a record, a journal, or anything sacred.
It was a blank notepad.
I glanced over my shoulder. Lorik was still asleep, the steady rise and fall of his chest a quiet, dangerous lull.
When I turned back, something else caught my eye.
A small stack of books pushed farther to the back of the table; old and worn. At the bottom lay the book he’d once been reading in the library months ago, the one he’d snapped shut the moment he realized I’d noticed it, urging me, almost pleading, to look away.
Ashes of the Sun, Tears of the Moon.
The title gleamed in ancient gold lettering along the spine.
