That night we share space. I lay my mattress next to his. He lies still for a long while before he turns toward me until our bodies are close enough to hear each other’s heartbeats. Chaste and charged — nothing more than limbs touching, breath shared. He doesn’t reach to hold me until hours later, when the darkness presses, and then his hand slides across my waist as naturally as midnight finds stars.
Sleep comes in fragments. I dream of flame again, but here the fire doesn’t burn, instead it radiates. My hands glow in the dark, touching cracked stone, curling into him, healing. He stands, bull form, colossal and tempered by flame. I watch him calm under its light. When daylight slashes through windows, I wake with electricity in my veins, heart shaking from what I imagined: that the power inside me might not be accident.
In the early hours before dawn, I sit by the window, knees drawn, watching shadows stretch across courtyard stone. Rafe is still asleep, head turned, chest rising. I trace his silhouette in moonlight. Outside, wind stirs branches; leaves whisper. I press my hand to my chest where I burned his papers, remembering ash and smoke. I realize I’m no longer afraid, not of what he is, not of what I might become.
I turn my head to him. He stirs, opens his eyes, sees me, smiles, and I know he’s seen me, all of me. Fear, curiosity, flame. And he still holds me, unwavering.
In this broken sanctuary among stone and olive and wind, I choose to stay.
15
RAFE
The dream begins long before I know I’ve fallen into sleep. It opens with heat and a distant roar. I find myself alone in a cavern of stone and flame. Walls pulsate with molten veins, shadows twisting like serpents. The air tastes of smoke and ash. That scent carries memory: my mother’s firelit lullabies, the smell of incense she burned when I was a child, the tang of blood on my father’s hands. In the cavern, I walk barefoot over cracked embers, stepping through flame without burning. The world hums with tension.
Then she appears: Kaleigh. She stands at the center, hair loose, a glow around her that makes the fire dim in comparison. Her eyes blaze amber in the dark. She does not tremble. She does not plead.
She just lifts her hand. Light spills from her palm and spreads outward. It flows over me, cooling, pacifying, calling out a name I’ve never spoken. And in that moment I shift: enormous, powerful, horned. My bones elongate, muscles swell. The roar in me becomes a sound that splits stone. But instead of fury, there is reverence. I kneel before her in molten light and press my mouth to her feet, claiming her without violence.
Then the cavern crumbles. Darkness swallows the fire. The roar becomes a whisper. I wake.
I open my eyes to stone walls, cracked sunlight, silence laced with memory. The villa is fragile around me. The broken window lets in wind and dust. Olive branches scrape against glass. Outside, dawn bleeds across the courtyard stones. Inside, the ruins echo the dream’s tremor.
I turn and see her curled beside me. Her hair fans across the mattress like night water poured. Her eyelids flutter—I catch the moment she sees me too. The shift from dream to waking is brutal; my ribs ache, my skin is tight, the bull still dim behind my ribs.
I sit up slowly, careful not to jolt the world. The mattress sags. The stone floor is jagged beneath my feet. Dust motes drift in light shafts. She watches me. Her eyes are wide but calm. I swallow, throat dry. My fingers tremble as I reach out.
“Good morning,” she breathes.
“Good morning,” I answer, voice ragged. The words echo in the quiet space. I shift closer, pulling her into my curve, pressing my body over hers just enough to measure how real this is.
I brush a hand over her cheek, fingertips ghosting skin. She leans into me as though she’s known this closeness always, as though our bodies have memorized each other. My dream, the fire, the shift—they all weigh heavy. But here, in her gaze, I find something steadier.
“I dreamed of you,” I say softly, humbling love and fear into the same breath. “In ways I’ve never dared.”
Her eyelids close a moment, as though she tastes that confession before she speaks. “Tell me,” she whispers.
I hesitate, heart pounding. Outside windows rattle. The walls sigh. The world cries in olive wind. I draw in a breath. “In the dream, I shifted fully. I was the bull. I claimed you with bone, muscle, power. But I saw you steady in flame. You touched me,calmed me. You didn’t run. You stood in light and let me be.” My voice softens. “You became mine.”
Her lips part. She presses a hand against my chest, over the spot of the Seal, where blood, oath, identity twist together in my flesh. Her fingers tremble slightly. Her eyes flick to my chest. Then back to mine.
She says, “If I take you, there’s no going back. You become mine forever.” She lets the weight of that settle between us.
I shut my eyes and lean down, kiss her again, slow and deliberate, trying to seal that truth in flesh. Her arms coil around me. She presses lips to mine, voice soft between kisses: “Maybe I want that.”
I pull back, forehead to forehead, breath mingling. The villa presses its ruin against us—cracked walls, fractured shutters, dust and silence—but this moment between us is sacred. Outside, birds stir. Branches scrape. The past calls, but here we are.
I stand then, hands still holding her. I carry her in my arms, feel every bone, every pulse. I unlikely as I ever see myself: vulnerable. The Seal shifts under my skin, a soft burn at my heart.
I set her down on the mattress again. I ease myself beside her. I wrap arms around her waist, she presses her body to mine. The stone beneath is cold, but her warmth radiates through bone and flesh. I bury my face in her neck, scenting linen, earth, rain, hope.
We lie like that for long minutes, breathing in and out together. I shift one hand to her cheek, then trace her jaw, then find her lips with mine again — not frantic, just claiming. The world outside fades. The villa ages into quiet worship. Each breath is prayer.
She murmurs against me, “Stay.” That one word holds the tremble of everything she’s choosing. I nod, kiss her temple. I vow without words to stay.
Morning stretches wide beyond broken windows. Stones gleam in pale sun. Olive branches bow outside. The chapel ruins loom beyond the courtyard, fragment and ghost. But here in this chamber of dust and light, we become something sacred. She holds me, steady as promise. I feel the Seal’s weight, but in her arms it softens.
I drift then into exhausted rest, arms still holding her. In dreams I return to the cavern of flame—but this time I wake to her, to skin, to breath, to blood, to oath redefined. And when she stirs in my arms, I choose again: her, always.
