He knew he should tell her about his own dream, so like the vision she just described. She deserved to know she wasn’t alone in these visions. But telling her would mean admitting what he’d done with the witchblade.
And he couldn’t. Not yet.
“After the wedding, you mentioned a voice,” he reminded her, hedging around the true reason for his curiosity.
The mere mention of the wedding was enough to see some color returning to his wife’s cheeks—a pretty splash of pink to breathe some life back into her features.
“Oh.”
The single word hung in the air between them.
He pursued her hesitation like a hound chasing a scent trail. “What did the voice say, kirei?” But still, she refused to answer, merely shaking her head.
Aldric gritted his teeth. What if it was the same voice from his dream?
No. It couldn’t be. What would that mean? Witchcraft? Some new, dark magic?
Something hunting her? Him?
…Them?
“Sera,” he tried again, his tone firm. “Please. Tell me what it said.”
“It said I could not save you,” she finally snapped, a frantic edge to her words. Her blush deepened, burning in the firelight. He grew quite silent, quite still, unable to look away as she softly continued to explain, “It was…when we kissed.” His kirei clenched her eyes shut, as if trying to remember.
Or to forget.
“I felt cold,” she recounted, almost too quietly for him to hear. “And then I heard a voice…a voice that claimed I could not save you.” Her eyes fluttered back open, but still she refused to look his way. “Because you already belonged to it.”
Unbidden, a harsh laugh scraped from his throat before he could bite it back. Too loud in the closeness of the study.
Sera flinched away from him. “This is not funny, Aldric.”
His fleeting amusement—brief and brittle as it was—died instantly. “No, kirei,” he rasped, the words tumbling out rougher than he intended. He leaned toward her, instinct overridingcaution. His chair scraped softly against the floor. “I wasn’t laughing at you.”
Her chin lifted a fraction, stubborn as ever. “It sounded like you were.”
Hurt. He could hear the hurt in her voice.
“Sera…” Without thinking, he reached for her, his fingers brushing the back of her knuckles. And though she trembled at his touch, she didn’t flinch away, not even when he slowly wrapped his hand around hers.
Her skin was like silk beneath his callused fingertips—flawless, perfect, everything he was not. He was unworthy of touching her, of holding her. He knew that.
But he could no longer resist.
“Sera,” he tried again, luring her gaze back to him at last. Her eyes shimmered in the firelight—like wisps of smoke swirling behind glass panes, giving him the illusion that he could see within, that he could spy what she was thinking.
But he couldn’t. He couldn’t penetrate that veil.
“I laughed because that voice lied to you. I belong to no one,” he snarled softly, not at her—but at the memory. At the echo of that voice. At the idea of being claimed by anything in this world or the next. “And nothing.”
But even as he said it, even as the words tore from him like a vow, he heard the lie echoing within them.No. No, that wasn’t true. That hadn’t been true for some time.
The truth hit him with the force of a warhammer crunching against his sternum and ripping through his chest, carving out ahollow where her memory could reside once he tore everything else apart.
His gaze dropped to their joined hands, her smaller fingers enclosed in his, her pulse fluttering against his thumb. Swallowing hard, he dragged that thumb lightly across her skin—slowly, helplessly—committing the thrum of her heartbeat to memory.
“Aldric?” his kirei whispered. So soft. So sweet. So hopeful.
