The hair on my arms stood up.
My parents look confused.
My men look angry.
And somewhere deep in the tunnels… a shadow listened.
Chapter 27
Torren
Ishouldn’t have followed her.
I know this.
I know it with the same certainty that I know how to kill a man in the dark without leaving a sound.
But for me, knowing something and following it are never the same.
She walks ahead of her men toward the darker fork in the caverns, her shoulders tight with the weight of everything she’s just learned—her family alive, her world no longer hers, the Dark Factions hunting her relentlessly.
Power clings to her skin like starlight, just like a fucking beacon.
And I… I am drawn to it like a starving man.
Her reunion with her parents is still echoing in my skull. I watched the way she crumbled into their arms. Watched her men form a perimeter around her without needing a word. Watched her cry, breathe, break—and survive.
And something inside me hurt. Something I shouldn’t feel.
I stepped out of the shadows before I could stop myself. “Reverie.”
She flinched and turned sharply to face me. Her breath caught, and her eyes remained glassy from crying. The light from the crystals cast a soft blue and rose gold hue over her.
She looked like a memory I couldn’t quite grasp and a future I can’t have.
“What do you want, Torren?” she breathed, voice shaking slightly and full of suspicion.
I should tell her the truth. That I want things I have no right wanting. That I’m dangerous. That I’m unraveling.
Being near me is a mistake she’ll regret.
Instead, I lie the way I always do. “I wanted to be sure you were alright.”
Her eyes soften a fraction, which is worse.
So much worse.
“Everyone keeps watching me,” she whispered, “but I just… I needed a second.”
I act before I think—instinct taking over. The serum I was given warping my emotions. My control is slipping more and more as the years go by.
I close the distance.
Slowly.
Carefully.
Like approaching something sacred or, in her case, possibly feral.
