“Ready to go into the rift?” she asked, her voice steadier than she felt.
He nodded once, already reaching for the rope in his pack. They worked in practiced synchronization, securing the line between them with efficient movements that spoke of trust earned in battle. But when her fingers skimmed across his abdomen as she knotted the rope around his waist, his inhale was too sharp and too revealing.
He looked at her then like he remembered every second of their kiss—the careful restraint, and the way his dragon had fought his curse so they could both lose themselves completely in that perfect moment. The heat in his storm-gray eyes made her pulse flutter dangerously.
She dropped her gaze fast, focusing on the rope with laser intensity. This was not the time or place for her body to remember how perfectly they’d fit together, and how right his mouth had felt moving against hers.
The descent into the crevice was treacherous. Warped gravity made each step unpredictable, and the ground was littered with bone fragments and corrupted glass that cut through the soles of her boots. Every time she stumbled and caught the rope, the bond flared with remembered heat and a stronger magical resonance that made her breath hitch.
The Gloam pulled at her consciousness, trying to drag her deeper with insidious whispers. But Vaelrik’s presence through their connection was an anchor, steady and immovable. He wanted to pull her back to him, to shield her from whatever ancient hunger lurked in these depths.
Only one force would win. And she prayed it would be him.
The low hum rose around them—that same twisted lullaby from Weeping March, but wrong in ways that made her skin crawl. Her breath stuttered as childhood fears clawed their way to the surface.
Without hesitation, Vaelrik stepped closer, circling her like a shield. His hand brushed her cheek with devastating tenderness—too intimate and too familiar. The gesture echoed their kiss with painful clarity, but maybe that had always been his instinct. To touch her when she was afraid. To gentle her fears with careful contact.
The shadows recoiled from their combined resonance, hissing like live things exposed to sunlight.
Then the shadow-plague surged.
A massive wave of corruption magic crashed toward them like a living tsunami, but Vaelrik pulled her behind him with alpha male authority that brooked no argument. She traced a lumen sigil down his spine without thinking, her magic threading through his shadowfire with perfect precision.
Their combined power fused stronger than ever before—light weaving through darkness like they were designed for this impossible mission into the void. But as her sigils connected with his curse, the truth revealed itself with crystalline clarity.
The shadow-plague wave hadn’t been meant to kill them. It was studying them. Memorizing the resonance between lumen magic and shadowfire. Between her and him.
Their kiss hadn’t been the spark. It was a symptom of something greater.
They were becoming something together that the Gloam recognized. Something it wanted. Something it planned to harness for its own twisted agenda.
The rift yawned open beneath them further, fog rising upward like reaching fingers. Serenya’s breath trembled as understanding crashed over her.
Vaelrik’s shoulder brushed hers—on purpose this time, solid and reassuring.
“We go deeper together,” he murmured.
She nodded, unable to speak past the emotion clogging her throat.
The bond pulsed hot between them—like the echo of his mouth on hers, like promise and peril intertwined. Together they descended further into the Gloam’s waiting darkness.
The chasm opened like a monstrous eye beneath them, ancient and all-seeing. And Serenya could swear it saw straight to the core of them—past their defenses, past their fears, to the dangerous truth neither wanted to acknowledge.
This wasn’t a mission anymore. It was an experiment.
And they were the test subjects.
FOURTEEN
VAELRIK
The Gloam’s rift writhed like a living wound beneath them, reality bending and twisting until up became sideways and solid ground felt negotiable. The rope around Vaelrik’s waist pulled taut as space itself warped, distorting their descent into something that defied every natural law he’d learned in four centuries of existence.
Yet the deeper distortion crawled inside him—his curse recognizing the corruption magic saturating the air like a lover’s whisper, wanting to reach out and answer its call. The shadowfire beneath his ribs purred with sick recognition, tasting the Gloamrot and finding it familiar.Toofamiliar.
But every time Serenya’s footing slipped on the treacherous, reality-bent ground, his arm shot out without conscious thought. His dragon surged forward in protective instinct, his hands catching her waist, steadying her against his chest with devastating gentleness. Her warmth pressed against him sent electricity racing through his veins, memories of their kiss flooding back with dangerous intensity.
“Careful,” he murmured against her ear, his voice rougher than intended.
