He hisses, “You are fidgeting like a child stuck in a lecture.”
I roll my eyes to the intricate ceilings. “I’m not used to having a stranger in my bed.” Not for sleep anyway. I can nearly hear his mind churning out a roasting retort, so I blurt, “Tell me something about yourself.” His breaths hitch and I press before he can think too much, “Tell me about when you were Selected.”
He’s quiet a long moment, and my tattoo itches, but then—“My father was in the uprising.” His chest rises and falls as if he trapped all the oxygen in the room inside it, and with the confession comes a release of pressure. “The end of the War meant vengeance against the mortals involved. It was King Altair of the seraphs that suggested turning us all in front of our parents, before executing us as repayment for the Curse. But when I was turned, the World card was drawn to me, right from King Silas’s own deck, and he stopped the executions of me and the other children.”
The heaviness of his tone puts me on edge. Not because I’m afraidofhim, butforhim.
“I’ll never forget the look on my father’s face when he saw me as a changeling. The disgust there.”
The Great War was fifteen years ago, but I know at some point immortals stop aging. Did he fight in the War? I break the sharp silence with a serrated question. “How old were you?”
“Six.” His answer stops my heart, squeezing it to pulp. “I won’t settle in age for another ten years, at minimum.”
My hands tremble, voice quaking as I ask, “And your real father? What happened to him?”
“King Altair executed him. Then King Silas adopted me on the spot. I was the first to be adopted by an immortal king, though not the youngest.”
His breaths are jagged in my ear, as though they whisper through shattered glass. I relax my body a bit more snugly against him and his breathing normalizes a bit. My mental shields lower, more parapet than solid wall, and I realize how much of myself I can see in him. The trauma we share might not be a mirror, but two rivers stemming from the same cruel mouth.
“King Silas saved you and raised you. When it comes to the throne—”
“He stood by as they killed my father.” His voice is darkness wrapped in fury. “Would’ve let it happen to me and the others if the World hadn’t decided otherwise. Six is old enough to know when you have been wronged. Young enough to grow around that betrayal until it is a part of your very foundation. As I’m sure you know.”
“Do you hate him?”
“I hate all of them.” He swallows hard. “The immortal royals have caused so much strain on Arcadia and Vexamire both.” He shifts and I find myself slinking my body against his. I can feelhis heart thudding through his chest. It beats awfully fast, yet as I lean into his strong chest it begins to slow, matching my own. “But I am one of them. I’ve been given the chance to change things. To save the immortals and mortals from themselves. I can’t waste it.”
His hand comes around mine, interlacing over the top of it, his fingers weaving between my own. Draven’s breaths send shivers across the nape of my neck, my shoulder. His other hand draws the blanket higher, tracing up my thigh and turning my bones molten. “Your turn.”
“Ask me something.”
“Who is Kiana?” His question stills my heart, but the pressure of his body lining mine stops me from trembling. He pulls back a little, angling his head to check my face. “You don’t have to answer. I heard the name in your thoughts when you first arrived, over and over.”
“We were together. Before, in Westfall.” Breathing the truth into the darkness releases a weight I’ve been carrying for some time. “She was all I had. She died.”
“I’m so sorry.” He doesn’t ask follow-up questions, not like I would’ve. He accepts as much truth as I’m willing to give him. His hand squeezes mine tightly. “I wish I knew what it was like to be loved like that.”
“You’ve never been in love?” The revelation surprises me so much I turn, looking him over. He lies in the shadow of moonlight, eyes like mirrors, animalistic. A shiver races over my skin yet I don’t withdraw. I want him closer.
“I …” His face lifts toward mine, and I’m drawn to those full lips. He’s never looked at me so serious before but he just swallows, watching me as if I hold the answers to the universe. “Was it worth it? Opening yourself up like that?”
I haven’t had to consider it. But the answer is too clear to deny. “I would do it again. A thousand times over. To feel that once more. Even if just for a moment.”
His lips lift in the corners, hope shining through those ever-changing eyes. “Why, Wraith, you may just make a convert of me yet.”
19Hollow Festival
The claim shared between partners is a chafing, addictive bond, hard to disregard. Yet a claim exchanged between two fated mates becomes impossible to ignore, the venom exchanged mixing hormones until it drives even the most chaste into a frenzy. Once given, it cannot be undone.
—Immortal bookThe Taken
AS THE WEEK LEADINGto Hollow Fest and our midsemester exams passes, I find myself overloaded with studying sessions, Draven’s extra homework, and practice; each day more information and mental strain. Instead, I live for the nights, craving the contact when Draven and I sleep as tightly as the spines of two books pressed into an overpacked shelf, with no give between us. Strangely, it’s the best sleep I’ve had in years, and each night we talk unto exhaustion, his alluring voice ensnaring me like a siren into the depths of oblivion.
But on the night before our tests, I tuck in, chest inflating, my anticipation rising for whatever we will uncover about each other only to find him sitting on the edge of the bed.
“What is it?”
“This isn’t working.” He heaves a sigh, hand flattened in the space between us as if he wants to be there instead.
