She shook her head, only then realizing her ashes had appeared as they drifted from her hair to the floor. He didn’t understand what she was trying to say, and she didn’t know how to articulate it because she was used to solitude. Not having to rely on anyone else. She was used to watching from the shadows and?—
A gasp escaped her as a dark tendril slithered along her jaw a moment before he was tipping her chin up with his hand. When had he moved in front of her? Again he said nothing, studying her features and his eyes roving over her.
A part of her wondered if this was always how their interactions were going to go. Her out of her element, and him meticulously observing her. Her feeling like she was finally gaining the upper hand only for him to prove her wrong. A push and pull that confused her and drew her attention away from what she should be focused on.
“How old are you, Kailia?” he asked, and she blinked because that question had come out of nowhere.
“Just under three centuries,” she answered.
Still holding her jaw, his thumb swiped along her skin, a searing path that had her wincing. He clearly noticed based on the way his lips thinned and a muscle in his jaw ticked in irritation.
“Three centuries and you have no personal experience with lovers?”
“That’s not what I said,” she answered, stepping back as his touch became the burning of every other physical encounter. “I said I don’t have experience with scorned or wronged lovers.”
He followed, keeping the space between them minuscule, but he didn’t reach for her again. “Are there any lovers I need to be aware of?”
“Isn’t it a little late to be asking that?”
“Kailia,” he growled, taking another step that forced her to back up again. “Are there any lovers I need to…ensure understand that you are no longer theirs?”
She studied him as he loomed over her. A slightly crazed look in his silver eyes. Silver hair that was loose around his shoulders. An aura of intensity that she didn’t know what to do with.
“It is weird to me that you are jealous of people you’ve never met,” she finally said. “But to answer your question, no.”
Because she’d sworn she’d never be owned by another person the first time she saw the stars.
She’d been nineteen years.
“Is there anything else required of me today?” she asked, no longer willing to engage in casual conversation as memories swirled, reminding her of her purpose. Why she had come here to begin with.
“I thought we would spend the rest of the day together,” Cethin said. “Get to know each other better.”
“No,” she said simply, slipping past him and making her way down the hall to the main bedchamber. She knew she was leaving footprints because she’d summoned her ashes, letting them flow around her. Letting them soothe her, comfort her.
Letting them protect and hide her like they’d always done.
She blinked, taking in the space around her.
Rocky walls. A cot along the back. A bucket for personal needs in the corner. The onyx door that was shut tight.
Her heart hammering, she tugged her sleeve back, breathing a sigh of relief at the sight of the Mark on her forearm. The Mark that confirmed this was a dream. Not real. None of this was real.
She’d paid a Witch across the sea a large sum to help her find a Mark that would work. Then she’d paid an Earth Court Fae trained in bestowing Marks an equally large sum.Blood magic was not something she played around with, but desperation can turn anyone into a fool.
She didn’t regret the cost of this Mark though. This Mark gave her back her sanity. It set her free from the nightmares of her past because she could only see the Mark in her dreams. It was how she knew she wasn’t really trapped in a commune beneath cliffs. It was how she knew she could leave this room because in her dreams, she controlled the narrative.
Pulling the door open, she still winced at the loud squeak, wondering who would be alerted to her movements. But no one came as she stepped into the hall and peered over the railing. She was several floors above the ground. Her room had been on that floor for the entirety of the nearly twenty years she’d spent here.
It wasn’t surprising she’d found herself here tonight either. Not with the memories that had surfaced after her conversation with Cethin. Still, she didn’t wish to linger. Not tonight. Even knowing this was a dream, it didn’t mean her nightmares couldn’t torture her while here.
Not wanting to wake her demons, she padded to the stairwell, quickly descending several flights. She kept to the shadows, not wanting to risk using her magic, unsure if it would work properly in her dreams or not. Unwilling to face the possibility that she was truly fucked and broken because she didn’t know how to fix it if she was. If, after all this time, after centuries of trying to put herself back together and figure out how to breathe with a tortured soul, it had all been for nothing.
The brand beneath her skin—that only appeared on those who were marked as belonging to the colony—glowed as she neared the entrance to the cliffs. It was one of three entrances. There was another one that only saw death, and there was one off the Baroness’s balcony. Was she gone in this dream? Hadthe Reaper already bestowed his wrath, or was this dream before he’d come back for his vengeance?
Kailia didn’t know, and she didn’t care to find out. Sometimes she did. Sometimes she lingered in these dreams, searching for information she’d forgotten. Sometimes she stayed to bestow her own vengeance on those long gone from this world. It was dark and twisted, and she was sure it marred her soul in yet another way, but she’d never cared because the high of retribution at her own hands was as addicting as the opioids some became slaves to.
Stepping through the rocky archway that appeared, her feet sank into sand. It was night, the moon and stars bright. She breathed in the fresh air, her first full breath since she’d found herself here. Even knowing it was a dream, her heart beat at a too fast pace and sweat beaded on her brow and slid down her nape.
