The unusual proposal felt mythic.
A ritual written in spirit and bone.
The room trembled and the shadows writhed on the wall, as if awaiting her answer. Perhaps he had always been her way out, or perhaps it was simply the fact that Rune still gave her a choice. Accepting his ring would spare her from Eldrik’s clutches. And that in itself was reason enough.
May her mother and father forgive her.
“I do,” she breathed.
Her reply fell like stones into a still pond. The ring pulsated with a heartbeat not her own and the sensation sank into her being, as if weaving through her soul. She gasped, the bouquet slipping from her grasp.
Wind ripped through the chamber and the ground vibrated beneath her feet. Screams and the clash of metal rang into focus as time resumed. Eldrik leaped up in the air, raising his sword above her head with a furious roar.
The shadows swallowed her whole.
Alora opened her eyes to darkness and abrupt quiet. Her chest heaved with wild breaths, heart hammering at how close she came to death. She stumbled back, her heels clacking on the hard stone, struggling to adjust her sight. The scent of damp earth and dust made her cough. At last her vision cleared with the faint moonlight trickling from the small opening in the ceiling far above.
She knew this place.
But this time… no dragon lurked in the cavern.
Alora whipped around.
Shadows clung to Rune like a living mist. His crimson eyes glowed bright as they watched her intently. A predator who had been kept waiting.
“Welcome home.” The God of Shadows smiled, the edges of his fangs glinting. “Wife.”
CHAPTER 18
Alora
This couldn’t be real. It was a waking nightmare.
Alora stood frozen, staring at her newfound husband. A man now, if he could be called one at all. She had never imagined the dragon might shed its scales, that such a beast could walk the earth in flesh. And yet here he was, unnervingly human in shape, though nothing about him was mortal.
He was unnervingly tall, at least seven feet. His pale features were sharp as carved bone, ears tapering to delicate points that marked him as other. Ink-dark hair spilled over his shoulders, framing the cruel symmetry of his face. Markings lit like molten fissures on his neck and the back of his clawed hands, dusted with black scales. Besides that, the one trait he carried from his dragon form was those eyes. Red and burning, as if the fire within had simply been contained behind his gaze.
Gods, he was beautiful. So strikingly ethereal it was otherworldly.
The perfect snare.
As if he read her mind, Rune’s glowing eyes gleamed with amusement.
“Follow.”
The word echoed off the stone. It was not a request.
A ball of anxious desperation roiled in Alora’s chest. She escaped one prison and fell into another.
Rune turned and strolled toward a narrow pitch-black passage carved into the mountain wall. The moment he fell out of view, Alora fled in the opposite direction and ran for a tunnel. His low chuckle carried in the cavern, but no echo of footsteps followed behind her. She heard nothing but her own ragged breaths and the frantic clack of her heels against the stone.
She had to find a way out. There had to be one, but she couldn’t see anything. Darkness thickened like fog, coating her skin and lungs. The walls narrowed and her heart hammered with fear and anguish.
“Let me out,” Alora cried out hoarsely. She moved through the dark blindly, the ridiculous wedding gown snagging on every jagged edge. She couldn’t breathe. Her heart hammered with fear and the mountain violently shook. “Please, let me out!”
As if something heard her, a soft glow appeared above her head. Tiny creatures curled in pockets of stone, their dim bioluminescence casting eerie blue halos across the ceiling. Glow worms.
Then the mountain groaned as the fissure she stood in widened into a tunnel, opening a new path. Alora stilled at the threshold, chest heaving.
