Alarik moved to fully sit beside her, his hand trembled slightly on his knee.
“Tell me everything.”
“I was… standing on a lakebed,” she said slowly, eyes unfocused as she searched her memory. “But it wasn’t filled with water. It was bone-dry. The sky was dark but cracked open with light. Not sunlight… starlight. Violent. Blinding.”
Alarik waited, still and watchful, though his gaze flicked now and then to the sheen of sweat still clinging to her skin, the rapid rise and fall of her chest. The tether between them humming. But he said nothing as he listened to each of her words.
“She came to me there ,” Maris whispered. “She looked like galaxies wrapped in skin. Her voice was everywhere and nowhere. She touched me and spoke quickly. I saw… everything, brought by a shadow.”
Alarik swallowed hard. “What did she show you?”
She met his eyes, voice trembling. “She spoke of me as if I was the one she’s waited for, my power greater than her own. She vanished. I don’t know why, or what it means, but she had something mark me.”
She held out her glowing palm for his examination. The sigil she was forced to grasp in the dream now carved into her fresh, it simmered with indigo, sea green, and the faint crimson of her blood.
Alarik’s throat worked.
“It said I would need to seek out an ancient relic to defeat the gods. A grounding for my power. This sigil, the figure said it would help guide me to the relic. A crown, made of her mortal bones. Woven with grief, laced with mercy and dreams.” Maris continued, softer now. “I want to find it.”
Alarik reached for her hand before he could stop himself. She didn’t flinch. Their fingers touched and heat pulsed between them like a heartbeat echoing in both directions.
”Look where the rivers run dry and the sky forgets its name.That’s where it can be found.”She said with distant eyes.
“Thank you, Maris.” he spoke quietly. His thumb rubbing soothing circles on her palm.
She nodded, but the flush returned to her cheeks. She looked away, eyes flicking to the window. She tried to focus on anything but him.
She knew he sensed it — that the dream had run deeper that what she had admitted.
But he wasn’t cruel enough to press.
-Alarik-
He waited until the door shut softly behind him and the fire in the hearth crackled again before letting his shoulders sag forward.
Gods.
He scrubbed a hand down his face, fingers trembling.
He had been there. That had been him, in her dream. The stream. Her slick skin and breathless moans, her lips parting for him in a moment too raw to be imagined.
That had been his hand tangled in her hair. His mouth at her throat.
He hadn’t planned to go back into her dreams. He had swore to her that he would not. Not unless she called to him.
But she had.
She had reached down their soul bond and beckoned him.
Unwitting or not, it hadn’t been some conjured fantasy. It was real —a calling bound by ancient magic and will. Those moments shared between them in the dream were real.
His heart had skipped the moment she appeared below him bare, flushed, whispering his name like it tasted like honey. Had he had a true conscience, he would have escaped from the dream the second he realized her call was unintentional. But with Maris, there were no lines he wouldn’t cross. Right or wrong meant nothing if it brought her pleasure.
And then…
Kael.
A monster made of shadow, greed, and violence.
