If she had woken then, she would have seen the monster and the male both, at war behind his cold, unblinking eyes.
But she did not wake. Kael stood there until the first gray of dawn cut across the sky, and only then did he retreat to his own chambers, leaving her untouched.
Chapter five
Between Shadow and Flame
-Maris-
Maris was dreaming. Kael stood behind her, breath hot against her throat, hands spanning her hips in a grip that was possessive and unyielding. His finger tips rasped against her bare skin, and she shivered as if every nerve had been exposed. He turned her in his arms with impossible gentleness, moonlight catching the edges of his sharp, inhuman beauty. The silver in his eyes seemed to flare, swallowing up every shadow.
“Mine,” he whispered, voice low and velvet-dark.
Her heart tripped over itself.
When his fangs brushed the curve of her neck, she felt the spark of fear, but also a deeper, traitorous desire. Heat flooded her lower belly, pooling between her legs until her thighs trembled.
Don’t…
But he did. Slowly, carefully, he sank those perfect white fangs into her moon-pale skin. The pain was a strange, sweet ache, chased by a pleasure so sharp she nearly sobbed in his arms.
She felt claimed.
The dream was so vivid she could smell him, cold like winter air, spiced faintly with crushed roses and smoke. She could feel the weight of his body, the warmth that should not have belonged to a creature born of night.
“Mine,” he murmured again, licking the bite with a gentleness that made her toes curl.
Her pulse roared, hips arching against him in a shameful, desperate plea for more.
No, she tried to tell herself, this is wrong, he is a monster…
But her hands still clung to him, as if nothing else could keep her from shattering.
Maris jolted awake just as the first rays of dawn broke across the stained-glass windows of her chamber.
She gasped, flushed, hands fisting in the crimson sheets, heart hammering so hard it made her ribs ache.
Her skin still burned where his phantom bite had marked her thin flesh, her body pulsed with a raw ache that refused to die down.
But the air around her seemed different, as if someone had only just left her side, the faintest trace of dark spice lingering in the room, Kael.
She scanned the shadows of her chamber, breath ragged. Empty.
He wasn’t here, she scolded herself, trying to banish the leftover heat that tangled her thoughts. He wouldn’t have been here, after their argument and his condescending attitude. But it felt real. Gods, it felt so real.
Slowly, she pushed herself upright, skin prickling from the chill of dawn.
Her whole body felt awake in a way it never had before, like a spark had been struck too close to oil, and she couldn’t snuff it out.
Maris had barely laid her head back on the pillow, hoping to steal a moment of rest after that fevered dream, when the shadows near the hearth rippled.
Two shapes emerged, gliding forward with a silence that made her bones tighten.
The twin servants appeared as if the night itself had peeled away from the walls. Their voices were one, an eerie harmony that made the hairs on her arms stand on end.
“Dawn rises, mistress.”
Maris’s head throbbed, the dream still clinging to her like a half-forgotten bruise.
