Kael crouched, retrieving it.
A symbol burned into the ivory, a serpent devouring a rose.
His mouth tightened.
The Seer tilted her head. And then, from her throat, not quite a voice but not quite a thought, echoed into the chamber:
“She is the storm born from the dreamer’s heart.”
Kael stared at her.
“What does that mean?”
Another rune clattered.
A feather. Broken.
“You cannot bind what is already chained to the sky.”
He stepped back, heart pounding.
The Seer smiled, soft, sorrowful, and terrifying all at once.
“Ask not what she is.”
“Ask what she is becoming.”
Chapter ten
Echo in Her Veins
-Maris-
Maris woke greeted by silence, head pounding, a foreign hum under her skin. No voices. No footsteps. No rustle of the wraith-twins laying out her clothes. Just stillness, thick, unnatural pressing against her like another layer of skin.
Her body ached.
Not the deep bruising ache of swordplay or drills, but something stranger. She pressed a hand to her chest and found her heart steady. It wasn’t pain, exactly. It was… dissonance.
Like the notes of a familiar song played slightly out of key. She sat up slowly.
Her nightgown was fresh. Her boots had been removed. Someone had placed her beneath the velvet blankets of her bed.
Did I faint?The question stirred in her mind.
Her last memory came in flashes.
Kael’s body above hers.
The sweat-slick heat of him.
The glint in his eyes, somewhere between hunger and awe.
Then — light, sudden and blinding, flooded the space, directionless as if it came from everywhere and nowhere at once.
And after that… nothing.
She swung her legs off the bed and winced as the stone floor chilled her bare feet. Her fingers trembled as she reached for the goblet of water set beside her but not from cold.
