Her scent had changed. Not completely, but layered now, frost and something he couldn’t name, something ancient. His magic recoiled and leaned forward in the same breath. The Veil Breaker, Alarik had whispered it to her and now he understood.
He should’ve been afraid.
Instead, Kael felt something deeper: reverence and hunger.
She turned too quickly, too gracefully. Her body had always held the faint edge of awkward human movement. But this was — honed. Balanced. As if she had been built for war and didn’t know it until now. And gods, her power danced across his senses like lightning trapped in silk.
He took a step forward.
Maris blinked once at him, and something in her expression cracked the armor around his heart.
-Maris-
He was staring at her again.
Maris stood, arms folded tight across her chest. Everything inside her felt like a live wire.
Her skin still shimmered faintly when she moved. Her magic no longer slept beneath the surface, it prowled. Coiled around her bones. Whispers echoed when she closed her eyes, pieces of dreams still stitched behind her eyelids like the remnants of a fever.
“You were called.”
The kiss still burned on her skin. Her fingers curled.
Kael hadn’t said a word.
The look in his eyes now wasn't shock.
It was recognition, a knowing of what she now was.
Maris inhaled slowly, afraid to speak first. Her voice might shake. Her body still felt wrong, right, buzzing. Her limbs stretched like they belonged to someone else, someone stronger. Her senses were too sharp. She could hear the fire popping, the soft shuffle of the wraiths outside the door, the shift in Kael’s breath as he exhaled. Scent his blood and nervousness.
He stepped closer— even now she wanted him. Not just the way his eyes darkened when they landed on her mouth. But the way his magic always seemed to find hers, the other side to a coin — a darkness to her starlight.
“Say it,” she whispered, finally. Her new slightly pointed canines caused an awkwardness in her speech.
Kael blinked. “Say what?”
“That you see the severity of this change. It's not a blessing it's a curse.”
His jaw flexed. The silence between them crackled.
“You’re becoming something the gods should fear,” he said.
Maris stared at him — her lover, her protector.
Kael watched her as if he were starving.
She wore nothing but one of his shirts, too long in the sleeves, barely covering the tops of her thighs, smelling like cedar and smoke.
She had never felt more dangerous or divine.
He crossed to her slowly, the air between them tight like a pulled bowstring.
“I can feel it in you,” Kael said low, brushing a hand along her waist.
Maris shivered at his touch. Her magic stirred just beneath her skin, responding to him with a chill.
“You’re not the same mortal I carried into this castle.”
