I remember trembling as Mom clasped the first one onto my wrist. The wonder of it. The gravity. By eighteen, when they arrived with the same predictable regularity as Alexander’s meticulously selected birthday gifts, that awe had dulled to obligation.
The middle class from Everreach obsess over them—covet them like designer bags, flaunt them in social feeds and dinner parties, even if most are minor-grade, and prone to flickering out mid-spell. It’s never about function. It’s about the illusion. Owning a ruby means your magic belongs to you. Needing to earn one means it never did.
The upper class from the Aureum Quarter and the elite parade them. Their rubies are ancient, passed down through rings and heirlooms, forged into brooches, even fused to bone. Wealth that means you never have to check your balance in public. A legacy where your blood is the password. Though lately, watching women like Madam Rothschild practically dripping with every ruby she owns, I wonder if they’ve forgotten that true power doesn’t need to announce itself quite so desperately.
I was sculpted for this arena. Etiquette tutors, Foundation galas, forced smiles at endless dinners. Each one a chisel stroke. The spotlight isn’t a choice. It’s coded into my bones; branded into my blood by parents who understood that in Eclipsera, being seen is its own kind of power.
But then I see him, and everything else fades, reduced to static beneath the sudden drumbeat of my pulse.
Dominic Blackwood commands the bar with the swagger of a fallen angel who found heaven dull and came back to burn it down. Six-foot-two, and carved from shadow and violence, he wears sin as if it were tailored. Lean, not bulky, every inch of him promises speed and precision over brute force. A body honed in back-alley brawls and bloodsport, not some sanitized gym. His shoulders slope with the elegance of a dancer, but there’s nothing delicate about him. He looks built to throw a punch, and fuck you breathless, without missing a beat.
“My love.” His voice is old whiskey and quiet ruin. “You’re making it incredibly difficult to remember why I agreed to dinner first.”
His fingers skim the curve of my spine, sparking heat with every casual, possessive touch. He guides me toward his favorite alcove, where the enchanted sunset spills molten gold across velvet cushions and wine-dark marble.
“Though perhaps that was your plan all along.” His lips brush my ear. “You always did enjoy making me suffer.”
I turn my head enough to meet his eyes, letting him see the wicked smile that curves my lips. “And you always did enjoy being punished.”
I sink into the aurora-kissed velvet chair, the cushions molding to me. Dom folds himself beside me in a slow sprawl. Three days since the gala, and somehow just sitting next to him makes it easier to breathe.
He brushes the inside of my wrist—not possessive, just grounding—and the knot in my chest loosens further. The server doesn’t even get the menus fully on the table before the words tumble out of me.
“Luna and I fought,” I say quietly. “About the journal.”
Dom stills, every line of his body tightening. His gaze flicks past me, scanning the room. “You told her?”
“I didn’t plan to,” I admit. “But we talked, actually bonded for the first time in years, and then it just . . . slipped out. I think she might tell Alexander.”
His hand twitches on the table. Then he shakes his head and leans in slightly, voice low. “Not here.”
“What—”
“Not here, Aria.” Dom is already watching the room again. “Too many mouths. Too many eyes.”
I follow his line of sight.
Two servers fold napkins with mechanical speed no normal worker maintains, one of them lingering by our table long enough to raise suspicion. A man in a tailored blue blazer laughs too loudly, theatrically tapping something on the inside of his cufflink. Overhead, a floating orb—shaped like a decorative lantern—blinks once. Then again.
The Sky Lounge might be a Blackwood establishment, but that doesn’t mean it’s safe. If anything, it makes the surveillance more insidious. Crystal chandeliers might hide recording spells. Mirrors become eyes that never blink. Even the floating candles flicker withtoo much intent, casting shadows that follow movement too perfectly.
“This place is wired?” I ask under my breath.
Dom doesn’t answer. Just reaches for his glass with deliberate nonchalance.
That’s when I catch it. The slight misstep in his motion, the hitch in his shoulder. The silk of his collar shifts, revealing the edge of something darker. A bruise blooms below his jaw, violet and green, and slick as an oil stain bleeding through skin. Not fresh, but not healed either. Pain delivered with purpose.
He masks it well, but I know him. I’ve learned to read the minute ticks of his expression. The tautness of his jaw, the ghost of strain in his grip. And when he lifts his arm again, another mark flashes beneath his cuff—red, raw, deliberate.
“You’re hurt.”
He straightens with that lethal grace I’ve always envied, every flaw reforged into armor. “It’s nothing.”
A spike of heat stabs through my chest. Rage. Helplessness. I want to tear open whatever door he walked through to earn those bruises and set the place on fire. But I’m not Dom. I don’t get to burn things without consequences. I don’t know how to protect him. Not the way he protects me.
“What happened?”
His jaw tightens. “Don’t.”
