A shadow shifts beside me, where Dom is slumped in a chair pulled close to the bed, head bowed as if in prayer. He looks ruined, his usual composure broken, dark stubble roughening his jaw. The shirt, once crisp, now hangs rumpled and marked with dried blood, and copper strands tumble across his face in tangles, the wreckage left by restless hands.
He’s not asleep, though his eyes are closed, one leg bouncing with restless tension. His fingers stay laced with mine, twitching in quiet spasms, as if even unconscious, he’s terrified I’ll slip away. The DomI know—flawless, untouchable, always three steps ahead—is gone. What remains is someone raw and broken.
“Dom?” My voice scrapes out.
His head snaps up so fast the chair legs shriek against the floor. For a moment, he only stares, storm-gray eyes bloodshot and wide, ravaged by exhaustion and something far more fragile: fear. His whole frame shakes like he’s seeing a ghost he’s both prayed for and dreaded.
Then he moves with desperate grace, surging forward to cradle my face in hands so reverent the touch is almost painful. His thumbs glide over my cheekbones, jaw, and mouth, as if the act of holding me is the only thing keeping him grounded.
“You’re awake.” The words leave him on a breathless laugh, torn between joy and grief. “Gods, you’re actually awake.”
“How long?” I rasp, leaning into his palms.
“Two days.” His voice fractures as he presses his forehead to mine. “Two days of watching you barely breathe, of not knowing if I’d lost you.” His exhale ghosts across my lips. “Don’t ever do that to me again. Don’t make me watch that again.”
“Wasn’t exactly my plan,” I murmur, aiming for levity, but the sharp anguish in his eyes makes the joke collapse before it leaves my throat.
He shudders. “Don’t pretend this wasn’t real. I watched you die, Aria. Your heart stopped beating under my hands.” I try to squeeze his hand, but my fingers barely twitch. He catches the movement anyway, lifting my hand to his mouth. “How do you feel?”
Like my soul got clawed in half and stitched back with wire.
“Better,” I lie.
Relief flickers in his expression, softening the strain etched into every line of his face, but inside me, something’s changed. Magic pulses under my skin, wrong and unstable, it doesn’t move the way it used to. It feels foreign, corrupted, as if someone poured a darker essence into my veins and called it mine. Even my emotions are distant and dulled, like they’re being filtered through smoke.
I raise a hand to my throat and my fingers meet bare skin. Panic slices through the fog. “Where is it—my ruby—?”
“It’s recharging,” Dom says quickly, gesturing to his desk. There, suspended in a web of spelled silver, the ruby hangs like a heart on life support. Three Vials of my blood connect through delicate channels, feeding energy into the fractured stone. It pulses faintly, struggling to recalibrate with my magical signature. I recognize the mechanism. My parents used to call it a Legacy Charger.
Most recharges are simple: a drop of blood, a whisper of intent. But when a bond fractures, when the wielder brushes death, it requires full essence realignment. In those moments, the system doesn’t merely feed the ruby blood; it rebuilds the original bonding conditions, drawing on the wielder’s essence to restore the emotional resonance that makes the stones so powerful.
“It was barely flickering when Kane brought you in,” Dom says quietly, thumb tracing circles against my wrist. “I thought we’d lost you for good.”
I watch the ruby’s glow intensify as another pulse of blood is drawn toward it. The stone recognizes it, reaching for the essence it knows, but something is wrong. Even it seems to sense the shift in my magic.
Sitting up is agony, each movement dragged from broken muscle and willpower. My arms tremble, useless beneath the weight of my own body. Before I can collapse, Dom is there, the bed dipping as he moves to catch me. One hand presses firm against my back, the other bracing my shoulder. His touch lands unfamiliar in its restraint, where once there was only heat and claim.
“Rowe—” I start, unable to keep the worry from my voice. “Is he . . .?”
Dom’s face hardens for a moment, jaw flexing. “He’s fine,” he grits out. “Perfectly fine, as always.”
The bitterness clinging to his voice makes me want to press further, but before I can, he’s already moving.
“You need water.” He reaches for a cup, and something in his careful movements makes me frustrated. This isn’t him. My Dom isn’t cautious with me. He doesn’t hover or flinch as if I might break apart beneath his hands.
He lifts the cup to my lips, fingers brushing my jaw. The water tastes stale, but I drink anyway, if only to stop him from hovering. Dom’s hand stays, ready to catch any spill, and something inside me snaps.
“I’m fine.” I jerk away, water sloshing onto me. “Just stop. This isn’t you.”
The cup disappears from my grip, set down with a sharp click that echoes in the silence. When Dom turns back, the gentle worry has bled from his features, leaving something cold and hard in its wake.
“Isn’t me?” The words slip out lethal. “And who exactly am I supposed to be right now, Aria?”
I start to answer, but he cuts me off. “Because last I checked, I wasn’t the one you cried out for while you were dying.” His fingers knot in the sheets beside my hip, the tendons in his hands taut. “Tell me whymy fiancéespent her final conscious moments calling for Rowe fucking Darkmoor.”
For the first time, I see past the possessive rage to the wounded pride beneath it, bleeding into genuine hurt. Instead of wanting to soothe his demons, irritation spikes through me.
“I was poisoned,” I bite back. “Delirious. Or did you miss that part while you were busy tallying up imagined betrayals?”
