I bury the hope and hold her tighter. Because even as I lose myself in her warmth, something cold whispers in the back of my mind.
The eclipse is coming.
I lie stillin the predawn darkness, watching Rhianelle sleep with something that feels close to worship. Moonlight catches her silver strands, turning them to threads of starlight against the pillow. Her lips curve slightly even in dreams.
For centuries, I have known only hunger and shadow. Now in her presence I feel something I thought lost forever.
Peace.
She doesn't stir. Her skin is still flushed and her lips are slightly parted. I trace the curve of her back beneath the sheet, following the elegant line of her spine.
My fingers tremble with restraint. It's not because I want more from her. We've had each other twice tonight and my body still hums with satisfaction. I tremble because there is still a darkand broken part of me that doesn't know how to accept peace. It wants to dig its claws into this moment and never let go.
I pull my hand back and curl it into a fist.
The bond stirs beneath my skin. I feel it like a second heartbeat, hungry and restless. It's been growing stronger these past weeks. The eclipse draws near and with it the inevitable breaking of every chain I've built.
Rhianelle shifts in her sleep, murmuring something I can't quite hear. Her hand reaches out across the bed for me. When her fingers brush my arm, she settles again with a soft sigh.
Such trust.
I close my eyes and let myself slip into dormancy. The transition is smooth. I've done this a thousand times before, retreating into the hollow spaces of my soul.
This is where I face the monsters that live in the dark corners of my mind.
The cottage fades along with Rhianelle's warmth. I find myself standing in the cavern of my own consciousness. It's vast and cold here. The walls are smooth black stone and the floor is littered with bones. This is my inner landscape. The kingdom of my damnation.
"Finally."
A voice echoes off the cavern walls. The bond materializes from my shadow, because that's what it is.
He is a part of me. The darkest, most possessive part. Where I've learned to wear the mask of humanity and play at being civilized, the bond has no such pretense.
It wears my face and my body. But his eyes are brighter, burning with an intensity that borders on madness.
"I felt it," the bond says. "Her warmth. Her surrender. The way she cried your name when she came apart beneath you."
He stops directly in front of me. "And yet you held back. Again."
"I didn't."
"Liar." The bond's hand shoots out, gripping my jaw with bruising force. "You gave her a fraction of what we are. A carefully measured dose of passion, just enough to satisfy but never enough to truly claim. She deserves more than your cowardice."
I jerk my face from its grasp. "What she deserves is to be safe. From me and from you."
"Safe?" The bond laughs, the sound echoing through the cavern. "Rhianelle doesn't want safe. She wants to be consumed."
I scoff, but the bond doesn't stop. It moves closer, crowding the space between us.
"She told you as much when she begged you not to stop," it says. "She wants all of you, and you're too afraid to give it to her."
"You'll kill her." I face it fully, this thing that shares my face. This hunger that knows no limits or mercy. "If I let you free, if I give in to what you want—"
"She is ours." The words are absolute, carved in stone and blood. The bond's eyes blaze brighter and I feel the truth of it resonating through every fiber of my being. "Every heartbeat, every breath, every thought should be ours. We should be inside her mind, her dreams. She should never think of anything but us, never want anything but us. We should mark her, claim her so thoroughly that every creature in this world knows she belongs to us."
The bond drags me back into a memory. Her dream. I remember the way she trembled beneath me.
I'm there above her, hands braced on either side of her shoulders, buried deep inside her. Her hair spills over the edge of the bed, throat arched, lips parted in breathless surrender. She had looked wrecked and wanting.
