ZYPHON
Days of training sessions where her fire reaches for my shadows without her permission. Days of shared meals where I catch myself watching her across the table, cataloging the way she laughs at Rurik’s jokes, the way she leans into Selene’s warmth, the way she’s slowly, carefully, learning to belong.
Days of wanting her so badly, it’s become a physical ache.
I thought I’d mastered this hunger. So much grief should have burned it out of me, should have left nothing but ash where my desire once lived. But feeling her shoulder brush against mine in the garden, watching her choose to stay instead of retreat?—
It’s all come flooding back. The wanting. The need. The desperate hope I’d convinced myself was dead.
Yesterday, Rurik cornered me in the armory and asked why I was “radiating enough sexual tension to power a small city.” I nearly threw him through a wall. He just laughed and said he’d take that as confirmation.
This morning, Aisling gave me a look during breakfast that suggested she knew exactly why I couldn’t stop staringat Nasyra’s hands wrapped around her teacup. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to.
Everyone can see it. Everyone knows.
And the worst part is, she feels it too.
I can tell by the way her shadow-flame flares when I correct her stance. By the way her breath catches when my hand brushes hers. By the way her gaze lingers on my mouth during conversations, then jerks away when she realizes what she’s doing.
We’re circling each other. Two damaged creatures, drawn together by something neither of us fully understands, too wary to close the distance but unable to walk away.
Something has to give.
Today’s trainingsession ends early.
Not because she’s struggling—she’s made remarkable progress, her control sharper with each passing day. But because our powers have become impossible to manage in close proximity. When I step near her, my shadows surge toward her fire without conscious direction. When she loses focus, her shadow-flame curls toward my darkness, seeking something it recognizes.
By midday, we’re both breathing hard, and not from exertion.
I watch her practice her favorite construct—a blade of shadow-flame, its edges sharp and stable. The darkness inside me stirs, reaching for her fire with an intensity that makes my skin prickle. Her gaze flicks to mine, and I see the same awareness reflected back. The same hunger.
“We should stop.” My voice comes out rougher than intended. “Take a break.”
She stands across the training yard, shadow-flame flickering at her fingertips, her mismatched eyes fixed on me with an intensity that makes my blood heat. “Why?”
“Because if we keep going, I’m going to do something we’ll both regret.”
The words hang between us, raw and honest. Her fire flares brighter—response to the admission, to the desire I’ve stopped trying to hide.
“Would we?” Her voice is quiet. “Regret it?”
The question lands with the weight of everything we haven’t said. I can see the challenge in her expression, the invitation she’s not quite willing to speak aloud. Part of me wants to cross the distance between us, to show her exactly what I’ve been imagining every time I close my eyes.
But not here. Not in broad daylight, with Rurik likely watching from some window and the whole fortress wondering what’s happening between us.
I don’t answer. Don’t trust myself to speak. Just turn and walk away before I do something that can’t be undone.
Her gaze follows me out of the training yard. I can feel it against my back, hot and questioning.
I spend the rest of the afternoon in my quarters, fighting the urge to go back to her.
Night falls.I don’t sleep.
Instead, I stand by my window and watch the stars emerge, one by one, over the mountains. The shadows inside me arerestless, stirring beneath my skin, reaching toward where she’s lying in her own bed. Probably not sleeping either.
A few doors. That’s all that separates us. A few doors and centuries of grief and the knowledge that if I go to her now, I won’t be able to stop.
She deserves better than this. Better than a dragon cursed by the same magic that killed her. Better than a man who’s spent years becoming something dark and dangerous and barely controlled.
