But the storm doesn’t care for denial.
You heard me.
I froze by the shutter, palm flat against the wood. The words weren’t sound, weren’t thought, they were pressure. Like the storm itself had leaned in close to test the shape of my name inside its mouth.
“I don’t hear you,” I hissed under my breath, fingernails biting into the wood.
The hum in my hand brightened, the silver pricking like frost breaking through the skin.
Lie.
The single word curled low, like thunder hushed to a whisper. Dark. Deliberate. And intimate enough to feel like breath against my ear.
My throat burned. “You’re a dream. Nothing more.”
If I am a dream, why do you answer back.
I stopped dead, heat crawling up my neck. “Because dreams don’t know how to shut up, apparently.”
The rafters creaked above me, no wind to blame. The sound bent strange, low and rough, almost like laughter, as though his amusement had threaded itself into the bones of my cabin.
Careful, little storm.
His voice unfurled inside the silence. Velvet threaded with thunder.
You bite like you want me closer.
“I don’t,” I hissed, louder than I meant to. My voice rang against the cabin walls, making the silence after feel even sharper.
I lowered it to a rasp. “I don’t want you. I don’t want any of this."
Another ripple of sound, half laugh, half growl, slid through the space between heartbeats.
Then why do you keep answering?
I spun around, staring at nothing and everything, unsure where to look. “Because you won’t shut up.”
Oh, I’ll hush if you wish.The voice came low, intimate.But we both know silence would taste lonelier now.
Heat crawled up my throat. “You’re the chain, you’re the curse they warned me about” I snapped. Trying to sound sharp, but instead it felt like striking a flint against steel. Sparks, not fire.
He chuckled again, a sound so quiet it felt like it had been pressed against my ear.
Curses don’t call you by name, Caelira. Chains don’t laugh when you defy them. But I do. And I like the way you burn when you fight me.
My pulse stuttered, “I’m not yours,” I said, steel this time, not flint. The silence bent.
His voice curved back slower, like thunder rolling deliberate across the horizon.
You’ve never been anyone else’s.
The mark flared in my palm, silver spilling it agreed with him. I clenched my hand into a fist trying to smother it, but the only throbbed brighter for the pressure.
“You don’t get to decide who I am,” I bit out, though the words shoot more from heat than fear.
No. His voice softened, but there was something in it that made my pulse trip.
Deny me all you like, little storm. Pretend you can outrun what already holds you. But storms don’t bargain, and fate doesn’t ask permission. You were mine the moment the storm marked you,
