"Because you shine with all the things you pretend not to carry."
One hand lifts.
It finds my cheek first, the back of its fingers brushing skin already too awake. They trace the curve of my jaw, drift lower, following the line of my throat. The touch is cold, yet warmth spreads in a slow bloom where it passes.
It holds me there, light, almost careful. Its gaze does not match it. The eyes rest on my mouth, my neck, glowing with a hunger that feelsendless. My breath catches as Its thumb slides to the hollow beneath my collarbone and gently presses there, feeling the quick throb of my pulse.
Lips hover near my ear.
"One day," they murmur, "you’ll beg me for what you fear."
The movement draws me closer, narrowing the space until Its breath spills warm across my mouth. I try to see more of the face, but shadow and nearness deny me. Something in me inclines forward, unbidden, as though drawn by a force that does not ask and cannot be refused.
Closer.
Fingertips drifts, slow and unhurried, grazing the rise of my chest. They linger there, press just enough for my pulse to betray me beneath them.
There is no stopping it. No hiding it.
My breath catches, shallow and unsteady. My lips part on a breath I do not recognize as mine. I search his face, drawn upward, wanting to see him fully, wanting—
He is gone.
The forest collapses into dark. Moonlight shatters, the moss at my back dissolving into rough wool as my body jerks awake. The fire burns low below. My shift clings to me, soaked. Heat floods my skin, low and deep, shame following it.
My teeth press hard on my lips, until the taste of iron rises, the sting meant to steady me. It fails.
My body will not quiet. My skin thrums, alive with the echo of his hands. My mouth aches with a hollow that feels like hunger given form. The sheets twist beneath my fingers. A pulse gathers in places I have never named, never needed to. The sensation pools and pulses, wicked and wet, refusing prayer, refusing sleep.
I curl inward, trembling.
Sleep claims me again before I can resist it. There, in the dark behind my eyes, his hands find me once more.
I let myself collapse into them.
Chapter Four
Dawn seeps in through the crack above the door, thin and pale. The house still holds the night’s chill.
I kneel by the hearth and stir the embers with the iron poker. A faint glow answers. I feed it splinters first, then a thicker piece of wood. Flame catches slowly, licking upward, breathing into the room.
Behind me, Mama tears bread in her hands. I hear the soft drag of crust against crust, the small knock of her cup set down between sentences.
"…they ran before sunrise… never should have let them stay so long… gold or no gold, it was foolishness…"
The words reach me as sound only. They do not settle.
I stare into the fire.
It bends and straightens, gold along its fringe, blue at its root. My hands hover over it longer than they should, letting the warmth soak into my palms, into my fingers, as if it might burn something away.
Earth. Smoke. Blood. The press of heat where no heat should have been. His—
My breath catches.
Itshands.
I see again the shape of Its mouth near my skin, the glint in Its eyes as they caught the moonlight, my skin prickling as if touched again.
