Thane
The stairs narrowed as we climbed, the tower’s inner spine tightening around us until our shoulders nearly brushed the outer wall with each turn. Stone held the warmth of something living, not heat from the sun or hearth, but a steady pulse that seemed to rise with us, as if the tower’s breath flowed upward and we were caught inside it.
The scent grew stronger the higher we went.
It wasn’t the sharp bite of Malric’s leather and steel, or the familiar undertone of my magic that always carried the edge of rain I could never fully scrub away. This was something else entirely, a sweetness that threaded through the air in a way that made my lungs deepen automatically, my tongue pressing to the back of my teeth as my senses sharpened with unwanted urgency.
Warm honey. Sweet spice. Silver blossom.
The last note struck like a hook, subtle and bright, and my body reacted before I could decide what it meant. Heat pulled low in my belly, a sudden awareness that made my thighs tense and my grip on my sword tighten hard enough to whiten my knuckles.
I had been attracted to others before, both men and women. I had taken lovers in camp when war dragged on too long and loneliness became its own kind of hunger. Malric and I were bonded, but occasionally indulged in a third in our bed when a woman caught our eye. This was not that.
This was a soul-deep recognition.
My magic stirred, restless and eager, pressing toward the scent as if it had been waiting for it. The tower answered with a low hum under my boots, a vibration that traveled through my bones and made it difficult to tell where my body ended and the structure began.
Malric didn’t speak as we climbed. He rarely did when he was mapping threats, when he was building the plan in his head. Hiseyes scanned the stairs, the walls, and every room we passed, cataloging threats, assessing dangers with his sword at the ready to defend us. I stayed close behind him, one hand on the wall when the stairs tightened, the other steady on my blade. The bond between us held taut, a line drawn too tight across a storm.
His tension bled through the bond, his tight control, and my magic threatened to spiral, but Malric was locked down. Focused, the way he always was, not only through discipline but through sheer will. His power locked behind the mark that kept it leashed, which helped steady my own. The tower’s magic pressed at it anyway, curious. Testing.
My magic pressed back.
That was the danger. It always wanted to answer.
We passed multiple levels on our way up. A dining room. A library. A nest. We cleared them efficiently, Malric checking them with the thoroughness of his military training, assessing for threats before I could even venture into the room. I tried not to be irritated. I was a soldier, commanded a unit myself, and didn’t need his protection, but he insisted all the same.
The threat assessments all had the same result. Each room was unoccupied. No people. No weapons. No threats. We reached the top landing with no warning from the tower, no change in temperature, no obvious threshold. One moment, we were turning past bare stone, the next the stair opened into a chamber lit by muted moonlight and the pale glow of old magic caught in the walls.
She stood at the far side of the room, backed against the stone as if she had nowhere else to go.
Malric stopped so abruptly that his entire body went rigid in front of me. I halted half a heartbeat later, my boot scraping the floor.
The girl—a woman—was real.
Not an illusion shaped by the forest. Not a memory the tower had conjured to lure us. Flesh and breath and the slightest tremor in her posture as she watched us with eyes that were too wide and too bright to be calm. The sight of her stunned me hard enough that my thoughts scattered, leaving only sensation in their place.
She was beautiful in a way that I never expected to find inside a prison of stone.
Not painted, not adorned, not the polished perfection of court girls who learned to wear their faces like armor. Her hair fell loose, heavy and pale against the darker stone, catching light in soft strands. Her skin was pale too, but not sickly, not fragile. Alive. Her mouth was parted as though she’d tried to speak and swallowed it back. Her hands hovered near her stomach, fingers curled into the fabric of her gown as if she were holding herself together by force.
Her scent hit me fully then, no longer a tease in the stairwell.
Warm honey. Sweet spice. Silver blossom.
My breath caught and stayed caught. Heat surged low and sudden. My body responded with an urgency that made my grip on my sword feel clumsy. The pull was not toward her body alone. It was toward something deeper, something in the shape of her presence, in the way the air itself seemed to align around her as if she were the axis.
Omega.
The word rose in my mind like a blade drawn free.
We didn’t have omegas in the Unseelie lands anymore. Not openly. Not safely. The king had hunted them, or locked them away, or forced them into breeding bonds that left them hollowed out. They disappeared, and the court pretended it was the natural order of things, that omegas were rare like comets, like miracles that didn’t need explanation.
This one stood in front of me and made my instincts flare so hard my magic twitched, storm pressure shifting in my chest.
Mine, something inside me tried to claim, too fast, too desperate.
And then I sensed Malric.
