I wasn’t going back to sleep, my body writhed too awake, morning too close. But the thought of being left alone felt...grim.
Ronan rose, taking my hand. “I have a better idea.”
He led me to the open balcony where his wings spread, tearing the night apart. Shadows shivered around us as the span of them caught the moon. He looked like everything the old stories warned of.
My instincts prickled, urging me to flinch, to fear. But I only stared. From here, he looked primeval. Beautiful in that bone-deep, ruinous way.
He slid me flush against him, one arm wrapping under my legs, the other bracing the line of my back.
Instinctively, my arm wound around his neck, clinging. “Where are we going?”
He kissed me instead of answering and I let my free hand rise to claim his jaw, pulling him deeper, erasing the last space between our mouths.
When he broke away, his breath felt like fire across my lips. “We’re going to a place that has never failed me. Not once. Not even when destiny demanded I kneel.”
Oh good. A soul-healing secret haven.
His wings stretched wider, blotting out the last threads of the moon, and then he leapt.
The drop yawned below us, black cliffs and crashing waves. Wind tore at my hair, while the weightless plunge clawed at my stomach. I might have screamed, except his chest pressed into mine, smoke veiling over me like a second set of wings drowning out the sound.
The sea rose beneath us, froth glittering, the night sky splitting with the sound of his wings as they caught the air in one violent, thunderous beat. Then another. And we were soaring.
I clung tighter and he angled his head just enough to brush his lips against my temple, a fleeting, stolen kiss.
Below us, the world blurred. Mountains, forest, sea—all gone. Only clouds and a setting sky remained. And in his arms, I almost believed I was weightless too.
The air shifted as salt thickened, biting at my lips. The roar of waves climbed until it swallowed even the sound of his flight. And when the horizon cracked open, I saw it—the jagged maw of stone made from the sea itself.
Black cliffs rose straight out of the water. In their center, a cavern gaped, vast and cathedral-high, glowing faintly blue, then green, where the waves surged and retreated. A place where sea and stone had conspired to create something secret.
A cool mist coated my skin as he angled lower, holding me steady as a cliff face rushed closer. Spray skimmed my cheeks as we crossed its threshold, diving into the cavern’s throat.
Inside there was no torrent, no wind. Just water glowing from the rocks, luminescence threading across black stone, casting the space in otherworldly light.
“This,” he said, lips brushing my ear, “is where the sea keeps its secrets.”
And tonight, it would keep ours.
The staircase twisted like an elegant dragon coiled in sleep. The further down we went, the duskier light got. From flaming to flickering, to singed-out entirely, deterring anyone from venturing down.
Ahead of me, Ronan’s wings faded into ink across his back, shifting with every step. They moved in their own fluency, not because hemoved, but because they followed him. Like his smoke, they were an extension of himself.
My stomach turned as memories found their way up, ones I had locked away, sealed tight, keys cast into the abyss. The taste of stone, the weight of chains, the dungeon’s soundless dark.
You’re not there, I whispered to myself.
I wasn’t in the cell. The pain was distant. Scarred but survived. It was Ronan before me now. Not Reve. And I was safe.
I braced for rot and dust, for stale air and suffocating dark as we went down further. But each muffled step only carried more salt, more sea.
All at once the walls began to blink, thousands of glimmering eyes opening as we passed. My hand waved over the gentle glow, each softening beneath my shadow, each wavering from silver to a cool blue, bending with my breath. They felt me, my panic at the memory.
“Lunethmoths—”
Ronan stilled, turning toward where my hand skimmed across the wave of starlight. Their translucent wings winked from blue back to silver as my hand dropped.
“But I thought they were only native to Nyctom?”
