Lifting his hand, his palm swept through a cluster, nearly thirty in one motion. They flared rust-red beneath him, recognizing the power he held.
“They were.” His chin tilted to the ceiling where more clung in constellations. “They were created to mirror the brilliance in its skies. But after the collapse, they migrated. Many found Ryuu’s caves to suffice, it seems.”
The moths multiplied as we moved, thousands thickening, spreading across the walls, the ceiling. Some gathered in bunches that curved into a perfect sphere, creating the illusion that Callisto’s moon hung only for us.
“Are they safe here?”
“Everyone is safe here.”
His confidence wove into me, binding to the pull of the bond. I didn’t need to feel it to believe him. He had given Sylen more than safety when she fled Nyctom. He had given her life. A home. And hadn’t he done the same for me? Even when I swore I didn’t want it, didn’t deserve it, he had still made space for me.
I turned, catching him in the glimmer of a thousand wings, his eyes burning with a certainty that everything he loved could be protected.
Ronan didn’t have a name for it, but said it’s where his flame can rest, can be still.
And it was nothing like the grand, war-ready halls above. No black stone bristling for battle. No throne forged to intimidate.
Here, the chamber walls bled into ginger, every surface pulsing with that molten hue. The air shined, alive with the glow of the lunethmoths; their wings painting the dark in threads of flame.
At the center lay a pool cut straight from the mountain, as though the gods themselves had scooped their fingers through rock. Aqua saltwater filled it, its surface lapping over the rim in delicate strokes.
Ronan stood by the wall we entered through, tendrils wreathing his hands before moving for a boulder twice his size. It shuddered along the wall before us, grinding aside with a growl. And there, behind it, was a window, opening into the sea itself. An entire, endless world pressed close.
A strike of water slammed against the barrier, shaking the chamber. But the window held. I realized then, like my room above, the sea could not breach it. That the water here would not steal me away.
The stone floor was flawless beneath my feet until I met the pool's edge. I bent closer, knees pressing against the brim, letting my hand skim its surface. The water yielded like liquid glass, smooth and impossibly soft beneath my fingertips.
“Does it heal or something?”
“Not technically.” He lowered himself beside me where the water remained calm, an oasis defiant against the chaos across the barrier. “But something about it always makes me feel more secure. Like my soul knows how to mend itself here.”
Beyond the arch of stone, beyond the horizon, daybreak had begun to unfurl, its pale light low but teasing across the waves, leaking into the cove.
“Well,” I said, sliding my shirt over my head, “let’s take a dip, shall we?”
The radiance from the pool caught against my skin, painting me in blue-green fire. The chamber thickened with a pause, his smoke restless, as if it already knew what came next.
I left it there, boldness hanging between us, daring him to answer.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Ronan
AMUSCLE TIGHTENED IN HIS JAW. He was a prince. An heir. The Wraith.
And yet, here before her, he was nothing but a man undone.
Her pants slid down next, pooling at her ankles. And she was bared to him. A goddess cut from myth, conjured only for him.
The light kissed her collarbones, catching the ink that coiled above one. Her Viper, alive even here, slithering as she swept her hair back.
His breath stalled while he drank her in, but it wasn’t yearning. She had already sated that part of him. This was reverence. As if a single breath might shatter the image.
Her breasts rose and fell with each inhale, achingly perfect, pulling his gaze down the line of her waist, the sweep of her hips. His hands twitched, eager to trace the places where light met skin. But then his eyes caught on her scar.
He forced himself not to think of that day. Of the twist in his gut when she had followed Reve into the woods. How even then something inside him pulled him to her.
A sweetened scent rose off her skin as she slipped into the pool—wildflowers, floating in the air, steeping of want and desire.
