Chapter 14 #2
Her marks didn’t just cover her skin—they were her skin, glowing vines that pulsed with each heartbeat, spreading across every visible inch in patterns that hurt to look at directly.
They wrapped around her throat like a lover’s hands, cascaded down her arms in spiraling fractals, disappeared beneath the white dress that seemed woven from mist and regret.
Her eyes were pure light, no iris, no pupil—just radiance that saw through me, past me, into me.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” she said, but she was smiling. That smile was wrong too—too knowing, too hungry, too much like the smile I’d imagined in a hundred moments I refused to acknowledge.
“The Veil.” My voice came out rougher than intended. “It’s making boundaries weak.”
“Or maybe you just can’t stay away.” She tilted her head, and her hair moved like it was underwater, defying physics the way everything here defied reason. “Maybe you’ve been trying so hard not to think about me that the Veil dragged you straight into my dreams.”
She moved toward me, and reality rippled with each step. Flowers bloomed where her feet touched earth, then withered, then bloomed again in an endless cycle of creation and decay. I wanted to run. Should run. In dreams, our marks couldn’t hurt each other. In dreams, we could—
“Don’t,” I said, but my voice lacked conviction. My marks were already reaching toward hers, corruption spreading across my hands like ink in water.
“Why?” She was close now, close enough that I could smell roses and rain and something underneath that was purely her—that scent I’d been trying not to notice for weeks.
Close enough that I could see myself reflected in those light-filled eyes, see how broken I looked, how desperate.
“We both want this. I can feel it through the bond. Every time you look at me. Every time you don’t look at me because looking would mean admitting—”
“The bond isn’t real,” I said, the lie tasting like ash. “It’s just magical proximity.”
“Liar.” She reached up, her fingers stopping just shy of my face.
This close, I could see her marks moving, vines shifting and growing, flowers opening and closing like breathing.
“You feel it too. Have felt it since that first day when I defied you in the tent. When I looked at you like I wasn’t afraid.
When you looked at me like you wanted to destroy me and save me in the same breath. ”
“Elle—”
“I’m so tired of almosts,” she whispered, and there was such raw need in her voice it felt like a physical blow. “Aren’t you? Tired of stopping ourselves. Tired of pretending. Tired of all the reasons we can’t when we both know we want.”
Her fingers made contact with my cheek, and the world exploded.
Not with pain but with rightness. Like two halves of something ancient and broken finally remembering how to fit together.
The sensation crashed through me—her marks meeting mine, dream-logic allowing what reality forbade.
I felt her gasp echo in my own chest, felt her surprise and relief and desperate hunger as if they were my own emotions.
I pulled her against me, and she made a sound that was part gasp, part laugh, part sob. Her body fit against mine like it had been designed for this exact purpose, every curve and hollow aligning perfectly.
“This is a dream,” I said, my voice barely recognizable. “Only a dream.”
“Then let me dream,” she whispered against my throat, and pulled my head down to hers.
The kiss detonated between us.
Desperate, hungry, tinged with the knowledge that this couldn’t be real, that reality would rip us apart the moment we woke.
Her hands tangled in my hair, pulling hard enough to hurt, and I welcomed the pain.
Mine spread across her back, then lower, pulling her impossibly closer.
Through the dream-bond—vivid and overwhelming in ways our waking connection never was—I felt everything she felt.
The want that had been building since the day we met.
The frustration of every interrupted moment.
The need that scared her as much as it scared me.
And underneath it all, something deeper.
Something that felt dangerously close to—
No. I couldn’t think that. Not even here.
“I hate you,” she gasped against my mouth, then bit my lower lip hard enough to draw blood.
“I hate you too,” I agreed, then kissed her again, deeper, trying to memorize the taste of her, the feel of her, knowing this was all we’d ever have.
The garden around us responded to our emotions like a living thing.
Flowers bloomed and died in rapid succession, their petals falling like snow.
Seasons changed with each heartbeat—spring’s soft green to summer’s lush abundance to autumn’s golden decay to winter’s stark beauty and back again in an endless, dizzying cycle.
The hedge maze grew wild, thorns lengthening, roses opening mouths filled with teeth.
The fountain at the garden’s center ran backward, water defying gravity, reaching toward the sky.
We were destroying her grandmother’s memory with our desperate need, warping this sacred space into something feral and hungry, and neither of us cared.
“We could stay here,” she said between kisses, her voice breaking. “In the dream. Never wake up. Just this, forever.”
“We’d die.” I pulled back just enough to see her face, to watch how the light behind her eyes pulsed with each rapid breath.
“Maybe it would be worth it.” She traced the carved marks on my face with trembling fingers. “Better than waking up. Better than pretending. Better than watching you walk away from me again and again because we’re too dangerous together.”
I pulled back farther, holding her face in my hands. Her skin was fever-hot beneath my palms, or maybe I was the one burning. “No. You’re meant for more than dying in a dream. You’re meant for—”
“What?” she demanded, and there was fury mixed with her want now. “What am I meant for, Kaelren? To survive? To become whatever the marks want me to become? To watch you destroy yourself while I can’t touch you, can’t help you, can’t—”
“To live,” I said, and the word came out like a wound. “To have more than this. More than me.”
“With you, though,” she said, and there was something broken in her voice that matched the broken thing in my chest. “I’d be dying with you. And maybe that’s enough. Maybe that’s everything.”
“Elle—”
The dream shattered like glass.
One moment I was holding her, the next I was slamming back into my body with enough force to make me gasp. My marks screamed with frustrated want, burning like brands across my skin. Across the fire, Elle jolted awake, her eyes snapping open with a sound that might have been a sob or a scream.
We stared at each other while the Star Veil danced overhead, both knowing exactly what had happened, both knowing we couldn’t acknowledge it.
Her chest heaved with rapid breaths. Her marks glowed amber-bright, pulsing in the same rhythm as mine.
I could still taste her on my lips, still feel the ghost of her body against mine.
“I should—” she started, her voice wrecked.
“Yes,” I agreed, not trusting myself to say more.
She stood on shaking legs and walked to the other side of the glade, as far from me as she could get while staying within the wards.
She didn’t look back, but through the bond—the one we both pretended didn’t exist—I felt her want warring with her fear, felt her trying not to remember the way I’d kissed her like I was drowning and she was air.
I remained where I was, trying to forget the taste of her mouth, the feel of her body against mine, the way she’d said my name like a prayer and a curse combined. Trying and failing. The memory was branded into me, deeper than any mark I’d ever carved into my own flesh.
The Star Veil began to fade with approaching dawn, silver threads dissolving into ordinary darkness. But the memory of that dream-kiss burned like corruption in my veins, like Bloom-marks spreading, like something that would consume me from the inside out if I let it.
We’d crossed a line we couldn’t uncross.
And we both knew it would destroy us.
The only question was whether we’d be able to stop ourselves from crossing it again.