Chapter 11
The curtains were drawn tight, sealing the world in a dim, diluted shimmer. Moonlight still clung to the sky, a wan, watery glow refusing to surrender to dawn. I turned slowly, my hand sliding across the linen to the place beside me where warmth should have been.
No imprint.
No scent.
Only the faintest heat, so faint it might have been nothing more than my own wanting reflected back at me.
My gaze drifted to Poe. He remained perched at the bedside table, head tucked into his chest, feathers trembling with each tiny breath.
A dream, I told myself. A terrible, beautiful, impossible dream.
Sylum had not come at all.
I pushed upright slowly, heart beating in some strange, off-kilter rhythm. My head still swam, not from sleep, but something deeper. A lingering fog behind my eyes that I couldn’t shake.
My fingers drifted to my lips.
They felt tender beneath my fingertips. Bruised. Swollen. Kissed thoroughly.
I closed my eyes.
The memory of the dream came back slowly, like mist curling back toward the sea. A hand stroking my cheek. A voice whispering my name as though it had always belonged to him, shadows pressing close as breath mingled with mine.
And the kiss…
Had that happened?
It couldn’t have. And yet… my skin ached where he’d touched me, every nerve tingling with remembered fire. I drew my knees to my chest, curling beneath the blankets as if I could press the confusion out of me. Logic told me one thing. My body said otherwise.
And between them sat the truth, mute and elusive.
I’d seen him. I’d felt him. I’d heard his voice, smooth as riverstone, winding through my thoughts. His mouth had found mine until I was weightless, until I forgot everything but the aching pull between us.
But now he was gone.
I hadn’t heard the door open. No footsteps. No retreat. Nothing. As if he’d never been there at all.
Had I truly dreamed of it? Some cruel, sweet dream spun from longing and my own fractured mind?
I pressed my fingers to my mouth once more, searching for certainty in the trembling curve of my lips.
Was it real?
Or was I losing myself piece by piece inside the icy walls of this house?
The cold floor stung beneath my bare feet as I slipped from the warmth of the bed. My limbs still felt oddly heavy, as though I moved through molasses, but the curiosity gnawed at me like a splinter beneath the skin.
I padded quietly toward the adjoining door to Sylum’s room. The golden handle glinted in the dim moonlight. I stared at it, heart ticking strangely in my chest, then pressed my ear softly to the door.
Silence. Not the rhythmic hush of sleep. Not the shifting sounds of movement. Just… stillness.
I curled my hand into a fist, hesitated, then gently, so gently, knocked.
Once.
Twice.
Nothing.
Perhaps he hadn’t returned. Or perhaps he was sleeping peacefully. Just as I turned to retreat, I heard it. The soft hush of footsteps beyond the door. Slow. Heavy.
My breath caught.
The knob turned.
The door opened a fraction, golden light from his side spilling over the threshold, and there he stood.
His ebony hair was tousled, sleep-soft and curling slightly at his temple. His robe hung loosely over his bare chest, revealing the carved muscles hidden beneath the soft patch of hair there.
His expression was easy as he leaned casually against the doorframe, brows furrowed, eyes shadowed with sleep.
“Lucy?” he said, voice rough and low, curling down my spine.
I stared at him, my eyes drawn to his towering figure. My gaze swept up to his mouth, lips full and soft. Had those lips kissed me with such warm devotion, crooned strange, fever-dream confessions against my skin?
Or had I conjured it all?
I opened my mouth, but the words trembled on the edge of my tongue, refusing to leap.
He straightened, taking a step closer, concern rising gently beneath his drowsiness. “Is something wrong?”
I shook my head slowly, swallowing the fear, the hope, and the terrible confusion that pressed like a weight into my chest.
“I… I thought I heard you come in,” I lied. “I wasn’t sure if you had.”
“I returned not long ago,” he assured softly. His eyes searched mine. “One of the mares gave birth. I told your maid to tell you.”
A lie?
The truth?
I couldn’t tell.
I wrung my hands together, my pulse still fluttering like wings against my skin. My lips still throbbed with phantom memory. And his were the lips I had kissed in shadowed moonlight.
Weren’t they?
He tilted his head slightly, a faint crease forming between his brows. “What is it?” he asked, quieter now. Concerned.
I could’ve told him the truth.
I could’ve said I woke to a dream I can still feel on my lips.
I’m not sure if you were the one who touched me, or if I’ve finally gone mad…
But instead, I smiled, small and false.
I stood there, silhouetted, staring up at him as the firelight from his room bathed the side of his face in soft gold. I didn’t know what I wanted. I only knew that I couldn’t let him walk away, not when my thoughts were unraveling thread by thread.
“Did you…” I began, my voice thinner than I intended, “when you came in… did you come into my room?”
His eyes moved over me with careful appraisal, as if he were trying to decipher something written between my words.
A long pause.
“No,” he explained slowly, searching my face. “I came straight into my room.”
I inhaled slowly.
There it was. Confirmation. A clean, sharp cut where the truth should have been soft.
A dream, then. Only a dream. And yet… the weight of his hands still lingered like fingerprints on my hips.
My lips still ached with phantom kisses.
My skin burned with the memory of a touch that had never happened.
“I just thought…” I smiled faintly, the expression brittle. “I thought you did. It must’ve been a dream.”
He stepped forward, brows furrowing with concern. His eyes were clear now, sharper despite the early hour. He caressed my cheek and I leaned into his touch. “You’re not sleeping well?”
I shook my head. “I had a strange dream,” I admitted. “It felt so real.”
He tilted his head slightly, watching me with something unreadable in his expression. “That’s not uncommon,” he offered. “Especially in old places like this. The mind is a delicate thing. It weaves stories to make sense of the unknown.”
He pulled me close, my face resting against the warmth of his bare chest.
“What was the dream?” he asked, his voice quiet. Curious.
I hesitated. The words clawed at the back of my throat, half-formed and burning. I couldn’t say it. Not all of it. Not the truth.
“I don’t remember,” I lied, even as the memory of his lips on mine replayed through my mind.
“Try.”
I swallowed, glancing away as heat crept up to my cheeks. “It felt… like you were there.”
He didn’t move, but I felt his attention sharpen.
“You came into my room. You…” I exhaled slowly, heart pounding. “You touched me. You kissed me.”
I pulled back to look up at him, his lips curved.
“It felt real,” I whispered. “So real I can still feel it.”
His gaze dropped to my lips, before rising again to meet my eyes. “And did you enjoy it?”
The question unraveled me.
“Yes,” I breathed.
That single word cracked something open between us. I felt the heat radiating from his body, the scent of him—spice, soap, something dark and masculine.
“Lucy,” he said, his voice low and reverent. “If I came to you like that, if I touched you… I would never want it to be only a dream.”
I forgot how to breathe.
He leaned in, and I thought for one wild, aching moment that he would kiss me.
But instead, he brought his mouth to the shell of my ear and murmured, “You haunt me.”
My eyes fluttered shut as his breath caressed my skin. When I opened them again, his lips were inches from mine. “Let me make love to you.”
His eyes searched mine. Slowly. Deeply. As if looking for a reason not to. I gave him none.
“Please,” I begged, leaning into him.
His mouth found mine in a kiss that was nothing like the usual careful, gentle brush. It was possessive, heated, like he was trying to erase the ghost of every dream and replace it with something real.
I gasped against him, my fingers gripping the lapels of his robe to keep from falling.
He deepened the kiss, his lips coaxing mine apart, his tongue sweeping through with sinful purpose. My knees buckled and he caught me effortlessly, lifting me as if I weighed nothing.
The world blurred around me. There was only heat, only sensation.
He carried me to his bed, his hands everywhere and nowhere, tugging at the buttons of my nightgown, brushing the skin at my collarbone, making me ache in places I didn’t know could ache.
“I’ve wanted this,” he said, breaking the kiss just long enough to press his forehead to mine. “From the moment I met you.”
“Then why—” I tried to speak, but his mouth was already back on mine, swallowing the question.
“No more questions, Lucy,” he said, voice hoarse. “Not tonight.”
And I let him have me.
Fully.
Utterly.
He touched me with ravenous hunger. It was as though he had been wandering through lifetimes in search of something warm, breathing, and wholly his…
and I was the first taste of life after centuries of famine.
Every doubt I had ever held, every tremor of fear, every blurred edge of memory seemed to dissolve beneath the heat of him.
My nightgown slipped away without my noticing, falling somewhere between us like a discarded lie. He drew back only enough to look at me and the devotion in his gaze was intoxicating. His pupils were blown wide, his breath uneven, as if he were fighting a war inside himself not to devour me whole.
Instinct tugged at me to cover myself, but the look in his eyes, dark, molten, and awed, rooted me where I was. My skin burned, flushing as his eyes scanned over my body. The sight of his desire made me shiver, not with fear, but a burning need of my own.
“You’re beautiful,” he breathed, voice dipped in honey.