Chapter 34
34
Kiaran
The fire roars, licking at the bricks lining the massive forge. Magic thrums from my fingertips, infusing the glowing runic metal. Each engraved symbol flares brighter beneath my touch, sigils of warding and confinement meant to reinforce the failing bindings on a prison built of blood and sacrifice.
Her blood. Her sacrifice.
Sparks dance on air currents stirred by my restless pacing. I can’t focus on the components laid out before me. All I see is her before she went upstairs to lay in my bed.
The scent of her. Eyes on me. I could feel her want through the mark, just as bright and visceral as mine.
The temperature drops again as I wrestle for control, but the cold does little to numb the furious energy flooding my system. Frost spreads across the floor in jagged patterns, climbing the furnace bricks. I stop pacing as ice rimes the table’s edge. My breath plumes white, a physical manifestation of the cold seeping into my lungs—into my bones. Of the ruthless creature within, slamming against its chains.
Raging to be free.
She’s up there. Sleeping while I fray at the seams. Barraged by relentless whispers.
To claim. To conquer. To feast. To fuck. My vows are never gentle. They are always savage things.
Take her. She’s yours. Taste her on your tongue. Watch her yield as you sink inside her pretty pussy. Make her beg and scream your name.
Make her say please in all the ways you’ve imagined in the dark.
“Enough,” I grit out. The shadows beckon, hungry and insistent.
I lower myself into a crouch, dragging both hands through my hair. Pain grounds me when nothing else can, bright and clarifying. The cold has claimed every surface now—icy fractals spiralling across the floor.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I swore to keep my fucking distance.
The darkness at my feet creeps higher. Shadows gather, writhing with minds of their own. Hungry for direction. Hungry for chaos. Their master is losing control.
It’s been tenuous for months—since I filled her broken body with my power, binding us together to keep her alive. To keep her breathing and fierce and fighting beside me. Our bond scrapes and claws and demands completion.
Even in sleep, she’s a temptation.
The shadows know. My power knows. It whispers that a half-bond means she’s unclaimed, and every cell of my being demands what’s mine.
This loss of control is precisely why I pace the forge rather than soothe her dreams upstairs. I won’t become the monster who lay waste to realms and slaughtered everything in my path. Who fed on fear, never sated. I conquered and devoured without mercy for too long.
Until I saw kingdoms destroyed and understood I had nowhere left to go. Nowhere but into the dark I’ve built in this city.
I didn’t anticipate her. I’d already made the mistake of caring for one Falconer, but this one— this one — is different. Fierce and reckless and so very human. Breakable in a thousand fragile ways.
Mine, and yet not mine.
Upstairs, her quiet sleep is replaced with those familiar nightmares I can never quite chase away.
“Fuck,” I mutter, pushing away from the table.
The half-finished seal components lie abandoned as I stalk upstairs, the bond scraping like glass to soothe, to comfort, to touch.
I pause in the open doorway, devouring the sight of her. Painfully soft in repose. Copper hair spills over her cheek, fluttering with each gentle breath. One hand clutches the blankets to her chest.
Tonight, I can’t resist crossing the room to perch on the bed’s edge. My knuckles brush over the mark on her palm, but the touch does nothing to ease the tension in her body.
“I hate letting you sleep like this, mo chridhe ,” I murmur.
The old endearment emerges unbidden. A secret name for her that I’ve never dared speak aloud before.
She stirs with a broken sound, still trapped in memories’ vicious grip. When she whimpers again, the last threads of my willpower snap. Icy fractals skitter wildly across the walls as I stand.
Better to rip the wound open than prolong the agony by dragging out my leaving.
I stride from the room and leave the forge. As I weave through the city’s streets, I fight to ignore the bond shredding my insides with each step I take away from her.
By the time I reach her townhouse, navigating locks and barriers is easier, focusing my control. My boots are soundless as I make my way on silent feet upstairs to her bedchamber. The room I should never have entered. Should never have left.
I gather clean clothes with hands that barely shake. The urge to imagine warm skin bared just for me, to indulge in dangerous thoughts of her soft and wanting beneath my touch, nearly shatters my control. Frost spreads in warning as I turn toward the door.
A burst of shimmering light fills the space—golden and searingly bright. “Where is she?” Derrick demands, wings humming.
I force my tone emotionless. “Asleep in the Fade. She’s safe.”
The pixie darts closer, eyes narrowing. “I don’t trust your definition of safe.” His gaze sweeps the creeping ice. “And you’re freezing the place.”
“My consort ,” I say very softly, “never has to worry about my hurting her.”
“Which version of you?” Pixie wings blur furiously. “Kiaran MacKay or Kadamach? Because Kiaran MacKay is the one I permitted to mark her. Kadamach is standing right in front of me. You have a breakable, mortal, entirely human consort. Forgive me for pointing out that your history with humans is hardly a sterling example.”
Anger coils hot and tense in my chest at his impudence. At how correct he is.
Kameron thinks she knows monsters, but I’ve had centuries to perfect the art of ruining beautiful things.
With effort, I tamp it down. Remind myself that she cares for this irritating creature.
“Kadamach would crush you beneath his heel for your insolence,” I tell him, nudging the bundle of clothes under my arm. “Kiaran MacKay is warning you the seal is shattering. She needs rest before we repair it.”
Derrick hovers silently, absorbing my admission. His next words slice deep. “Will you also get some rest? I don’t trust you in this state.”
I look away, tension coiling painfully tight. Rest is a distant memory with her haunting my thoughts, the whisper of her power an endless tease. “I’ll rest soon,” I lie.
But the consort bond never lets me forget how close Kameron is. The space between us now is an open wound, stealing what’s left of my sanity. Across the damn city, too close—not close enough. I turn toward the door, steps leaden. “After tomorrow, I won’t trouble either of you anymore. You’ll take care of my consort when I’m gone.”
I make my way downstairs, chest aching. Tonight, I’ll listen to her nightmares one last time.
And tomorrow, I’ll let her go.