Chapter 22 All Eyes on Me
I stretched beneath the covers, my limbs heavy, my eyes still closed.
The remnants of a strange dream clung to me—shadows, heat, a voice I couldn’t quite place.
But as awareness crept in, something felt wrong.
The mattress was too firm. The air smelled different—cooler, tinged with cedar and something darker.
I opened my eyes.
This wasn’t my room.
I shot upright, shoving the dark-blue blankets off me.
A long gray shirt brushed my thighs— one I didn’t recognize.
My pulse spiked. The wound on my leg, the one that should’ve taken days to mend, was sealed over, leaving only a pale mark.
Whatever potion Lorik had used on me worked almost as well as magical healing, better, in some ways.
Dragontails weren’t taught potions, certainly not ones most Aurorics couldn’t manage.
And why would he save me at all? He’d shown nothing but contempt for my family, and a cold, practiced indifference toward me.
But that thought slipped away when I turned toward the window, where the first shards of dawn shimmered through the glass.
And I saw him.
Lorik Draventh lay asleep on a futon across the room, bare-chested, one arm bent beside his head.
He wore loose gray pants that clung just enough to show the long lines of his legs.
In the pale early sunlight spilling through the windows, every muscle in his arms and abdomen stood out in quiet, effortless definition.
His caramel hair had fallen over one eye, softening the sharp edges of his face.
Even asleep, he looked carved by the God of the Moon.
The room was so still I could hear nothing but our breathing, slow, steady and the thunder of my own heart, each beat quickening with the memory of last night. The rush, the need, the want still lingering in my blood.
My throat tightened. What was I doing? How was my mind going there again?
I had almost been killed, healed by a potion I barely understood and somehow the most unsettling part was this desperate, aching pull toward a Moonveil. I had ingested an aphrodisiac potion, and it had dragged me straight toward him, of all people. A pull that was forbidden, dangerous… cursed.
My dress lay crumpled by the door, stiff with dried blood.
He must have changed me into one of his shirts while I was unconscious.
The realization hit hard, he’d seen me in my underwear.
Heat rushed to my cheeks before I stopped myself.
I peeled off his oversized shirt and forced the bloody dress back on.
Better to explain blood than walking out wearing something of Lorik Draventh’s.
If Dragontail hadn’t killed me yet, that certainly would.
The Solenhart throne had executed males and females for less, and not even my mother could save me from that kind of offense.
But before I could leave, my gaze snagged on the table.
The book with the serpent on the cover lay exactly where he’d left it, the same volume he’d consulted yesterday to save my life.
I hesitated. Touching his things again felt like a breach of privacy.
But that serpent, coiled, crowned, inked in obsidian, was the same sigil tattooed along his arm.
A mark I had never seen on any noble house. Not in any archive. Not in any record.
It could have been nothing, an artist’s choice.
Except it wasn’t. A secret pressed in plain sight.
Maybe this was my chance to start unraveling whatever he was hiding. In a breath, I was at his desk.
The book was heavier than it looked, bound in soft black leather, nearly two inches thick. I opened it carefully.
Blank pages.
Every single one.
I flipped through them slowly, fingertip tracing the edges, certain I must have missed some hidden script or runes burned between the fibers but there was nothing. No ink. No clues. I must have lost my mind yesterday in the pain; there was nothing in this book; it was a blank notepad.
I flipped through them slowly, my fingertip tracing the edges of each page, certain I must have missed some hidden script or runes burned between the fibers but there was nothing. No ink. No clues. Just emptiness.
Maybe I had lost my mind yesterday in the pain.
Because this book wasn’t a record, a journal, or anything sacred.
It was a blank notepad.
I glanced over my shoulder. Lorik was still asleep, the steady rise and fall of his chest a quiet, dangerous lull.
When I turned back, something else caught my eye.
A small stack of books pushed farther to the back of the table; old and worn. At the bottom lay the book he’d once been reading in the library months ago, the one he’d snapped shut the moment he realized I’d noticed it, urging me, almost pleading, to look away.
Ashes of the Sun, Tears of the Moon.
The title gleamed in ancient gold lettering along the spine.
It felt as though it called me.
I slid it out with careful fingers, moving as silently as I could so I wouldn’t wake the male sleeping behind me. The cover was warm beneath my palms. When I opened it, my breath caught.
A first edition.
Centuries old.
Pristine.
I turned another page and found the handwritten note I never got to finish reading the night in the library, the one Lorik had taken from my hands before I could see more.
“For my love,
O.S.”
This note didn’t seem to fit with the first edition. The ink seemed strong and unfaded; it was evidently done recently.
Then, I felt something shift behind me, a faint brush of movement along my back. Maybe it was just the draft from the window. Maybe it was Lorik walking.
I didn’t wait to find out.
On silent toes, I slipped toward the door, careful not to let the floorboards betray me, leaving the serpent-bound book wide open on the table.
Then I ran.
I bolted out of the Natch Tower, where Sunhearts had no business being and didn’t stop until I reached my room. The halls were mercifully empty; it was still early on a Sunday, and most students were asleep.
Soehl wasn’t there, of course. She was probably with Jan. Whatever was between them had turned into something dangerously close to love and obsession, almost overnight.
I changed quickly into my green pants and cropped uniform top, intending to grab breakfast, when the door swung open, and Soehl, Tran, Rowan, and Shakari piled in and still wearing the tavern clothes from last night, looking as if they hadn’t slept at all.
“You are safe,” Shakari said, running and hugging me.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” I chuckled nervously. “It’s six in the morning. Did you guys even sleep?”
“Your mother sent Thalen to look for you in the tavern yesterday. She had a vision that night that a royalist had intentions to kill you and that he almost would, but she knew you would be saved by someone; she just couldn’t see who it was.
She just assumed Thalen was going to save you since she had sent him to you. ” Shakari explained.
“When Thalen came, desperate to look for you, we didn’t find you, just the Sunheart flat dead at the back of the tavern and a lake of blood next to him,” Rowan added.
“We looked for you everywhere, the whole fleet of Emberkeep guards are looking for you everywhere,” Soehl said, worried.
“What happened? Clearly someone helped you and it definitely wasn’t the uptight blond Emberkeep,” Tran said, joking as always, even in the darkest moments. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Shakari rolling her eyes.
I told them everything. Well… almost everything.
I left out the humiliating part, the want, the ache that had twisted through me under the potion’s influence.
The rest I laid out plainly: the Sunheart slipping me an aphrodisiac potion, my eyes turning red, running into Rory in the washroom, stepping outside for air, the royalist Sunheart coming at me with a dagger, and Lorik Draventh stopping him.
But I did leave certain things out, the Tucana serpent venom on the dagger, the way Lorik had healed me, and the fact that I’d slept in his room afterward. He had saved my life, and until I understood why, I wouldn’t expose his abilities to anyone.
I hated keeping anything from them. They were my people now. But there was too much I still didn’t understand…and too much I wasn’t ready to admit.
Because part of me already felt something for him and I couldn’t bear the thought of them seeing it. Questioning it. Questioning me.
“Lorik Draventh?” Rowan lifted a brow, genuinely intrigued. “Now this gets interesting. Why would he save you? No offense.”
“None taken. I asked myself the same question.”
“I don’t trust him. He might have done this to get a royal favor,” Shakari said, her words slicing clean through me.
The possibility hit hard, I hadn’t even considered it.
How could I have believed it was a genuine act?
Lorik most definitely had an ulterior motive for saving me.
The aphrodisiac potion had blurred too many lines last night, leaving my thoughts twisted and unfocused.
“He still saved her, right? That has to count for something,” Soehl offered, always ready to see the good in people.
“Soehl, you’re too na?ve,” Shakari shot back. “Lorik Draventh hates the Solenharts. Beatrix Solenhart, her mother, killed his sister and mother. If he saved one Solenhart, it was for a reason.”
“And where did you sleep? Where were you all this time?” Rowan asked, snapping me back from my own thoughts. He was curious, almost knowing the hours didn’t add up.
“I didn’t, I told you someone from Wolventon healed me, and then Lorik portaled me to the Auroric wing, which was empty, and gave me another healing potion, and then I just walked there. Hence, I need sleep,” I lied almost naturally but with guilt.
“We haven’t slept either.” Rowan yawned, rubbing his eyes. “We are glad you are safe and in one piece. Time to sleep.”