CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
My eyes fluttered open, not to the dim, steam-fogged ceiling of my bath chamber, but to a kaleidoscope of impossible, shimmering hues.
The Garden of Thrynn stretched before me, yet it was not the manicured sanctuary I knew. The trees towered until they pierced the heavens, their trunks veined with liquid emerald light. Stardust floated thick in the air, cooling my skin like a thousand tiny diamonds.
A breath of pure wonder escaped me.
My hand reached out, catching the falling motes. They settled on my skin, cool and vibrant, leaving behind a faint, sweet hum.
My gaze drifted beyond the nearest cluster of glowing flora, drawn to a rise in the landscape where an enormous canopy tree stood. It was the same tree where Hera and I had stood mere days ago, but the figure beneath its sweeping boughs was not her.
Talon stood there, his black shirt stretched tight over a chest of forged steel. His bare forearms were marked with runes that writhed in time with the living dream.
“Talon?”
He looked up, his head tilting. “Kaelia. How did you get here?”
Confusion tangled my thoughts. I looked at the stardust on my palms, sparkling like remnants of another world.
“I… I walked,” I managed, feeling the ground waver beneath my bare feet. “How else would I get here?”
“You are asleep, Kaelia,” he said with a shake of his head. “Mortals do not wander here. This is a private sanctum. This is my mind’s creation.”
The dream seemed to bend around him as he moved toward me, trees leaning into his path.
I swallowed hard, retreating a half-step, though the ground seemed to give way beneath me. “This… this is not real. You are not real.”
He smirked, a dark curve of his mouth that made every muscle in my body tighten. When he finally stopped, the distance between us thinned until the heat of him brushed across my skin.
“Were you thinking of me, little flame?” he murmured.
“Yes,” I whispered honestly. “But that does not explain how I am here.”
“Such a dangerous mind you have,” he said, his voice soft and dark. His fingers latched onto my wrist and tugged, pulling me until I collided with him, chest to chest.
The heat of him seared through the thin fabric of my nightdress, sending a tremor from the tips of my breasts to the end of my toes.
His gaze dropped, pinning me where I stood, as his hand found the soft swell of my breast. His thumb circled the sensitive nub through the silk, drawing a helpless moan from my throat.
“If you wanted to see me, little flame,” he breathed, lips brushing the shell of my ear. “You only needed to ask.”
His face moved an inch from mine, so close that I could see the fracturing of light in his glacial eyes.
Our breaths mingled as we both subconsciously inched closer.
The kiss felt inevitable, like the charged moment before lightning strikes the earth.
His mouth crashed into mine, hungry and commanding, and my world tilted on its axis.
My resistance shattered like thin ice, my body arching into him with a hunger I despised but could no longer deny.
My lips parted, answering his tongue with a fire of my own, feeding the bond even as my mind screamed for me to stop.
His arms tightened around my waist, crushing me against him. My fingers tangled in his dark hair, dragging him deeper into a kiss that felt like a devouring.
He groaned, a low, guttural sound that vibrated through his chest and into mine. One hand slid into my hair, angling my head, deepening the kiss, his tongue caressing mine.
The dream around us bent and blurred.
We stumbled, Talon twisting to take the brunt of the fall. We landed with a soft thud on the plush emerald grass, stardust drifting down around us like silent witnesses.
The kiss never broke. If anything, it became more frantic.
I rolled over him, straddling his hips, my nightdress ghosting across his abdomen. His hand slid from my hip to my waist to my ribs, leaving a trail of fire in its path. My palms mapped the lines of his shoulders, the muscle shifting beneath the thin cotton of his shirt.
“You are mine,” he growled against my lips. “Say it.”
“I cannot,” I gasped, my head falling back as his lips found the sensitive skin of my throat. “Talon, please…”
“Please what?” He bit softly at my collarbone, and I arched my back, a low sob escaping me. “Please stop, or please never let you go?”
Every touch was a step deeper into a terrifying abyss. We were on the brink, teetering on the edge of something irreversible.
Then, as if the city itself could see us, pain detonated in my chest.
It was as if a hook had been driven straight through the center of my chest and yanked backward with brutal force.
My lungs seized, a gasp tearing from my throat that broke the kiss. My hands shoved against his chest, not to escape him but to escape whatever invisible force had seized me.
“T-Talo—”
The pressure splintered into heat so sudden and violent that my spine arched off the ground. It flooded through me in erratic waves, scalding and then vanishing just long enough to make me think it had ended before slamming back in with twice the ferocity.
My abdomen clenched so sharply that my muscles locked, forcing my knees into the damp grass as I folded forward, my palms digging into the earth in a useless attempt to ground myself.
The stars above blurred, their steady glow warping into streaks of silver light as though the sky itself had begun to tilt.
Something was wrong.
Cold followed the heat, slithering through my veins and hollowing me from the inside out. My teeth knocked together despite the warmth of the night.
My hands flew to my chest, fingers pressing hard against my sternum as though I could physically contain whatever was unraveling beneath it.
Talon caught me before I could collapse fully.
One arm wrapped around my back and hauled me upright against him gently. His other hand came to my face, thumb pressing beneath my chin to lift it.
“Kaelia,” he said, and my name sounded different in his mouth now. Distant. “Stay with me.”
I tried to answer him, but the pain surged again, stronger this time, radiating from my chest down through my ribs and into my stomach in a merciless spiral that made my vision pulse at the edges.
The grass beneath me felt distant. His hands felt distant. Even my own body felt as though it no longer belonged entirely to me.
My fingers twisted into the fabric of his shirt. I did not know whether I was holding on to him or bracing against the next wave.
He shifted behind me, pulling me fully against his chest, one hand splayed flat over my sternum now.
The night around us had gone unnaturally still.
No wind moved through the trees. No distant laughter drifted from the city. Even the insects seemed to have quieted.
My lashes lifted and fell heavily, the night sky above me dissolving into blurred streaks of silver and black. The stars refused to hold their shape. They bled into one another, trembling at the edges as though the heavens themselves had begun to melt.
“Kaelia.”
His voice reached me from somewhere impossibly far away, threaded with a strain I had never heard from him before. Fingers brushed against my cheek, firm and insistent.
“Stay with me.”
I tried.
I truly tried.
But the world would not steady.
The pressure in my chest no longer tore through me in violent waves. Instead it drew inward, tightening slowly, until it felt less like an explosion and more like something being pulled taut inside my ribcage.
The stars above flickered once more.
Then they shattered.
The sensation of falling came with the abrupt and nauseating awareness that the ground beneath me was no longer grass, that the air against my skin had shifted temperature, that something colder had swallowed the warmth of his body.
A crash of water erupted around me and my eyes flew open as liquid surged over my lips and into my nose. I choked, instinct taking over as my body lurched upward, coughing violently while bathwater sloshed over the porcelain edge and onto the tiled floor.
My vision steadied enough for the world to assemble itself piece by piece. Pale marble walls. The gilded edge of the bathing pool. Steam curling faintly from water that had begun to cool against my skin.
I was sitting upright in my bath.
Water soaked my hair, plastered it against my shoulders. My fingers were still curled as though gripping fabric that was no longer there.
My stomach rolled without warning. A violent wave of nausea climbed my throat, forcing me to scramble forward. I barely made it over the edge of the tub before my body emptied itself into the water below, the force of it leaving my muscles trembling and weak.
When it passed, I sagged against the porcelain, my throat raw, my skin clammy despite the lingering warmth of the bath. Another heave threatened, but I swallowed it down with effort, pressing the back of my hand to my mouth as I forced my breathing to steady.
I dragged myself fully from the bath, water streaming down my legs and pooling at my feet. The chill in the air struck immediately, raising gooseflesh along my arms.
My body felt heavier than it should have.
I grabbed a towel with shaking hands, wiping myself down before wrapping it tight around my shivering frame.
Step by step, I made my way to the vanity, gripping the edge of the marble basin as a wave of dizziness swept through me. I lifted my head slowly.
The reflection that met me did not look rested.
My skin was drained of color, my lips pale against the flush high on my cheeks. Damp curls clung to my temples, and my eyes looked too bright, too wide.
I looked sick. And I felt it too.
My chest was no longer in agonizing pain, but a persistent, dull ache remained.
It felt like something inside of me was gone.