CHAPTER TWENTY
The bunk beneath me dipped in the center, the thin mattress creaking each time I shifted.
I turned onto my side, then my back, then my side again, but sleep would not come. The fever from the severance still burned in my blood, but it was nothing compared to the memory of tonight.
His mouth on mine.
His hand at my waist.
His voice threading through my ribs like it belonged there.
My chest still carried the echo of that dream and no matter how steadily I breathed, it would not quiet. It was as if something inside me had been stretched too far and refused to settle back into its proper shape.
I pressed the heel of my palm against my sternum.
You are in control, I told myself.
My body did not agree.
A faint scraping sound threaded through the quiet, so soft at first I wondered whether it belonged to the settling of ancient stone.
I pushed myself upright on the mattress, the lantern-light trembling as though it too had sensed the shift. My gaze fixed on the chamber door. It remained closed, its heavy latch unmoved.
Slowly, I turned my head to the shadowed window.
The iron bars that guarded the narrow archway began to groan, the metal protesting under pressure that I knew no mortal hand could exert. They bent outwards, the gaps widening just enough for something dark and inky to slip through.
The bubbling mass dropped to the stone, a heaving, ink-slicked ball.
It hissed, slithering toward the center of the room before the darkness pulsed.
Odd shapes began to push through the murk—the knobs of a spine, the powerful arc of a neck, and finally, limbs unfurling from the writhing center.
Where a gap had remained between the chest and shoulders, his head emerged.
I gasped and reached blindly for the wool blanket and dragged it over myself.
If I could not see it, perhaps it was not real.
But as a guttural growl vibrated through the floorboards, I knew it was no shield at all.
Within a heartbeat, the blanket was ripped from my grasp. It flew across the chamber and collapsed at his feet. The shadows recoiled, climbing his body in slender streams and vanishing beneath the ink on his skin.
Talon’s gaze moved over me slowly. “I went to your home.”
Moonlight cut across his face, catching along the hard planes of his cheekbones and the severe line of his mouth.
“You should not be here,” I said, swinging my legs off the mattress. My feet hit the stone floor, the chill of it biting into my soles. “If Keeper Sora finds you—”
“You were not there,” he cut me off.
“So you thought breaking through iron was the appropriate response?”
His answering growl rolled through the room. “Come here, Kaelia.”
“No,” I snapped. “You do not get to crawl through windows like some nightmare and demand things of me.”
That cruel smirk tugged at his mouth as he prowled forward. “You did not call me a nightmare when you were writhing beneath me tonight.”
Heat rushed to my face. “I thought it was a dream!”
He leaned in, his face mere inches from mine.
“Even so,” he murmured. “You dream of me. Your soul knows where it belongs.”
“Talon, this cannot continue.” I shook my head.
Talon ignored me, his eyes moving around the chamber. “Why are you here? I thought we established the Keeper cannot be trusted?”
“I fell ill,” I said.
“I would have come to you, little flame.”
I offered him a pointed look. “Talon, you know that is risky. Every time we are together, it gets harder to pretend I do not want to be with you.”
“Then do not pretend,” he growled.
“I cannot,” I whispered. “The consequences will be too great.”
“I am a selfish man, little flame. I could not care if the whole realm fell to dust around us, as long as we are together.”
Talon’s eyes darkened, but I hardly had time to take note of the shift, because his fingers were gripping my chin and his face was moving toward mine.
His mouth captured mine in a kiss that was not savage but consuming, deep and searching and aching with something neither of us had fully allowed to surface before.
My hands fisted in his shirt, pulling him closer. He responded immediately, one arm wrapping around my waist, the other sliding into my hair, tilting my head to deepen the kiss.
Heat surged through me, sharp and intoxicating, pooling between my thighs and stealing the breath from my lungs.
When his hand slipped beneath the hem of my nightgown, skimming the bare skin of my thigh, my knees weakened.
“Talon,” I breathed against his mouth, half warning, half plea.
His fingers traced upward slowly, as though giving me every opportunity to stop him.
I did not.
Instead, I arched into his touch, my body answering with a humiliating eagerness. I hated that my skin seemed to recognize his touch better than it recognized my own.
He guided me backward until the mattress met my legs, lowering me onto it without breaking the kiss. His weight followed, pressing me into the thin bedding, solid and entirely too real.
His hands left my waist, gliding upward until they found mine, drawing my arms above my head and holding them captive against the stone.
The sensation building inside me was no longer only desire. It was something deeper. It was a terrifying erasure. Every moan that left my throat felt like a brick pulled from the wall of who I used to be.
When release tore through me, it felt less like pleasure and more like impact, as though two fractured halves had collided with enough force to mend. My back arched, a cry breaking from my throat as something unseen snapped into place within my chest.
Talon’s breath left him in a ragged exhale that bordered on a snarl, and the tattoos across his skin ignited—not all at once, but in spreading lines of light that chased along his arms, climbed the column of his throat, and flared at the hollow of his collarbone.
From the illuminated ink burst strands of light. Silver and deep blue spirits unfurled like ribbons pulled from flame, circling us in widening arcs.
They wove around us in a luminous storm, their light reflecting off bare skin and tangled sheets, off the iron bent at the window, off the carved sigils etched into the walls. The chamber glowed as though submerged beneath starlight.
Outside, wind roared against the Archives, echoing the storm raging within the chamber.
Slowly the spiral began to contract.
The spirits circled tighter, faster, until they collapsed inward in one blinding convergence, pouring back into Talon’s skin in streams of liquid light.
He remained draped over me, his weight a grounding heat against the thin mattress. His chest rose and fell, the light from his skin fading back into the ink of his tattoos until the room returned to shadow.
When he opened them, there was no confusion there.
“You knew,” I whispered. “You knew this would seal it.”
His eyes bore into mine, dark and unblinking. “I suspected.”
I pushed against his shoulders, but it was like trying to move the foundation of the Archives. “You did not tell me. You gambled with my life.”
A muscle ticked in his jaw, but he did not pull away. He did not even look guilty.
“I would gamble the heavens,” he replied quietly.
The arrogance of it should have made me scream, but before I could find the words, he was already shifting, his body leaving mine with a suddenness that made the air feel freezing.
“We must leave,” he said. “They will have felt that.”
I gathered the hem of the thin nightgown, my legs trembling as I stood. The fabric was a poor shield against the sudden chill of the room, and as I moved toward the doorway, Talon’s gaze dropped to the bare skin of my thighs.
His coat was around my shoulders before I realized he had removed it, the heavy fabric swallowing my frame and carrying the lingering heat of him.
He moved into the hallway, navigating the labyrinthine corridors as though he had walked them a thousand times before. I followed in his shadow, hoping we would be able to sneak out without alerting Keeper Sora.
Just as we turned a corner, a flickering light appeared. Keeper Sora stood in the corridor, her face drained of color.
“What have you done?” she whispered. Her gaze darted from my disheveled state to Talon. “Kaelia, tell me he forced you. Tell me you did not choose this.”
I clutched the lapels of Talon’s coat, my silence giving her the only answer she needed.
Sora’s expression shifted, the shock smoothing over into a clinical resolve.
“Kaelia,” she sighed, moving to the wall beside the large oak doors. “You should not have done that.”
“Keeper,” I asked wearily, taking a step forward. Talon’s hand shot out, wrapping around my arm and halting my steps. “What are you doing?”
“I am sorry, Kaelia.”
As soon as the words left her mouth, she slammed her palm against a concealed brass plate.
A piercing alarm shattered the quiet, a sound so sharp, I slapped my palms against my ears. The noise was quickly drowned by a deep groaning of machinery.
At the windows, the light of the moon was cut into ribbons as heavy iron grates descended, sealing the narrow archways with an echoing thud. I turned toward the doors, watching as the massive oak slabs were reinforced by bars of cold metal sliding into place.
She was locking us in.