Chapter 10
EIRA
Sleep doesn’t come easily.
Understatement.
My awareness of him is so insanely maxed out, I can’t see the needle any more.
The silence beneath his tower is too curated, too insulated, as though even the walls are trained to keep secrets, and the knowledge that he’s somewhere above me, close enough that concrete and steel are the only things separating us, refuses to become manageable.
It’s absurd to think he might feel the rhythm of my pulse through floors and beams.
Unfortunately, my brain has never let absurdity stop a perfectly good spiral.
I pace the length of the stupidly plush suite, vaguely dismayed that I’m too rattled to check out the amenities, the kind I’d be stuffing into my pockets if this were a five-star hotel and not a gilded holding cell owned by a vampire with boundary issues and a God complex.
I snort under my breath, then replay the final moment of our evening with the ruthless precision that has kept me alive for years.
The intrusion.
The pressure.
The way my internal defences shifted beneath his touch.
Memory fortification is too blunt a phrase for what I’ve built inside my own skull. Selphine once called it a cathedral of partitions. The Agency preferred defensive discipline. I call it the difference between autonomy and annihilation.
And he brushed right up against it like he was testing a fence.
He didn’t smash through. Didn’t even attempt brute force. But I felt him assess the integrity, measure the strength of walls I’ve spent half a decade refining, and the fact that he did it with such casual restraint somehow makes it worse.
I stop pacing and press my fingertips to my temples, breathing slowly as I scan for any foreign presence. Residual sigils. Psychic spoor. Some arcane little fingerprint tucked into the seams of my consciousness because apparently my life was missing a final sprinkle of nightmare seasoning.
The urge to call Selphine burns sharp and immediate.
She would know whether such a thing is possible. But… she would also remind me, in tones edged with acid and ancient contempt, that offering a vampire sanctioned access to your mind is the intellectual equivalent of handing a loaded weapon to someone who has already proven he knows how to use it.
You dared him, she would say. And then you were surprised when he accepted.
My jaw tightens.
It was supposed to be a calculated risk. A show of confidence. I never believed he would actually take it. And when he did, he didn’t batter through my defences like a monster drunk on power. He was controlled. Surgical. Careful enough to make it worse.
He mapped me.
That’s what I can’t shake.
Not the intrusion. Not even the threat of what he could have done. It’s the restraint. The sense that Valentin Moretti didn’t break down a door because he wanted to learn how it was built before deciding whether to return with the right key.
Fresh chills crawl over my skin.
Fuck no.
I will not romanticise predation.
I strip off my jacket, drop it over a chair, and sit on the edge of the bed, forcing my pulse back into line as I catalogue what I know.
He isn’t looking for Lyra Hannigan because of her father’s debt. That hope died tonight. And this sure as hell isn’t some tragic, candlelit, violins-in-the-background love match for the ages.
Please.
He’s Don Valentin Moretti.
He beds women bred in power. Heiresses with private islands. Biotech queens who rewrite genomes before breakfast. Widows who can shut down half of Monaco because someone insulted them at a gala.
Not girls who fled Port Authority with stolen bus tickets and a backpack full of trauma.
So what does he want?
Blood? Memory? Claim?
The last thought lands coldest.
Because revenge can burn out. Desire can be redirected. Even obsession can be starved if you’re brutal enough.
But claim?
Claim digs in. Claim waits and convinces itself it has rights.
And I have no idea what Valentin Moretti thinks gives him one over me.
I lie back fully clothed and stare at the ceiling as exhaustion drags at me despite my best efforts.
There’s no need to undress.
I don’t intend to sleep.
Not with a not-so-cold bloodsucker vampire one floor away.
The dream doesn’t ease itself in with soft smoke and a gentle breeze.
Because, of course it doesn’t.
It’s my kind of dream, actually. Full action from minute one. I still hate every frame of it as it unfolds with unsettling clarity, less like dream and more like memory deciding to sharpen its teeth.
I don’t need a neon sign to tell me it’s my bedroom door from six years ago.
This time, I’m fully awake when the handle turns slowly in the dark.
The house had been silent that night, but not naturally. Every sound seemed withdrawn in anticipation, and I know he’s there before I see him.
Valentin stands in the doorway, a tower of raw power, the room recalibrating around him because apparently even architecture has survival instincts.
He studies me with the quiet certainty of complete ownership. ‘Your time is up, little one,’ he says, and there’s no cruelty in his voice.
Just fact. Stark and soul-rending.
Which is worse.
In the dream, the same collision tears through me. Fear sharpened by fury, humiliation tangled with something dangerous that feels disturbingly like lust. Heightened. Treacherous. The kind that makes my thighs clench even knowing this bloodsucker can probably already smell the betrayal.
He steps into the room and the air changes.
‘You belong to me,’ he says quietly.
The words should feel like shackles.
Tonight, they feel like confirmation of something I’ve kept locked at the back of my mind.
Absolutely fucking not.
I retreat until the bed presses against the backs of my knees, but the distance between us keeps collapsing in ways that have nothing to do with space.
His hand lifts, hovering above my throat without touching. Close enough that heat radiates from his skin.
Again, he should be cold.
He isn’t.
His warmth connects straight to my chest, then unfurls through my whole body, thickening into a pulse, a tightening thread that snags me, invisible and undeniable.
The room shifts. The walls stretch.
The bed dissolves and suddenly we’re on the rooftop again, the city sprawling beneath us in glittering lines, wind sharp against my skin and his hand still poised near my throat.
‘You run,’ he breathes into my ear, hot against cold, almost contemplative, ‘but you do not sever.’
‘I severed everything,’ I reply, but even in the dream I hear the fragility of it. ‘You will never find me.’
He steps closer, and the skyline tilts as if the world itself is adjusting to him.
‘You severed your name,’ he corrects. ‘Not your fate.’
The pulse between us burns brighter.
My gaze drops to his mouth, his jaw, his throat. Then lower, to a resonant echo coming from beneath his black shirt.
His chest?
I know I’m dreaming. I know I can’t trust my eyes.
Still, I can’t look away as something ancient presses its thumb into the space between my ribs.
‘Lyra.’
The snap of my name yanks my gaze up. I want to tell him not to call me that, but even in my dream I have the sense to keep my fucking mouth shut.
‘You cannot outrun what was written,’ he says.
The rooftop shifts again.
The city turns vertical. Gravity abandons its rules, and I fall.
This time, he doesn’t hold me. And I drop alone through open air, the city racing upward, eager to swallow me whole.
I expect terror. Instead, clarity arrives. A strange, quiet awareness that even in descent, something binds us.
He appears beside me midair, matching my fall without effort. His eyes are pinned on me, not the ground. Darker now, stripped of silver, almost human in their intensity.
And what lives inside them is not possession.
It is hunger.
For blood, yes.
But for something deeper too. Something that could rewrite a soul.
‘I should’ve claimed you that night,’ he says, his voice rough with fury and regret.
The words echo as the pulse burns hotter, the thread between us tightening hard enough to split bone.
I reach towards him, disconcerted by the hunger burning through me.
To touch.
To stroke.
Holy fucking fuck.
To yield.
The instant our hands meet, the air fractures around us, the city dissolving into darkness that feels less like absence and more like waiting.
And somewhere above me, in a tower of black glass and ancient blood, something stirs in response.
Valentin
Sleep does not take me gently.
Unsurprisingly.
The mark burns beneath my skin as I lie in darkness, not enough to wound, but enough to remind me that time is no longer theoretical.
It is moving. Towards me. Towards her.
I do not intend to dream but the dream finds me anyway.
It begins with a door.
Lyra’s bedroom.
Old wood. Moonlight. A threshold I crossed once and should have claimed entirely.
She stands by the window, dark hair loose around her shoulders, youth and defiance braided through the line of her spine. I remember this room with cruel clarity. The scent of her fear. The tremor beneath her pride. The way she looked at me as though I were both executioner and answer.
‘I gave you time,’ I hear myself say. My voice, but wrong. Less controlled. More exposed.
She turns, and there is no submission in her eyes. Only fire. ‘You don’t own me.’
The words strike harder than they did that night, the mark pulsing as the room tears open.
Bedroom becomes rooftop… Moonlight becomes city glare.
Lyra stands at the edge of the tower, no longer trembling, older than eighteen, her gaze sharpened by survival. Then her face blurs. Dark hair pales. The shape of her shifts.
Not Lyra.
Not—
Pain rips through my chest.
The mark flares violently, tearing through muscle and bone, radiating outward until my ribs feel close to splintering. I stagger, fury rising, but another sensation cuts through it.
A thread. Answering. Pulling.
The woman steps closer. Her face remains indistinct, but her attention drops to my chest. To the glow beneath my shirt.
In wakefulness, I would stop her but, in the dream, I do not move.
Her palm presses flat over my heart and the fabric dissolves. Skin meets mark. Shock punches through me as the burn blazes high and bright, then suddenly, impossibly, steadies. The inferno becomes warmth. The roar inside my blood quiets into something deeper.
Almost reverent.
Relief spreads through me with humiliating ease. ‘You’re here,’ I murmur.
She says nothing. Her face blurs further, dissolving into starlight.
‘I thought I would never find you.’ The confession leaves me before I can stop it.
She’s still saying nothing, her fingers curling against my chest, and the mark answers, light pulsing outward in slow, deliberate waves.
Then comfort turns to pain. The bond tightens, digging beneath my skin, seeking the dead heart Morrighan remade. Seeking the essence she breathed into me at the moment of immortal birth.
Her other hand rises to my jaw and I allow it. Gods help me, I allow it. And yearning surfaces with brutal clarity.
This is what was written.
This is what was withheld.
This—
I open my eyes.
And it is not Lyra standing before me.
Instead I see ash-blonde hair. Sharper face. A defiant gaze I recognise too well.
Eira Cross.
Recognition strikes like poison and the mark flares with fury. ‘You dare invade my dreams?’ I breathe, though whether I speak to her or Morrighan, I cannot tell.
Eira does not look confused. She looks aware. Poised. Almost triumphant. As if she has seen this dream from inside it… knows how it ends.
With my ruin?
The skyline fractures with a deafening roar.
The dream collapses.
I wake violently, sheets tangled at my waist, predawn shadow thick around me. My hand flies to my chest.
The mark scorches hotter than it has since its awakening, jagged lines glowing beneath my skin as they creep towards my ribs.
I force breath into order, control back into place and the echo of her touch from my mind.
It was a dream. Nothing more.
Yet the sensation lingers on my chest, as if her hand truly rested there.
She has no right to invade what belongs to me. No right to occupy the space reserved for the woman who fled.
And yet. The thread did not feel one-sided. That is what I cannot dismiss.
I sit up, fury settling into precision. If the bond is strengthening, I will master it. If Eira Cross is more entangled than she realises, I will test it.
I close my eyes and extend my will to my Twelve. They answer in silence, immediate and absolute.
Meet me in the Lower Vaults in one hour. Bring the latest batch.
Their loyalty returns as one.
Yes, sire.
I rise and cross to the Heartshard Glass. The surface shimmers as the mark pulses beneath my skin.
One new finger of crimson rests just beneath the hollow of my throat.
A dare.
A warning.
I turn from the mirror, jaw set.
By the time night falls again, I will understand exactly what has begun between us.