Chapter 17 Dark Adaptation #2
The tide rushes in, and with it all my fear, flooding every hollow crevice of this rocky basin and fissure within me.
I can’t lose Orion—
I need him.
The frigid water soaking my skirt hem, I rise onto my toes, trying to make eye contact. “Orion… Orion, come back to me.” My voice breaks. “I need you to come back to me.”
Desperation lifts my hand toward his face, trembling fingers hovering close. When he doesn’t react, I curl my fingers into my palm, nails biting until it hurts. “Dammit.”
Blood flecks his cheekbones. There’s a thin smear at the corner of his mouth. For Orion, this level of contamination would do more than simply trigger him; it would send him into a full-blown spiral.
His scenes are contained. They’re ritualistic artistry. Never this chaotic, displaying this level of dysregulation, this absolute loss of control. So utterly…broken.
As foamy water rushes around my ankles, I follow the path of carnage to his hand. Stained with dried blood, he clenches the brass astrolabe, his grip fierce.
The sight of it stirs the memory of another fraught moment as we stood before the ocean, drenched in fading light and breathless anticipation. When the space between our skin was charged with a silent dare, challenging Orion to defy his aversion and touch me in the only way he could.
Slowly, I lower my hand into the cold tide and scoop water into my palm. I grasp his sleeve, carefully guiding his hand not fisted around the instrument between us. A second of hesitation, then I let the water trickle onto his skin.
The salt water and blood run together across the back of his hand, the soft moonlight revealing the dark ink hidden beneath. I lift my gaze to his, watching him closely as I daringly hover the tips of my fingers just above.
Clear beads glide over his bloodstained skin, dissolving the crystalized blood like stars fading from the night.
Breath held, I try not to move, recreating the moment he touched me through the same conductive friction of saline and subtle pressure, forming an anchor. Connecting us.
For an eternal heartbeat, there’s no response. Then gradually, his pupils dilate, a low flame lit in the depths of his eyes. His gaze finds our hands. My retreating fingers. And then, me.
Recognition flickers, breaking through the vacant haze. The flame blazes, sparking a filament of warmth amid the cold darkness. His breath shudders out, a fractured sound. “Collins.”
A weight settles within my chest. The rough caress of his voice abrades more than the air between us, the familiar sound resonating past the callus around my heart, turning it porous.
“I’m here, Orion,” I say gently. “I’m right here.”
I lick the salt from my lips, and his gaze hones, following the path of my tongue and rousing a fire beneath my flesh no frigid wind or freezing water could extinguish.
“You are, starling,” he says, a trace of reverence bleeding into his rough tone of voice.
The cadence of the endearment moves in time with my pulse, strumming weak heartstrings, awakening dormant chords buried too deep.
A wave crashes against my legs, sending me off balance. I instinctively reach out and grasp Orion’s shirt, curling my fingers into the bloody fabric. I turn my hand over. Blood tinges my fingers. I rub the tips together, feeling the gritty texture, and an unsettling guilt thickens my throat.
“The tide’s getting higher,” I say, unable to mask the tremor rolling through me as the water clings heavy to the hem of my skirt. “We can’t stay here.”
My gaze darts anxiously toward the university before I look up at him, the blood streaked across his face, soaked into his clothes. Indecision battles inside me, knowing I can’t risk anyone seeing him like this.
“Come on,” I urge him, giving his thermal a tug. “You have to rinse off in the ocean.” Fighting my fear, I take a backward step, drawing him with me as the cold slices through my bones. “God, it’s freezing.”
Icy waves lap against my calves, and my body stiffens, halted by cold and fear. Desperate, I drag my skirt up, trying to tear at the wet material, needing something—anything—to wipe him clean as a wave crashes into me, nearly knocking me over.
“Fuck,” I gasp out, frustration clawing at my chest. I smack at the water, panic stinging hot behind my eyes. “Shit, Orion. It’s fucking cold.”
He looks down, his movements oddly calm as he slips the instrument into his pocket. “You get used to it,” he says, voice distant beneath the roar.
A weary smile touches the corner of his mouth before he leans into the oncoming wave and lifts me into his arms. My body curls against his, feeling the cautious tension in his hold, aware of my hand placement.
As he begins to wade us deeper, panic seizes me. “Wait—no.” I glance around, out over the gray, tossing waves. “We can’t see anything. Please, Orion, it’s too dark—”
“It always is at first,” he cuts in, “but we adapt.”
He’s speaking to something beyond the dark, icy waters. Beyond even the blood staining us both.
“We adapt to the dark,” I question, searching his unreadable eyes.
“It’s a process,” he murmurs, shifting me higher against his chest.
Out in the ocean, enclosed by this utter darkness, fear should be tearing me apart.
But something happens when his arms embrace me, caging my body against his, just as he did amid the music in his observatory.
My pulse steadies, modeling its rhythm to the strong, even beat of his heart beneath my palm.
“Our eyes naturally seek the light,” he continues quietly, securing me tighter.
“Even indirect, there’s light to be found in the deepest shadow.
Dark adaptation is the gradual shift, the slow recalibration of our senses, until what once seemed too dark, too unknown, no longer frightens us. It becomes familiar.”
As the water rises around his hips, he holds me safely above the surface, our bodies intimately close within the danger. Freeing one of his hands, he wipes his face, smearing the blood along his jaw.
“That helps to know, Dr. Night.”
The subtle lift at the corner of his mouth tugs at my heart.
And it’s here, deep in the night, that we’re able to acknowledge darker truths we’d never dare own in the brightness of day. Not when the sunlight reveals the scars and flaws too starkly, exposing what we aren’t ready to confront.
Beneath starlight, immersed in the cold shadows, we can rationalize almost anything.
The blood. The torn clothes. The death undoubtedly caused by his hands. The secrets we both harbor, hidden below layers of denial and deception.
Feeling the soft contours of my body give effortlessly against the hard lines of his, all I can do is cling tighter to his steady strength, his warmth, where I should feel anything but comfort. Yet Orion embodies it all—the night, the darkness, the calm refuge.
“Don’t worry,” he says, his voice rising above the crashing waves. “I won’t lose you to the dark waters. Not tonight.”
“I’m not afraid,” I tell him, my hand held to his chest.
The ocean reaches around us higher, rocking us gently in the current. After a moment, I no longer feel the burn of frigid water. I watch as he lifts his hand once more, clearing another trail of blood from his face.
“Orion, what happened tonight,” I dare to ask.
The tendons along his throat work, silent conflict banked behind those eyes of dark teal waters as they meet mine. “I hurt someone,” he confesses.
I hold his gaze, unrelenting. “Is it possible they deserved it.”
Because I know, if they were chosen by Orion, they committed a far worse offense. Some monsters can only be hunted by darker ones.
A muscle tenses along his jaw as something reverent and pained passes over his expression. “You are such a beautiful anomaly.”
And I’m suddenly weightless, lost within the starry ocean of his gaze instead of the dark waters.
As my eyes fully adapt to the night, pale moonlight glimmers across the waves, and the endless stretch of ocean becomes serene, beautiful even in its terror. The sea is cast in silver and deep teal, a reflection of his eyes, turbulent and clouded by a storm.
I become brave and shift in his arms, lifting myself slightly to wrap my legs around his hips. Orion helps me, bracing his forearms around the lower curve of my back to anchor me against him.
I drag the hem of my skirt up and, carefully, gently, wipe the remnants of blood from his neck, his jaw, his cheek.
He remains utterly still amid the rolling waves, his gaze unwavering, trusting.
With cautious pressure, I brush his lips, breath stalling as I draw the fabric across the smear of red, erasing the evidence of violence.
He moves a fraction closer, head tilting, gaze falling to my mouth—and the hunger to close the final space between us becomes a painful ache. But I pull back, not wanting to push him further, even as his eyes beg for relief from this agonizing, tortuous distance.
Releasing a slow breath, he eases a hand between us, settling just below the hollow of my clavicle, and I stop breathing entirely.
Hands of a killer, tense with the sexual violence he craves, capable of the brutality and destruction and, undeniably now, the carnage he delivered tonight—those same hands rest tender on me, holding me as if I might shatter under the weight of his touch.
That’s why, in the same way Orion restrains himself, refusing to cross that boundary, fearing he’ll hurt me…I can’t hurt him. Not when he’s this vulnerable. Even here, wading the cold shallows beneath the stars rather than the muck, I have to tread lightly, careful not to shatter his mind.
His gaze skims my features, droplets of water running down his. “Are you still cold,” he asks, his breath a warm brush across my lips, making me shiver.
I drag in a trembling breath, scared to breathe too deeply, for him to feel what’s barely hidden beneath the sheer material. I shake my head. “No,” I say, “but we should probably go in.”
He licks his lips, tasting the salt water, making me irrationally envious over the water that gets to taste him back.
His hand slips away, leaving my chest cold from the loss of his warmth. Delicately, he touches a wet lock of my hair, guiding it behind my ear in a way that avoids touching me, but it’s the closest he’s come without his gloves, and a murmur echoes through my chest.
If Orion is broken, his cracks reveal something startlingly beautiful beneath—and I bear some of the blame for those cracks. I helped carve them deeper. I watched the fault lines widen.
But if his ritual is really complete, then maybe there’s a chance I can help him while still getting what I came here for.
I still have some time.
Taking the risk, I ask, “Orion, what happened tonight…” I hesitate, and a furrow forms between his brows. “Will it happen again?”
He inhales deeply, his chest expanding against me. “No,” he answers simply.
A tremble of relief washes through me, and I relinquish the aching breath from my lungs. Just one word. But it’s enough.
The hunter is done.
To ensure this, I have to see the dark-sky preserve. I need to assess the carnage myself. I don’t know exactly what spiraled him tonight, but in his current state, I can only imagine the mayhem of the crime scene. The potential trace evidence left on the victim—far too close to Shorehaven.
Protecting Orion protects me, us.
The artist should never impose their will on the stone.
And yet, since the start, I’ve been doing just that.
Something Darby warned me against so many months ago.
And maybe it’s time to stop. Maybe the firefly doesn’t need to lure and trap.
Maybe she can be selective of her counterpart, finding that one rare male she can trust. Finding another way into his habitat by forming a real bond, a connection, attracted by a mutual desire.
To work together. And maybe, for me, this was always my way in.
Because maybe—we’re not two different species at all.
“Take me in, Orion,” I whisper across his lips, voice soft, imploring his protective instinct. “Take me in and make me warm.”
With a shaky exhale, he nods once, his arms banding possessively tighter as he begins to wade us back toward shore. “The sun will be rising soon.”
I cast one last glance over the water, a solemn ache blooming in my chest at how something so terrifying in the dark can be made beautiful by the simple act of illumination.
If dark adaptation is the incremental descent into darkness, then perhaps it’s what we allow, what we accept.
Until eventually, inevitably, we no longer fear the dark.
We become part of it.