Chapter 38 Dream Tide
Chapter thirty-eight
Dream Tide
-Maris-
Maris was dreaming. She knew it in the way one knows a storm is coming.
Water lapped at her thighs, warm and mineral-rich, surrounding her like liquid dusk.
A stream coiled around black stone, half mist and half moonlight, nestled deep in a glade that pulsed with otherworldly magic.
She stood half-clothed in the current, bare toes curling into the smooth sand.
A head rising like night incarnate, was Kael.
His chest gleamed under the dripping falls, muscles slick with sheen. His hair was wet, plastered to his sharp cheekbones, silver eyes fixed on her with pure hunger.
“Mine,” he growled.
Before she could answer, he was upon her.
The water splashed as he surged forward, lifting her like a rag doll, pressing her back to a boulder slick with moss.
Suddenly claiming her throat with a bite of fangs.
His mouth was everywhere, with a brutal tenderness only he possessed.
She gasped as his dark shadows sang through her — smokey and all consuming —coiling around her soul like shadowed vines.
His hand slipped beneath her thighs, pulling her higher to align their bodies.
His cock nudged her entrance. She moaned into his kiss, fingers tangling in his dripping hair.
He was within her walls in an instant, establishing a rhythm.
Searing pleasure melted her core with every powerful thrust. She had been frantic for this, for him — from the moment she was pulled from his side. Her lover, and her future.
But then, something shifted. The tendrils of his hair disappeared from her grasp.
The mouth on hers changed. Softer. Cooler.
A tongue darting between her lips. The weight of the body over hers eased, became languid, teasing rather than ravenous.
The pace slowed to a savory pulse. The length of him suddenly reaching new places to wring pleasure from her.
He pulled out his arousal slick with hers.
When she opened her eyes…
It was no longer Kael above her.
It was Alarik.
His white-blonde hair shimmered like moonlight in the mist. His violet-blue eyes burned onto her with a fire that didn’t devour but seduced. His fingers traced reverent lines down her hip, brushing over the ring Kael had given her as if to curse it from her skin.
Maris hate for him for ripping her away from her desire, her betrothed.
Alarik was a temptation she wanted to refuse — but the tormented hunger she held for him refused to be cast aside.
It was a sin her heart committed even as her mind raged against it.
Her only solace came in the knowledge that this version of Alarik was entirely a figment of her imagination, a sweet indulgence — a safe release for an unwanted urge.
So he allowed, his fingers to draw runes along her inner thighs as he looked up at her with a silent question.
She nodded in answer. Her core throbbed pleading for his touch.
He lowered himself to her — tongue gently licking circles slowly increasing his pace. But he became desperate, pulling her closer by the back of her thighs. Wildly exploring her with each heat sealed stroke, his warm breath a crest heightening her arousal.
To her dismay, he stopped. Rising to face her.
“Let Kael haunt your sleep,” Alarik murmured against her neck. “but know I’m the one who answers your call —I can give you what you truly crave and have you gasping my name as you wake.”
Maris tried to speak, but his lips brushed hers— stealing away any retort on her tongue. The kiss was vow of longing. It was not possessive like Kael’s, but indulgent like he had all the time in the world to learn her.
His faelight hummed across her skin, stirring her magic like a tide drawn by the moon.
“You feel it too,” he whispered against her mouth. “The tether… between us.”
She trembled, lit by the spark from the heat his words carried. She surrender her defenses then, offering up her body in its entirely.
This was wrong. This was betrayal.
And yet — she burned for it.
Alarik slid his hand from her cheek, tipping her chin toward him. “I don’t want to steal you, Maris,” he said softly, eyes swirling with fractured sorrow. “I want to worship you. The way he never could.” His hand slipped down her throat to the peak of her breast, rubbing tender lazy circles.
Lightning crackled beneath her skin.
Alarik moved suddenly his mouth to her neck from behind, her body no longer pressing on stone, but against him. She could feel his hard length grazing her as he planted kisses along her throat. Another touch joined Alarik's — familiar, dominant, dangerous.
Kael.
His hands felt rough —hotter sliding up her thighs, parting her once more. His voice growled in her ear, low and commanding, “Why choose only one lover, when you can have us both?” — with that he resumed his earlier stance between her thighs.
Her body arched between them, trapped in a firestorm of pleasure and chaos. Alarik pressed a kiss between her shoulder blades while Kael dragged his teeth along the shell of her ear.
“We are yours to claim —to break —to burn into,” Alarik murmured from behind.
Kael echoed the same sentiment, a whisper into her ear. “Your desire rules us, we are nothing but willing sacrifices to alter.”
And with each command they followed her lead.
There was no logic in it, no reality. It was heat and friction, power and primal need.
A dance between shadows and faelight. Kael kissed her like a king laying claim to his crown.
Alarik touched her like he was crafting a spell with his fingers, pulling at her magic from within. Her body both battleground and temple.
Hands tangled.
Mouths explored.
Magic sparked at her fingertips, crackling violet and silver in the space between their skin. She cried out, pleasure crashing through her so violently her vision blurred and just as her climax hit, tearing her apart like a star being born, they vanished.
The air was ripped from her lungs.
The dream twisted.
She now stood naked and glowing on a cracked, bone-dry lake bed, the mud beneath her feet turned to ancient dust. The sky above was black and heavy, as though holding its breath. A strange pressure coiled in the silence.
And then she appeared.
The goddess Eiren.
Wreathed in light and shadow —her form glided forward like she walked on time itself. Her robes whispered across the air, threaded with constellations that shimmered in a rhythm only known to the stars. Her eyes were galaxies, her voice both lullaby and thunder.
“You burn brighter each day,” she said.
Maris trembled, heart thundering from more than pleasure now.
“Did you cause that dream?” Maris questioned.
Eiren only smiled. “A mirror. A test. A truth.”
Maris clenched her fists. “You’re inside my head playing games.”
“No. This is your soul, little starflame. I only looked to see what crawls within.”
She stepped forward and brushed her fingers to Maris’s chest. The place her heart still hammered like it was trying to remember which name it beat for.
“You will be more powerful than I.”
Maris blinked, looking upon the face of the goddess.
She continued, “Tread carefully, power always draws hunger.”
The stars in Eiren’s dark hair dimmed. Her expression turned grave.
“They are watching you now.”
“Who?” Maris whispered.
“The others. The four who remain.”
Yseron. Syrathe. Thaleia. Vaerith.
The cursed gods.
“They crafted the cage you and I live in, and now you threaten to unravel it. They will send terrors, shadows from the oldest corners of the Veil to stop your rise.”
Maris’s throat tightened. “How do I fight gods?
As Eiren had begun to speak but suddenly tilted her head to the side she heard something beyond what Maris could detect. A darkness consumed the dream space, Eiren faded and Maris' eyes widened with terror.
A silhouette of a hooded figure came forward and reached into the folds of its robe and pulled out a faint glowing sigil.
It held it out for Maris to take it, pressing it into her palm..
The sigils central symbol was a tree, four branches stretched upward, its roots spiraling downward into glyphs of an ancient language.
“When the nightmares come,” it said in a blurred tone,“You must find the Crown. An ancient relic made from the bones of Eiren's mortal form. Woven from grief, laced with mercy and dreams. Only with it can you become the reckoning, it will ground your power. Use your light and restore the order.”
Maris clutched the sigil. It burned her flesh like a brand.
“Where do I find it?” she asked desperately.
But the dream was already fading, her voice echoing like wind over a grave.
“Look where the rivers run dry and the sky forgets its name…”
The lakebed cracked beneath her. The stars above wept.
Only darkness remained.