Chapter 39 Wake of a Goddess
Chapter thirty-nine
Wake of a Goddess
-Maris-
She woke choking on stars.
A scream echoed through the marble halls of Nerium, bouncing from carved sea-snake pillars and gray warped stained glass. Her body arched off the bed in a violent jolt before she slammed back into silk sheets drenched in sweat, chest heaving. A bright glow emanated from her palm.
Alarik dropped to his knee beside her bed, breath ragged, golden skin gleaming with exertion.
His bare chest heaving with panic, a sword haphazardly strapped at his hip as though he hadn't spared a second to dress.
His pale hair was tousled from sleep. His eyes searched her face for any signs of injury.
“Gods,” he breathed, his voice torn. "You screamed so loudly, I thought —" His words broke off, choked by terror, as if he had visualized her slipping from his grasp.
Her breath was logged in her throat, the fragments of the dream coming back in unwelcomed flashes. The goddess's gaze, the cloaked figure ushering in her destiny. The message etched into her very being. The relic she needed to find.
“I came as fast as I could,” he raked a hand down the nape of his neck. “The guards thought you were being attacked.” His voice cracked. “I thought he had reached you somehow.”
“No,” she rasped. Her voice felt wrong in her throat, thick and raw. "It wasn't Kael."
Quick steps echoed down the corridor. Serenya appeared in the doorway, breathing heavily. She saw Maris taking in her state offering her a relieved smile. She looked to Alarik, giving him a nod of acknowledgement and disappeared back down the hall.
A flush painted her cheeks, heat racing up her neck as her eyes dipped against her will to the lines tracing his stomach, the way the trousers clung low to his hips, the deep V peaking out, the gleam of his muscles in the candlelight.
She remembered all of him. How he looked inside her, the sound of his voice whispering her name. What started as a fantasy poisioned by prophecy and warning. It made it worse knowing the goddess had observed quietly from the edge of her dream, watching her come undone between the two males.
Alarik saw the shift in her expression. The tension flickered. “You were dreaming?”
She nodded, swallowing hard. “Not like before.”
He moved to sit at the beds edge cautiously, as if approaching a creature ready to shatter.
“What did you see?”
Her hands fisted the sheets. She didn’t trust her voice yet. Not after seeing Eiren and the hooded figure, not after being kissed by both males and warned by stars.
“I—,” she whispered, eyes meeting his. “she was a harold of warning.”
His expression shifted — understanding washing over him.
“Eiren?” he breathed.
Maris nodded once.
Alarik moved to fully sit beside her, his hand trembled slightly on his knee.
“Tell me everything.”
“I was… standing on a lakebed,” she said slowly, eyes unfocused as she searched her memory. “But it wasn’t filled with water. It was bone-dry. The sky was dark but cracked open with light. Not sunlight… starlight. Violent. Blinding.”
Alarik waited, still and watchful, though his gaze flicked now and then to the sheen of sweat still clinging to her skin, the rapid rise and fall of her chest. The tether between them humming. But he said nothing as he listened to each of her words.
“She came to me there ,” Maris whispered. “She looked like galaxies wrapped in skin. Her voice was everywhere and nowhere. She touched me and spoke quickly. I saw… everything, brought by a shadow.”
Alarik swallowed hard. “What did she show you?”
She met his eyes, voice trembling. “She spoke of me as if I was the one she’s waited for, my power greater than her own. She vanished. I don’t know why, or what it means, but she had something mark me.”
She held out her glowing palm for his examination. The sigil she was forced to grasp in the dream now carved into her fresh, it simmered with indigo, sea green, and the faint crimson of her blood.
Alarik’s throat worked.
“It said I would need to seek out an ancient relic to defeat the gods. A grounding for my power. This sigil, the figure said it would help guide me to the relic. A crown, made of her mortal bones. Woven with grief, laced with mercy and dreams.” Maris continued, softer now. “I want to find it.”
Alarik reached for her hand before he could stop himself. She didn’t flinch. Their fingers touched and heat pulsed between them like a heartbeat echoing in both directions.
”Look where the rivers run dry and the sky forgets its name. That’s where it can be found.” She said with distant eyes.
“Thank you, Maris.” he spoke quietly. His thumb rubbing soothing circles on her palm.
She nodded, but the flush returned to her cheeks. She looked away, eyes flicking to the window. She tried to focus on anything but him.
She knew he sensed it — that the dream had run deeper that what she had admitted.
But he wasn’t cruel enough to press.
-Alarik-
He waited until the door shut softly behind him and the fire in the hearth crackled again before letting his shoulders sag forward.
Gods.
He scrubbed a hand down his face, fingers trembling.
He had been there. That had been him, in her dream. The stream. Her slick skin and breathless moans, her lips parting for him in a moment too raw to be imagined.
That had been his hand tangled in her hair. His mouth at her throat.
He hadn’t planned to go back into her dreams. He had swore to her that he would not. Not unless she called to him.
But she had.
She had reached down their soul bond and beckoned him.
Unwitting or not, it hadn’t been some conjured fantasy. It was real —a calling bound by ancient magic and will. Those moments shared between them in the dream were real.
His heart had skipped the moment she appeared below him bare, flushed, whispering his name like it tasted like honey.
Had he had a true conscience, he would have escaped from the dream the second he realized her call was unintentional.
But with Maris, there were no lines he wouldn’t cross.
Right or wrong meant nothing if it brought her pleasure.
And then…
Kael.
A monster made of shadow, greed, and violence.
The tether, the pulse of it, had yanked him deeper than he ever meant to go. But it was the sharing that undid him. Even in the dreamscape, even without waking memory, Maris had wanted both of them.
The agony of that truth shredded him in silence. It wouldn’t have been so gutting if she’d simply belonged to Kael.
But now she was caught between them. She had reached for him in her sleep. Let him see her, feel her, claim her for a moment.
The sudden push from her dream was jarring. Awakening to shouts near her chamber, hearing her screams of terror. He thought the short pleasure of her was being ripped from him by Kael. And in that instance it had nearly broken him to realize he might never touch her like that again.
Not if she chose Kael in the end.
Alarik knew then that losing her would be the end of him.