Chapter 17 Bree
Bree
I wake in silk.
The dress clings to my skin like shadow, dark and unfamiliar. I never chose this. The fabric pools around me on cold stone, and when I move, it slides against me with a whisper that makes my skin crawl.
Where am I?
The chamber breathes around me—black stone walls, silver fire flickering without heat. Everything is wrong. The air tastes like smoke and frost, and underneath it all, something that makes my stomach turn.
Hunger.
I try to remember how I got here. The sanctuary. The fountain. Ethos’s voice threading through my mind like silk ribbon around my throat.
“Come to me, little queen.”
I must have followed. Must have walked through shadows or mirrors or whatever pathway he laid out for me. But the memory feels hazy, dreamlike. Like watching someone else’s life through thick glass.
The mirror catches my attention.
It stands against the far wall—black iron scrollwork, ornate and ancient. The kind of mirror that belongs in nightmares. When I look into it, my reflection stares back, but there’s something in my eyes I don’t recognize.
Surrender.
The thought comes from nowhere, settling in my chest like a weight I don’t remember picking up. I should be afraid. Should be fighting to get out of here. Instead, I just… exist. Suspended in this strange space between terror and something that might be relief.
I’m tired of fighting.
The realization whispers through me, and part of me—a part I don’t want to acknowledge—finds comfort in it.
“You waited for me.”
His voice comes from behind me, warm and intimate. I don’t turn around. Can’t, maybe. Or won’t. In the mirror, I watch my reflection’s eyes flutter closed at the sound.
Ethos moves behind me like shadow given form. I feel him more than see him—heat at my back, the whisper of breath against my neck. The silver fire along the walls pulses once—like a heartbeat beneath the stone. Then his fingers brush my shoulder, and electricity shoots down my spine.
“I told you that you would choose,” he murmurs, and his voice is everything I’ve been missing. Certainty. Desire without apology. “Look how beautiful you are when you stop fighting.”
My reflection shows me the truth. The dark silk clinging to curves I usually hide. My lips parted, breath coming quick and shallow. The hunger in my own eyes that I’ve been denying for so long.
I want this.
The thought should horrify me. Instead, it settles somewhere deep in my chest and stays.
His hand slides down my arm, fingers trailing electricity. Where he touches, cold shoots through me—sharp and sudden—but then it’s gone, replaced by heat that makes me lean back against him.
“Tell me what you want,” he whispers against my ear.
“I—” The words stick in my throat. Because I do want. I want to be desired without hesitation. I want to be chosen without question. I want to take instead of always giving until there’s nothing left.
“I want to stop being afraid,” I whisper.
“Then stop.”
His mouth finds the curve of my neck, and my knees almost buckle. Heat floods through me, drowning out everything except the press of his lips, the scrape of teeth that should terrify me but doesn’t.
In the mirror, I watch my reflection arch against him. Watch silver mist spill from my fingers, reaching for him like it’s been starving.
It has been. I have been.
He turns me from the mirror, and for the first time I see his face fully. Beautiful in a way that makes my chest ache. Dark hair, sharp features, eyes that hold centuries of knowing exactly what he wants.
And right now, he wants me.
“Please—” The word slips out before I can stop it.
He smiles, and it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
“Finally.”
His mouth captures mine, and the world disappears.
The kiss is everything—desperate and consuming and perfect. He tastes like power and promises, like all the things I’ve been too afraid to want. When his tongue slides against mine, electricity shoots down my spine and settles low in my belly.
My hands fist in his shirt, pulling him closer. I can’t get close enough. Can’t breathe around the want that’s consuming me from the inside out.
He breaks the kiss, and I actually whimper at the loss.
“Shh,” he soothes, hands framing my face. “I’m not going anywhere.”
The cushions appear without my noticing—soft and dark, spread across the stone floor like an altar. He guides me down, and I go willingly. Let him position me exactly where he wants me.
When he raises my wrists above my head, crossing them, something cool slides around them. I should panic. Should fight. Instead, I test the bonds and find them like silk—holding me but not hurting. Comforting in their certainty.
“Beautiful,” he murmurs, and the word goes straight through me. “Do you feel it? How right this is?”
I do. God help me, I do.
His hands map my body through the silk—tracing curves, finding places that make me gasp and arch. Every touch sends lightning through my veins, and my Ether responds, silver mist curling around us both.
“More,” I breathe, and I’m not sure if I’m talking to him or to the magic.
He obliges.
His mouth follows where his hands led—pressing kisses to my throat, my collarbone, the swell of my breasts through silk. When he finds a particularly sensitive spot, I cry out, and the sound echoes off stone walls.
The silk slides away like water, leaving me bare and wanting. He takes his time looking at me, and under his gaze I feel powerful. Desired. Chosen.
“Perfect,” he says, and it sounds like worship.
When his mouth closes around my nipple, my back arches off the cushions. Pleasure shoots straight to my core, and the bonds around my wrists tighten just enough to remind me I’m his. That I chose this. Chose him.
His hand slides between my thighs, finding me already slick and ready. I moan when he touches me, really touches me, fingers sliding through wetness to find the bundle of nerves that makes my whole body sing.
“So responsive,” he murmurs against my skin. “So perfect for me.”
He builds me up slowly, expertly, until I’m writhing against his hand and begging for more. When he finally slides a finger inside me, I nearly come apart.
“That’s it,” he encourages, adding a second finger. “Let go for me.”
I can’t hold back anymore. Can’t think past the pleasure building inside me like a storm. When my climax crashes over me, silver Ether explodes from my skin, flooding the chamber with light.
And something else.
Streaks of ink threading through the silver like veins. Beautiful in a strange way, like shadow flowing through water. But I’m too lost in pleasure to care, too high on the feeling of being completely, utterly desired.
He doesn’t stop. Doesn’t give me time to recover. His mouth replaces his fingers, and I scream at the sensation. He devours me like he’s starving, like I’m the only thing that will save him.
Maybe I am.
The second orgasm is even stronger than the first. My Ether surges again, silver shot through with growing ribbons of darkness. In the very back of my mind, something whispers that this is wrong. That I’m losing something with every pulse of pleasure.
But it feels so good to lose. So good to finally take what I want without apology.
When he rises over me, I spread my legs wider in invitation. He’s perfect—all lean muscle and sharp edges and eyes that see straight through to my soul.
“Are you ready for me?” he asks, and there’s something in his voice I can’t identify. Hunger, maybe. Or triumph.
“Yes,” I breathe. “Please, yes.”
He enters me slowly, carefully, and I’ve never felt so complete. So perfectly filled. The stretch is delicious, the friction exactly what I need. When he starts to move, I meet him stroke for stroke, chasing the pleasure that builds between us.
“Mine,” he growls against my throat, and the word resonates in my bones.
“Yours,” I agree, because it’s true. In this moment, in this place, I am completely his.
The rhythm builds until we’re both desperate, both racing toward something that feels like salvation. When my third climax hits, it takes him with me. He spills inside me with a groan that sounds like victory, and my Ether explodes outward one final time.
This time, the silver is barely visible beneath the black.
But I don’t care. Can’t care. I’m floating on waves of satisfaction and completion, wrapped in the certainty that I’ve finally found where I belong.
He pulls me against his chest, and I curl into him like I was made to fit there.
“Sleep, little queen,” he murmurs, lips against my hair.
My eyes flutter closed, and for the first time in forever, I feel safe. Chosen. Loved.
I don’t notice the way my Ether dims with every breath. Don’t feel the way my strength seeps away like water through cracks.
All I know is that I’m his now.
And that’s exactly where I want to be.
I sleep, and dream of silver turning to shadow.