Chapter 155
DANE
My memories were a kaleidoscope of blood and death, fire, and pain.
Now, touching her skin, it was like escaping from a burning house to gasp down clean, fresh winter air.
Curious. The one I served said she might affect me. He said she had been important to me, once.
I hadn’t remembered. But now that my hands were on her, I did. Almost.
The words that were pulled from my lips, You have no idea how much I’ve missed you, felt like they’d been spoken by someone else. Someone who had been dead a long time.
But they also felt familiar. They felt true.
Don’t let her get inside your mind, the Nameless had said. She was supposed to be for me, but her connection to the moon bitch was too strong. You are better in every regard. I made a good trade. She is powerful, but she still doesn’t know it. Can’t reach it.
You are plenty strong enough for my purposes.
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Was I? Because the feel of this woman in my arms was…fuck. She was the most gorgeous creature I’d ever seen, so ephemeral it looked like she was made of pale gold and starlight.
I had to stamp down the violent urge to lift her in my arms, press her against me more tightly. To claim her mouth. To trace my fingers up from her ankle along the outside of her calf and up, until my fingers were beneath her dress on her warm, perfect skin.
I felt eyes on my back. The wolves I’d come here with were watching me, and that meant he was watching.
Something deep inside my chest, something that burned hot, told me I couldn’t let them know how much she affected me. How much I already wanted her. Like I’d savored her before and forgotten, and her sweet scent was bringing the memory back.
But even if I needed to be cautious, I wasn’t going to loosen my grip.
I felt the shadows surge within me, shifting, resettling around my heart. But with her in my arms, it was like they couldn’t touch me. Not as deeply.
With her in my arms, I felt…
I didn’t know.
I just…felt.
But feeling, remembering, was too much.
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Because as soon as I did, I knew one thing: I was evil. Tainted. Unworthy of her.
So instead of examining those feelings, I fell back on my mission. “Tell me, Luna, how are you enjoying the new toy you finally pried out of that old stone?”
AURORA
My attention snapped to his eyes. I’d been getting lost in the feel of him. Of his warm hands. Of the way his body moved while we danced, so familiar and so strange, because we hadn’t had the chance to do this since we were married.
Goddess, that felt a lifetime ago, now.
No, it felt two or three lifetimes ago. How many times did one woman have to reinvent herself just to survive?
At his words, my hormone–driven daze disappeared. All the places I’d been heating up turned cold.
The relic. How does he know I finally have the relic?
Evander’s father Winston had been the one to figure out how to get it from the stone. He and a coven of witches, and a ritual held together by spit and prayers that–without Dane, the third chosen–had nearly killed both Evelyn and me.
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I pasted on a flirty, carefree smile. “You heard from all the way on the other side of the world? My goodness. Does your master really care so much about my silly little projects?”
Dane growled. Even though it wasn’t an angry sound, it was
still a warning. “When you’re tinkering with power beyond you? Yes.”
That didn’t answer how he had heard of it, but if I asked again, I’d only seem desperate to know.
“I’m flattered to have caught the eye of the Nameless for a second time,” I said.
Dane’s hands squeezed mine. “Don’t be.”
“Why is that?”
He leaned down until his lips brushed the sensitive shell of my ear again, his breath warm as he whispered, “Because when you catch his attention, you catch mine.”
I shivered. Because of fear, but also because it had been so long, and to have him this close felt…delicious. Maybe even more because he was so dangerous.
Stupid, I knew. I chastised myself. But the song would be ending soon, and foolish as it was, I didn’t want him to let me go. Even this shadow version of Dane was more than I had gotten in so many years. “Do you understand it?”
He lifted a brow. Before he could respond, however, the click of
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heels hit my ears. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of a tall, red–headed woman in a scarlet dress. Her lips were red as blood, and her eyes flashed lilac.
“Hello, Aurora, dear,” my cousin Lilliana purred. “How are your sweet little children? Still alive? What a shame.”
