Page 55 of Shadowed

"Lilith."

"Don't."

Silence. His shadows flatten. The protective curl recedes.

I leave the window. Walk to my room. Close the door. Sit on the bed and press my hands flat against my thighs.

The coat. The book. Elena's bright eyes. The way Tommy said kind.

The crack in my chest opens wider and wider until it's not a crack anymore but a door and behind the door is the thing I've been trying not to look at since the first night.

The male who kept his word. The prince who let me find the second ledger on my own. The shadow-creature whose darkness makes locks for me to pick and gardens for me to sit in and meals that arrive without asking.

My hands press harder against my thighs. Crying is not something I do.

Except three nights ago. Three times. On his floor. While his shadows caught my tears.

I'm not afraid of him anymore.

That's the problem.

22

CALIGO

She's furious.

It hits across the bond—not the heat-pull, which is there, insistent and biological, building for two days since the claiming. The fury underneath it. Fury at herself for wanting this. Fury at me for making it so that wanting it heals something in my court. Fury at the bond for existing.

I know exactly what made her furious. The bond told me.

For three days she's been alone in her room trying to manage the heat herself. Her hands, her patience, the grim professional discipline of a woman who has been solving problems without help since she was six. It hasn't worked—it can't work, the bond heat doesn't break from her own touch, it breaks from mine—and for three days she's known that and refused to do anything about it.

Each attempt feeding back through the bond into my chambers. Her frustration. The slick heat of her. Her body asking for something her hands can't give it.

I've spent three days sitting with my hands flat on my thighs, feeling all of it, and not going to her.

She had to come to me. That's the rule. That's the only rule that matters.

She came. And it has made her absolutely furious.

The heat returning three days after the claiming is faster than the standard cycle. I know why. The soul corruption is accelerating—every kill, every shadow ward she dissolved, every willing choice she's made in my court has been deepening her darkness, and the darker she gets the more fully her omega nature wakes. Her body is becoming more mine, not less. The bond at seventy-eight percent keeps the heat cycling regardless. It won't stop until we're complete.

She doesn't know that yet. She thinks this is the last time.

She's standing outside my door.

I know this the way she knows which direction I am in the building—the bond has given us both a compass and hers is pointing at my door and the anger radiating through it is so sharp I can taste it. Copper and salt and the specific bright heat of a woman who has spent three days in her own room refusing to come to mine and has lost the argument with her own biology.

She could pick the lock. She mapped my chambers the first week—twelve locks, three wards, and a shadow-seal she cracked in forty minutes, faster than Sybillis ever managed. She could find a window. The palace would open one for her. She could walk through a wall—the architecture adores her.

She knocks.

Three sharp raps. The knocking hand of someone who does not sneak.

I open the door.

She's wearing the high collar. Hiding the mark. Her jaw is set and her eyes are bright and hard and her hands are fisted at her sides.