Page 105 of Ashen Souls

I was jealous of her. I envied her capacity to love. She had given herself over to it entirely, without a fraction of hesitation or dread.

Trapped behind her senses, I had experienced the way her heart opened to Daeren without a single doubt. His presence had settled into her like a refuge. Their connection had an absolute, staggering clarity.

Whatever tethered them across a thousand years was forged from pure devotion. And I had never experienced anything remotely close to it.

With Daeren, the lines didn't exist. I was trapped in a constant war between wanting him closer and being terrified of what would happen if he actually was. I couldn't separate the lure of something forbidden from the unnerving possibility that something genuine was taking shape beneath the chaos.

I stared at the ring until the tea went cold.

Tucking the ring back into its casing, I shoved the box deep into my bedside drawer. I crawled beneath the blankets, my limbs aching from the miles walked, my mind still spinning with questions I couldn't answer.

I surrendered to the dark, but the dark refused to let me rest.

The silence of my room was ripped apart by the deafening groan of crumbling stone. The infernal chamber rose around me in ruins. It was worse than before. The structural bones of his prison were giving way as the ancient arches crumbled into heaps of smoking rubble.

The polished obsidian walls now bled sluggish, glowing magma from jagged fissures. Ash sifted like snow from a ceiling obscured by dense smoke, and the heat bordered on unbearable.

Yet, the bed beneath me remained absurdly opulent. Cool silk clung to my skin, shielding me from the inferno outside the bed. A thin coverlet draped across my hips.

Daeren stood at the foot of the bed. His skin carried the dull, textured gray of old ash, and the darkness clinging to his boots writhed like an extension of his body.

“You’ve been busy these days, Patches,” he murmured.

Before tonight, I thought the nickname was just another one of his strange games. But in the vision, I saw Avelia. I saw the distinct lack of pigment on her arms and neck. I finally understood why he called me Patches. He was looking right through my skin, talking to a ghost.

I clutched the edge of the silk coverlet, dragging it higher over my chest. “I found the ring.”

He didn't move.

“I saw Aethrya,” I pushed, the words scraping my dry throat. “The wedding. And the void they threw you into.”

A muscle feathered along his jaw. He held my gaze, and for a fraction of a second, the infernal glare in his eyes faltered.

“That history belongs to dust,” he said. “It doesn’t matter now.”

“It matters to me.” My fingers twisted into the sheets. “But Daeren… I’m not her. I’m not Avelia. You know that, right?”

He closed the distance between us in a single stride. The mattress dipped heavily under his weight.

“Don't you ever fucking tell me who you are,” he rasped. “I know exactly what belongs to me. You think digging up one ancient memory gives you the truth? You haven't even bled enough to scratch the surface.”

He leaned over me. The sulfurous haze of the crumbling room mixed with the cedar-and-spice scent of his skin.

“Daeren, please. I just want to talk. I want answers.”

“Liar.” He braced a forearm on either side of my head, caging me against the pillows. “Let’s be honest with each other. You're not here to talk.”

I swallowed.

“You can deceive your family, your friends, even me if you wish.” His knuckles skimmed down the bare curve of my neck. “But don’t lie to yourself.”

Daeren wrapped his fingers around mine where I clutched the coverlet. He pried my rigid fingers loose, pulling the silk away and tossing it to the floor.

“Don’t pretend you don’t want this,” he whispered, his mouth brushing the shell of my ear, “my hands on every inch of you, touching you, making you scream.”

He aligned his hips between my parted thighs. The abrasive material of his pants rasped against my bare skin. His free hand moved to the waistband, unfastening the metal closure.

He captured my hand, uncurling my tense fingers, and pressed my palm flat against the hard heat of his erection through the unbuttoned pants.