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CHAPTER SIX

ISOLDE

My sleep is a battlefield.

Dreams crowd in, each one soaked in crimson, veiled in whispers, and threaded with a power that is hunger and agony.

I see William not as a handsome phantom but as a god in his own right, awash in blood, eyes burning as he cleaves through his enemies.

Cassiel shines with hellfire, fallen angelic wings spread wide as he stands over my prone body, keeping the darkness at bay with raw violence.

CJ, his eyes molten, marking his claim with teeth and touch, holds my ravaged body as if he will never let go.

But there is the slow, steady drumbeat of something older, colder, calling me out of sleep and into myself.

My eyes snap open, and the feeling of power is so dense I almost choke on it.

My body is liquid mercury, my mind a thousand splinters of sharp ice.

The world looks brighter, each sound painfully crisp, the thrum of blood in the walls like thunder.

Cassiel sits at the foot of the bed, bare-chested, wings concealed, staring at me with an intensity that borders on worship.

CJ stands beside the window, backlit and terrifying, while William is spectral chill next to me.

CJ moves first, and it is terrifying. He slows his speed deliberately and steps from the shadows. He studies me, face unreadable. “Hungry?”

He knows the answer. His eyes flick to my lips and linger there with a heat that would have driven me to distraction before. Now it sends me into a frenzy.

I reach for him, and he comes. No hesitation, no reservation. His wrist is at my mouth before I have time to worry if I’m hurting him. The moment his skin breaks, the taste of him erupts on my tongue, and every cell in my body lights up with pleasure.

I drink, and he lets me, but I can feel Cassiel behind me and William’s chill at my other side. They want this too, want to be part of it. I drink from CJ, enough to take the edge off, enough to remind him he belongs to me, then I pull away and swallow the fire in my mouth, my pulse hammering.

I look back at Cassiel, and no words are needed.

I’m on him, pinning him to the mattress, the taste of power and forsaken divinity in his veins. His hands are on my hips, squeezing hard enough to bruise, but the bite is what matters, the way our hunger doubles back and forth, amplifying.

I stop before I take too much and wipe my mouth, feeling the rush of energy surge through me, down my arms to my fingertips. My body feels like it might split or rip open with the violence of this new life.

I look at William. His spectral form is practically vibrating. His mouth crashes down on mine, and the excess power I’ve taken from CJ and Cassiel floods into him. It’s a torrent, a deluge, and I feel him absorb it, ground it, and become more real with every stolen spark.

His kiss is desperate, hungry, a century of deprivation poured into one searing moment. I can feel the cold of his ghostly essence warring with the heat of the life force I’m inadvertently channelling into him. It’s a dangerous dance, this exchange, but utterly intoxicating.

He pulls back, rasping, his green eyes blazing with an intensity that should scare me, but instead it fires up my lust like nothing else. He’s almost fully corporeal, the lines of his old-fashioned suit sharp, his skin no longer transparent but flushed with stolen vitality.

“More,” he breathes, his voice no longer an echo but a solid, commanding presence.

Before I can react, before CJ or Cassiel can intervene, he pulls me against him and bites my throat.

It’s not a gentle claiming. It’s a Sanguinarch taking what is theirs, what they need. His fangs are ice and fire. He has a darkness that calls to the new, monstrous part of me.

The world fractures. Power surges between us, a feedback loop of creation and consumption. I feel my essence being drawn out, but also amplified, refined. This isn’t just feeding; it’s an awakening.

The brand on my chest sears with a white-hot recognition, as if acknowledging its true master.

And in that moment, I know. I’m not just a Sanguimonarch.

I am his queen.

He is entirely mine.

The power exchange is electric, raw, a storm contained within the confines of my bedroom.

William’s hold is iron, his bite both agony and ecstasy.

My blood, my essence, my Sanguimonarch power, flows into him, not just restoring him but reforging him.

He’s drinking from me and giving something back, knowledge, an ancient resonance that slots into place like the final piece of a puzzle.

This isn’t just about him becoming corporeal. This is about him becoming more, and in doing so, he’s unlocking parts of me I didn’t know existed.

CJ and Cassiel are frozen, watching this unfold with expressions that are volatile. They can sense the shift, the monumental change occurring as William and I become linked in a way that transcends simple feeding.

He pulls away, his eyes burning into mine, no longer green but a swirling vortex of silver and amber from the essences he has drawn from me, which I took from CJ and Cassiel. He’s solid, overwhelmingly real.

And utterly terrifying.

“Isolde,” he rasps, and his voice is a symphony of power, a velvet growl that promises pleasure and pain. My name on his lips isn’t a request, it’s a claim.

I don’t want to resist. I want to lean into this riptide, to see where this dark, bloody path leads with him at my side. The pull towards William, towards this shared, monstrous power, is undeniable.

“Mine,” William murmurs, his hands framing my face with reverent possession. “My dark fate. My queen. My dark salvation.”

The words send electricity through my veins. This connection between us isn’t just attraction or convenience, it’s recognition. Like calling to like across the void of death and time.

“William,” I breathe, my hands fisting in the fabric of his century-old suit. The material is real beneath my fingers, warm from his restored body heat.

Behind us, CJ clears his throat with deliberate menace. “As touching as this is, we have bigger problems than your resurrection romance.”

“Blackridge,” William murmurs, and then, in one cold-hearted second, he is ripped away from me, back to the ghostly form.

“No!” I roar, the ground trembling under our feet.

The tremor that runs through SilverGate at my outburst isn’t just emotional, it’s seismic. Windows rattle in their frames, and somewhere in the distance, I hear the crack of stone splitting.

The bell tolls, jangling under the force of the earthquake ripping the ground apart.

“Isolde,” CJ says sharply, moving toward me with his vampire speed and gripping my upper arms. “Control it.”

“I can’t,” I snarl, fury and desperation warring in my chest as I stare at William’s now-translucent form. The power that had been flowing between us, that glorious, terrible connection, has been severed like a cut wire. “I want him back.”

“It will happen,” CJ says. “But you can’t bring it into fruition with a temper tantrum. We can see it’s possible, but we need to figure out how to make it permanent. Got it?”

I stare into his eyes and nod, gulping back the rage, the sorrow that I’ve lost William. It’s like having my heart ripped out.

“I’m still here,” William says carefully, but I can hear the anger underneath. He is as livid as I am, but for all different reasons. I want him back where I can touch him, feel him, kiss him, bite him. He wants to be back so he can be whole again, live his life, get back what was stolen from him.

“I will find a fucking way,” I growl, looking down at my crumpled clothes that I slept in. I shrug and shove my feet into my boots before storming from the room, knowing I should wait for the guys to escort me to Blackridge, but what does it matter?

The corridors of SilverGate blur past me as I storm toward Blackridge’s office, my footsteps echoing like gunshots against the ancient stone. Students press themselves against the walls as I pass, sensing the dangerous energy crackling around me like static electricity.

The rage burning through my veins is power demanding release, seeking destruction. Every torch I pass flickers and dies. Every window I walk past cracks down the centre. The stones beneath my feet pulse with the rhythm of my fury.

I don’t knock when I reach Blackridge’s office door. I don’t need to. The heavy oak swings open at my approach, responding to the raw authority radiating from my presence.

Blackridge sits behind his massive desk, looking entirely unsurprised to see me. He glances up from a leather-bound tome, his dark eyes taking in my dishevelled appearance, the silver light still flickering beneath my skin.

“Miss Morvoren. You’re early.”

“I want to get this over with. What else is there for you to say to me?”

“Not say,” he says, adapting to this situation thrust upon him like a champ. He rises and holds out his hand. I glare at it, and then I’m transported to a place deep underground, away from my guys, away from everyone.

I look around uneasily, taking in a laboratory-type space, but from a hundred years or more ago.

It is a nightmarish blend of Victorian science and arcane magic.

Glass cabinets line the walls, filled with specimens suspended in amber fluid, things that might once have been alive but now exist in a grotesque state between life and death.

Ancient equipment crowds every surface, brass and copper contraptions whose purpose I can’t begin to guess.

An examination table, more accurately described as an altar, stands at the centre. It’s carved from a single block of obsidian, its surface etched with symbols that glow faintly silver.

“What is this place?” I demand, my voice echoing in the cavernous space.