Page 26

26

LIORA

S omething is wrong.

It hums beneath my skin, slow and insidious, like embers buried beneath ash, waiting for the wind to coax them into flames. My body feels too hot, too full. Like I have swallowed something ancient, something that isn’t mine.

Dain stares at me, his chest moving in jagged, uneven breaths. His hands are clenched at his sides, claws digging into his own palms, muscles straining with tension that ripples down his arms.

But it’s his eyes that unnerve me most.

A flicker of recognition. Of something like fear.

But Dain does not fear anything.

I shudder, my breath catching as I brace my hands against the creaking wooden floor. My body feels different. Lighter, yet stronger. As if something has been pulled loose inside me, something that was meant to be out of reach.

The taste of him lingers on my tongue.

Blood.

The moment I realize what happened, my stomach twists. My lips part, words forming and then dissolving into silence as I try to piece together what he has done. What I have become.

“You—” My voice cracks, my throat raw. I sound different.

Dain grabs me before I can speak again, his clawed hand snapping around my wrist, fingers tightening just enough to still me without pain. His touch is searing.

“Who are you?” His voice is low, barely above a growl, the words laced with something raw. Accusation.

I blink. “What?”

His hold tightens, dragging me closer. His heat seeps into my skin, into my bones, making the burning sensation inside me even worse.

“That name,” he grits out. “You said my name. As if you’ve always known it.”

I swallow hard, pulse hammering against my ribs. “I don’t?—”

“You don’t remember?” He leans in, his breath warm against my face. “Or you don’t want to admit it?”

Something fractures inside me at the words, a splinter of something familiar.

The image of a woman, shadowed, distant. Her voice, a whisper at the back of my mind, speaking in a tongue I do not understand.

The darkness shifts.

For a moment, I feel as if I am standing somewhere else. Somewhere outside my own body, outside this life.

Dain releases me, his touch vanishing as if burned.

“You’re a mistake,” he snarls.

The words slice through me like a knife. A mistake.

I recoil, my hands curling into fists. “I didn’t ask for this.”

His eyes darken, his mouth twisting into something cold. “No,” he murmurs. “But neither did I.”

Silence settles between us, thick and suffocating. Outside, the wind howls, rattling the broken shutters of the abandoned house, as if trying to shake free the tension curling in the air between us.

I breathe through the weight pressing down on me, my hands clenching at the fabric of my tattered clothes. I don’t understand what’s happening.

But I know one thing.

I am not the same.

Something inside me has changed.

Dain hates it.

His claws flex, his posture rigid, as if he is fighting himself.

I should be afraid.

I should push away the remnants of his blood inside me, pretend it never happened. Pretend that when I said his name, it did not feel like I had said it before.

But I can’t.

Because the worst part is that I don’t want to.

Dain exhales sharply, running a hand through his damp hair. He moves away, putting distance between us, as if my presence is a sickness he cannot afford to catch.

His jaw tightens. “We leave at dawn.”

The words are final. No room for argument.

But I can’t let it go.

I rise on unsteady legs, my body still too light, too full. I want to shake off the sensation, but it lingers—his magic, his blood.

“Dain.”

He stills.

Something flashes across his face, so quick I nearly miss it.

Regret.

I take a slow step toward him. “Tell me what’s happening to me.”

He doesn’t turn.

“You already know.”

He’s gone, slipping into the shadows, leaving me standing there, alone with the ghosts inside me.