Page 91 of Lustling

I glance up and meet his eyes across the room. His jaw is tight, but there’s no anger simmering there. No fury. Only something heavier. Something that looks far too much like knowing.

So I give him a smile. Small. Crooked. A lie with dimples.

He doesn’t return it.

Instead, he closes the space between us in two long strides, each step echoing sharp on the stone floor. He lowers himself beside me on the bench, close enough that his heat rolls against me, far enough from the others that this becomes a secret carved between us.

“What’s wrong?” His voice is low, rough-edged, scraped raw.

“I’m fine,” I answer automatically, because it’s easier than truth. Easier to offer a mask than bleed all over him. I let the lie sit between us like a shield. “Just… a little worried. That’s all.”

The sigh he gives is quiet but deep, worn from too many battles, too many losses. He leans in, until the warmth of his shoulder presses along mine, until I can feel the heat of his breath against my ear.

“I know you’ve been dreaming about Zepharion.”

My body goes rigid.

“I felt it.” His hand brushes against mine—light at first, testing—before lingering. And then, carefully, he twines our fingers together. The contact is solid. Anchoring. A tether against the dark tide pulling me under. “You didn’t say anything. I figured you wouldn’t. But I feel you, Lillien. Like your whole soul is trying not to scream.”

My throat closes, tight with unshed words.

He turns his hand, fitting our palms flush together, calloused skin rough against mine. Real. Grounding. “Lillien…” His voice drops, heavy with steel and certainty. “He can’t have you.”

My gaze falls to our hands, to the way his thumb strokes slow circles across my skin as if he’s memorizing me, committing me to flesh and bone.

“You belong to me,” he says softly, fiercely. “To Bastion. Even to Cassiel.”

Something in me stutters. My heart flutters weak and uneven, like a bird trapped in its own ribcage.

“You came into our lives and cracked them wide open. You ruined the silence. The stillness. You made all of this…” He gestures around the fortress, around himself. “Mean something.”

A breath shudders out of me, trembling. Maybe that’s the problem. Because I can see it now, too clearly—how much I mean to them. And if they die because of it, if I have to watch them fall one by one into dust and shadow…

How will I survive it?

Deimos shifts closer, his presence overwhelming, his heat sinking through my skin. He brings our joined hands to his knee, bowing over them. Then, with a tenderness that slices me open, he presses a kiss to the back of my hand. His lips linger a heartbeat too long, before he rests our hands back down, fingers still locked.

“We need you,” he says, eyes burning into mine. “And we’re not going to let anything happen to you. I promise.”

The word promise cuts sharper than any blade. I want to believe him. Gods, I do.

But Zepharion’s voice is still alive in my skull, whispering threats in a tongue only I can hear. And the vision of their broken bodies, strewn in dust and blood because of me, claws at the edges of my sight.

So I lean into Deimos’s side anyway. Let him believe I believe him. Let him hold my hand like it’s an oath. Let him love me with the kind of love that terrifies me.

Even if I already know—I won’t be here much longer.

FIFTY-FIVE

Ispend days training. Learning to pull on my newly formed mate bonds becomes both ritual and obsession. A private liturgy that eats the hours between their plotting and the long silences that follow.

The practice chamber smells of cold stone and breath. Cassiel doesn’t light anything; there’s nothing to call the flame to but what’s already here and what lives in both of us. He sits across from me, palms open on his knees, eyes closed as if listening to the world’s small, honest heartbeats.

“Close your eyes,” he says. “Breathe with me. Don’t reach outward. Reach inward.”

His voice is the kind that hushes the air. I follow him: inhale three, hold four, release six. With each count the tight coil in my ribs eases, and something that has been humming at the edge of me—not hunger, not want, but a different, purer heat—shifts closer to the surface. Cassiel’s hum threads through the floor and up into my bones; it’s not an offering from him so much as a shared note that makes the same thing in me vibrate.

“Find the thread,” he whispers. “Not mine. The one between us.”