Page 21 of Shifting Hearts

SEVEN

Kieran

T he moment the sigil flares, I feel it.

A pulse, low and deep, rips through the mansion’s wards like a heartbeat skipping out of rhythm. My breath catches. The chamber’s awake.

I’m on my feet before thought catches up, fire sparking beneath my skin. The house groans around me, old stone shifting, whispering warnings in a tongue only dragons remember.

She found it. The hidden chamber was sealed centuries ago, buried beneath layers of magic and bloodline protections. It’s not supposed to open unless the Echo touches it.

Unless she touches it.

I move fast, the hallways bending around me, guiding me toward her like the house itself wants me there. Like it wants me to see what she’s becoming.

The air thickens as I descend the spiral staircase. The scent of her hits me first; moonlight and frost, threaded with something new. Power. Her power.

The tapestry is gone. The stone door is dissolved.

I step into the chamber, and the heat slams into me like a wave. The sigils on the walls pulse in rhythm with her heartbeat. The book is open. The prophecy exposed.

Raven stands in the center, eyes wide, breath shallow, her hand still glowing from contact.

She turns when she hears me, and the look on her face guts me. Not fear. Recognition.

“You weren’t lying,” she whispers, voice raw. “This place knows me.”

I nod, stepping closer, careful not to spook her. “It knows us .”

She flinches. “The vision changed. It mentioned a dragon.”

I stop just short of her, the fire in my chest burning hotter. “It’s not just a mention.”

She stares at me, storm-gray eyes searching. “It’s you, isn’t it?” I don’t answer. I shift. Just enough.

My eyes burn gold. My skin heats. The mark on my shoulder glows through the fabric, and she sees it. The dragon. The flame. The bond.

She doesn’t run. She steps closer.

Her voice is barely above a whisper, but it slices through me like a blade. “Does that mean we’re… mates?”

The word hangs in the air, ancient and sacred. Not a label. A fate.

I see it in her eyes; she’s not asking out of fear. She’s asking because something inside her already knows.

I want to lie, to say no. To say it’s a coincidence that the bond is a fluke, a misfire of old magic.

But the mark on my shoulder burns, and her scent, gods, her scent is braided into my soul like it’s always belonged there.

I step closer, slow and deliberate, the air between us thick with something ancient.

“It means more than that,” I state.

She doesn’t move, but I hear the hitch in her breath. Her eyes search mine, wide and wary, and I know she feels it too. “It means you were forged for me,” I murmur, voice low, “and I was cursed for you.”

Her brows draw together. “Cursed?”

I nod, the truth clawing its way out of me. “The bond doesn’t just link us, it binds us to the prophecy. To the war, to the power that sleeps beneath this house.”

She looks down at her glowing hand, then back at me, her voice barely audible. “So if I walk away…”

“You’ll survive,” I say, and the words taste like ash. “But I won’t.”

Her lips part, trembling. “And if I stay?”

I take her hand and press it to the mark. The chamber flares around us, sigils igniting in a rush of heat and light. The bond roars to life, ancient and undeniable.

The moment her hand touches the mark on my shoulder, the world tilts.

Not violently, not all at once. It’s slower than that. Like reality is exhaling, peeling back layer by layer until the chamber around us dissolves into shadow and flame. We’re no longer standing in stone and silence. We’re somewhere else, somewhere older.

The ground beneath us is obsidian, slick and veined with runes that pulse like a heartbeat.

Above, the sky spins too fast, constellations rearranging themselves into symbols I haven’t seen since the old wars.

The air is thick with prophecy. I feel it in my bones, in the bond flaring between us.

Raven grips my arm, her breath shallow, her eyes glowing silver threaded with gold.

She’s changing. The bond is awakening her.

Then the voice comes. Not spoken aloud, but felt. It vibrates through the marrow of me, through the magic that binds us.

“Two halves of ruin. One chance at redemption.”

The vision shifts.

We’re on a battlefield scorched by dragonfire. Raven stands at the center, cloaked in shadow, her eyes blazing. Bodies fall around her, some human, some monstrous. She screams, and the sound becomes a spell, a curse, a promise. Then the scene fractures again.

A ruined temple. A child with Raven’s eyes reaches for a blade etched with the Brotherhood’s sigil. I’m kneeling before her, bleeding, offering the weapon like a sacred gift. I remember this moment. I’ve dreamed it. Feared it. The voice returns, colder now.

“If you love her, you will burn.”

Raven trembles beside me. “Is this our future?” she asks, voice barely audible.

I shake my head, eyes locked on hers. “It’s a future,” I say, and the weight of it presses down on me like ash.

She doesn’t flinch. “Then we change it.”

The vision begins to collapse, the chamber calling us back, but before it fades, one final image sears itself into my mind; a crown of bone, a kiss in fire, and the two of us bound, broken, beloved, standing at the edge of the world.

We snap back into the chamber like surfacing from deep water. Gasping, disoriented, changed. The vision still echoes in my blood, but it’s her I feel most. Raven. Her presence is a roar in my senses now, no longer distant or uncertain. The bond is locked into place. There’s no going back.

She stands in the center of the room, chest rising and falling, eyes wide and luminous.

Power clings to her skin like heat. I move before I can think, drawn to her like gravity.

My hands rise, slow and deliberate, and I brace them on either side of her face.

I give her time to pull away. I need her to choose this.

She doesn’t move.

Her breath brushes my lips. Her gaze holds mine, steady and unflinching.

“My fated mate,” I whisper, voice rough with everything I’ve held back. “My flame.”

Then I kiss her.

Hard.

It’s not gentle. It’s not careful. It’s the kind of kiss that burns through centuries of silence, prophecy, and war.

Her hands clutch my shirt, pulling me closer, and I feel the bond flare again.

Not just magic, but memory, longing, recognition.

Like we’ve done this before in a hundred lifetimes and still never got it right.

She tastes like frost and fire. Like defiance. Like home .

And for the first time in years, I stop fighting the curse.

I let it claim me.

I let her claim me.

Her lips are still on mine when the fire shifts.

Not the one between us, the one in the house. In the wards. In the bloodlines stitched into the stone beneath our feet.

The bond is sealed. I feel it in my bones, in the mark on my shoulder, in the way the house exhales like it’s been holding its breath for centuries. Raven is mine now. Not by ritual, not by choice. By fate.

And fate doesn’t come quietly.

I pull back just enough to see her face, flushed and fierce, her eyes still glowing faintly with the power that answered mine. She’s beautiful like this—untamed, awakened, dangerous.

But the moment is already slipping.

“They’ll come for us,” I say, voice low, rough. “The Brotherhood.”

Her brow furrows. “Why?”

“Because the bond changes everything.” I step back, just enough to let the truth settle between us. “They don’t fear love. They fear what love unlocks, what it unleashes.”

She’s silent, but I see the question in her eyes.

“They’ll say I broke the code,” I continue. “That I let prophecy take root, that I let you become what they tried to erase.”

Her breath catches. “They’ll try to kill me.”

I nod. “Or worse. They’ll try to bind you. Use you. Twist the bond into something they can control.”

She straightens, chin lifting. “Let them try.”

I almost smile. Almost.

But the fire in the walls is already shifting. The wards are alert. The house knows what’s coming.

“They’ll send emissaries first,” I say. “Then enforcers. Then the High Circle.”

Raven steps closer, her hand finding mine. “And you?”

I look at her, the woman fate carved for me from moonlight and ruin.

“If loving you is the end of the world, then I’ll light the match myself.”

She doesn’t hesitate.

One heartbeat, maybe two, and then she’s on me. Her fingers fist my collar, yanking me down, and her mouth crashes into mine like she’s sealing the bond with fire, fury, and everything the Brotherhood will try to erase.

It’s not a kiss. It’s a reckoning.

Her power surges through me, wild and electric, and the house groans around us like it feels the shift. Wards flicker. Shadows recoil. The air thickens with something ancient, something watching.

She pulls back just enough to breathe against my lips, voice trembling with rage and devotion.

“Then light it, Kieran. Burn it all.”

And I will.

Because this, her, us, the bond, isn’t just forbidden. It’s prophecy, and I’d rather become the monster they fear than live one more second without her.

Her words are a spark.

“Then light it, Kieran. Burn it all.”

And I do.

Not with fire. Not yet. But with the way I pull her back into me, hands gripping her waist like I’m afraid she’ll vanish if I let go. Her mouth finds mine again, fiercer this time, like she’s pouring every ounce of defiance, desire, and prophecy into the kiss.

The bond thrums between us, alive and demanding. Her power coils around mine, not clashing— merging .

I press her back against the wall, the stone warm beneath her skin, pulsing faintly with old magic. Her fingers slide under my shirt, nails grazing, claiming. I groan into her mouth, and it’s not just want, it’s need. Ancient. Elemental.

She’s not just Raven anymore. She’s mine. Fated. Forbidden. And I’m hers, in every way that matters.

The house doesn’t stop us. It welcomes us.