Page 89 of Shifting Hearts

SIX

Brannan

T he air in the cathedral crackled. Magic charged the stones beneath us, steeped in the blood and bones of long-forgotten rituals. It wasn’t just history that haunted this place, it was something living, something watching. Something waiting.

I felt it in the back of my throat. In the heat prickling under my skin. In the way my threads twisted, pulling tight around my ribs like a snare.

Eris knelt across from the fire; her silhouette painted in orange light and long shadows. Bone glinted at her hip. Her knives — sacred, cursed, holy — glowed faintly, as if remembering their purpose. As if they sensed what was coming.

She looked like a storm. Wind and flame and fury contained in skin.

And I was so fucking tired of pretending I didn’t want to be struck by her.

“I thought you’d left.” My voice was low, gravelled, splintered with restraint. “You always leave.”

“I should’ve,” she said. Her fingers flexed against her thigh, her voice was brittle. “But I didn’t.”

The silence stretched, again, taut and dangerous.

She didn’t move. Not yet. But her eyes flicked to mine like a match against dry bark, like she wanted to burn me alive and hated herself for it.

I don’t know which one of us moved first. Maybe we both did. It didn’t matter much, because in the next beat of my heart, she was in my arms, and I was wrapped in hers, and the fire between us roared.

Her mouth met mine with desperation, not softness.

It wasn’t a kiss — it was a battle. Her teeth caught my lip, sharp, and I tasted copper.

I didn’t care. I grabbed the back of her neck, my hands tangling in her hair, as I pulled her closer until there was no breath between us.

Her body against mine, all edges and heat and fury.

Clothes tore. Not removed — ripped . My tunic split down the front, her fingers impatient. Her shirt fell away under my hands, thin fabric tearing like parchment under bloodstained fingers. Her skin was hot. Soft. Alive.

“Fuck,” I hissed as her teeth grazed my throat.

“Still sure you don’t want this?” she whispered.

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. My hands slid over her hips — greedy, reverent, starving.

Magic flared — hers and mine. The cathedral lit from the inside, the knives at her waist pulsing a cold, eerie blue. My threads burned scarlet, coiling around my wrists and up her spine, binding us without consent.

She straddled me, one knee braced on either side of my thighs, her fingers curling around my jaw. I looked up at her — wild, furious, beautiful — and for a second, I thought I might beg.

But she didn’t want my submission. She wanted the truth. All of it.

I ran my hands up her back, her waist, her ribs, dragging her flush against me. Her breath caught as I groaned against her, hips rising, the heat between us was electric.

So when I slid inside her, it wasn’t gentle. It was brutal. Hard.

Her breath shattered, and my name broke from her lips like a curse, like a prayer, like a promise she knew she couldn’t keep.

She moved with purpose — fast, hard, as if trying to chase the pain away. And I met her rhythm, thrust for thrust, our bodies moving like weapons — angry and sharp.

She clenched around me, tight and slick and hot, and I almost came undone right there, but I didn’t, I held on, I needed to hold on, because with every movement, every breath, the magic between us surged.

I saw things — fragments, flashes — pieces of her memory, her soul. Her hands shook as she took her oath. Her mother’s face, proud and cruel. The moment she chose me , again and again, even when it tore her in half.

And I felt her in me, too. Her visions invaded my mind. The way I’d gripped my brother’s corpse and screamed to the sky. The long, cold years of silence and duty. My own face reflected in the glass of fate — tired… alone… damned.

I kissed her like I was drowning.

She bit my shoulder, and I welcomed the pain. It was real. She was real.

The cathedral pulsed with light, with heat, and the passion of us.

I flipped her over, driving into her from above, hands braced on either side of her head. Her eyes met mine — wide, tear-glossed, burning.

“Say it,” I demanded.

“I can’t,” she whispered.

One hand went to her face, brushed a strand of hair away from her face. “I think you already did.”

She came then, shuddering, her back arching, her fingernails digging into my spine. And I followed, losing myself inside her, inside the chaos, inside the fucking ecstasy of it all.

Afterward, we lay tangled on the old stone floor, sweat cooling, magic fading.

Her head rested on my chest, her breath uneven. The knives had gone dark. My threads, slack and listless, hung from my wrists like bloodied ribbons.

“I shouldn’t have—” she started.

“Don’t,” I said hoarsely. “Please.”

She sat up, pulling her tunic around her shoulders like armour. “This changes nothing.”

“It changes everything,” I said, too quietly.

She looked at me like she wished I were wrong.

And maybe I did too.

Because I knew what came next. The guilt. The fear. The walls rebuilt, stone by stone.

She stood, and I didn’t stop her. I couldn’t

“We can’t stay here,” she said.

I nodded, rising slowly, every muscle aching with the weight of her absence. “Then we run again.”

She turned her back to me, heading toward the narrow break in the cathedral’s wall. But just before she disappeared into the night, she looked back.

“I saw it,” she said. “What you carry. What they did to you.”

I couldn’t breathe.

“You didn’t deserve it,” she added.

And then she was gone, just like that.

And the cathedral, once alight with prophecy and need, fell silent once more, but the magic that lingered between us stayed.

And I knew — no matter how far she ran — she’d never outrun this .

I stood in the silence long after she had vanished.

The fire had burned low, leaving nothing but embers now.

My shirt hung in tatters from my shoulders, streaked with soot, blood, her fingerprints.

I didn’t bother fixing it. Didn’t bother pretending I hadn’t just surrendered everything I had to her – the symbol of everything that had made me who I was and then tried to erase me off the face of the earth.

I sat back on the cracked stone floor, the heat of her body still echoing through mine like phantom fire. My hands shook — not from exertion, but from what I’d let happen. What we’d become in that moment. No mask. No armour. No excuses.

Just man and woman, fate-tangled and fire-bound, damned from the start.

The silence pressed in around me, thicker than before. Not empty. Watching . The cathedral had seen our truth. It would remember. It would keep the shape of her cries and my groans carved into its bones like runes.

I dragged a hand over my face, trying to scrub away the scent of her on my skin, but it didn’t work.

Part of me wanted to chase after her. To stop her before she disappeared again, to force her to stay and face what this meant. But the smarter part — the older, more broken part — knew better.

She would run. And I would let her.

Because that’s what we always did.

But, gods, I didn’t want to.

I wanted to hold her down and tell her she wasn’t leaving without letting me fight for her.

I wanted to scream that I was worth choosing, even if I wasn’t.

I wanted to break this cathedral open and pull her name from every stone until she turned back around.

Instead, I stayed kneeling in the ash and quiet, my heart hammering behind bruised ribs.

The visions hadn’t stopped, not entirely. Little echoes clung to the edges of my vision — glimmers of her oath knife slicing her palm, blood dripping onto the stone altar. Her younger self weeping into her sleeve in the dark. Her shaking as she whispered my name when no one else could hear her.

And beneath it all, the constant beat of her heart as she chose me, again and again, even when it killed her.

I didn’t deserve it. Not even close.

But the magic didn’t care what we deserved, or wanted, no…

it only cared that we were fated. Thread and bone.

Guardian and knife. Wolf and witch. I didn’t dare think of the other half of her.

The fey part that had my wolf wanting to tear her limb from limb, because that’s what wolves did to fey.

Not that witches were any better. They’d made me after all.

Wyrd Wolves… together with the dark fey, we’d been made…

regular wolf shifters taken as children.

Maybe that was no better than what the Dark Court had done to Eris.

I didn’t know, I couldn’t. Dreams… visions, were far from the starkness of reality, and I hadn’t been there.

I shifted, letting my head fall back against the pillar behind me. Cool rock kissed my spine.

There’d be consequences for this. I could feel them already circling. Magic like that didn’t happen without cost — and neither did defiance.

I had tasted her, known her, claimed her — even if we’d never speak that truth aloud ever again, only now the magic had a tether. Something real. Something binding. Something made of flesh and bone.

My threads still hadn’t faded completely. They glowed faintly under my skin — not the usual tight red lines of protection and prophecy, but looser, pulsing strands that ached . As if they mourned her leaving. As if they wanted to follow.

I clenched my fists and tried to will them still.

She wasn’t mine to keep. I’d made peace with that long ago. Or maybe I’d just convinced myself I had, but gods help me — in that cathedral, in her arms, I’d let myself believe otherwise.

The wind stirred outside — the first breath of movement in what felt like hours. Dust shifted in the doorway where she’d disappeared. Just enough to make me lift my head. Just enough to make hope rise, uninvited and cruel.

But it wasn’t her.

Only the night. And the ghosts we’d stirred.

I closed my eyes.

And for the first time in years, I didn’t pray to the gods for strength.

I prayed that she’d come back.

Even if I knew deep down she wouldn’t.