Page 6

Alaric

The Eyrie

“I thought you might enjoy this,” I say, gesturing toward the towering library chamber just beyond the arched door.

I watch her greedily as she steps over the threshold— my threshold —with wide eyes and parted lips.

While I’d been surveilling her in the human realm, I noticed the way she lingered in bookstores, the way she read late into the night on her small cellular device.

She sought escape in stories.

Longed for them.

And now I’m giving her an entire library.

“This is incredible,” she breathes, her voice low, reverent.

Her entire posture shifts, softens, like something inside her has uncoiled. She all but shimmers with quiet joy.

“Is this all yours?” she asks, eyes wide with genuine curiosity.

“The Eyrie is my legacy,” I answer, standing a bit straighter. “And everything in it belongs to me.”

I shouldn’t care whether she’s impressed.

But I do.

“Your house has a name?” she says with a grin, and something tightens in my chest.

I clear my throat. “Yes, most places here do.”

She walks farther inside, trailing her fingers along the carved railings and weathered leather spines like she’s touching something holy.

The way she looks at it all makes the air around her glow.

It’s like she is maybe realizing for the first time that magic is real, and wonder isn’t dead.

“In here, I have books from all corners of Nightfall,” I tell her. “Histories. Mythologies. Grimoires. Adventures.”

She pauses beside a shelf and grins again. “Any romance?”

The question catches me off guard, but I recover quickly.

“You won’t need books for that, Myrrin ,” I murmur, meeting her gaze.

She bites her lower lip and looks away, but not before I see it.

The flush that spreads across her cheeks.

The way her breath stutters, just once.

The ripple of awareness that passes between us.

It’s small. But unmistakable.

I find myself wondering at her reaction. I know it’s genuine.

When was the last time someone blushed in my presence?

When was the last time I cared?

I admit, seduction isn’t something I’ve had to practice.

As Alaric, Demon Knight, Lord of Air, keeper of Winds, Guardian of Nightfall, I have never lacked for admirers.

My name and titles carry power, prestige, allure.

But none of them— none —have ever stirred anything more than passing interest.

Until now.

Until her.

Jules Strano.

Human. Mortal. Inconveniently irresistible.

The thought alone has me frowning.

No. This isn’t desire. This isn’t fate.

She is a means to an end.

A vessel. A variable. The key to my ascension. A means to make me Prime.

That is all she is.

Then why do you have to keep reminding yourself?

I clasp my hands behind my back and follow her with careful detachment as she explores the room, still lit with wonder.

She brushes her fingers along a spine— Nightfall’s Golden Age —and glances back at me, uncertain.

“Am I? That is, um, can I touch?” she asks, one brow arched, fingers resting lightly on the worn leather.

“Yes,” I say, my voice lower than I intend.

And in truth, I wish she was asking to touch something else.

Someone else.

The thought angers me, too.

It’s ridiculous for me to have these desires. Dangerous, too.

So I step back. Regroup. Reassert control.

“Touch whatever you like, but stay in here. I’ll return shortly,” I tell her, turning toward the archway. “Before supper.”

I glance back once.

She’s already pulled a book from the shelf and is flipping through the pages with those delicate, fascinated hands—touching ancient knowledge like it’s sacred. It’s not reverence for power, not awe for magic. It’s genuine wonder. And that, somehow, makes it worse.

“Try not to upset anything, Myrrin ,” I say dryly, the endearment once more slipping too easily from my tongue.

She snorts. “No promises.”

I let the smile curl at my mouth, but only after I’ve turned away. She doesn’t need to know how effortlessly she affects me. Not yet.

“Oh, Alaric?”

I stop mid-stride, one hand braced on the stone archway.

“Yes?”

She hesitates. “When can I go home?”

The words hit harder than they should.

My back stiffens. My jaw clenches.

Home?

She means Earth. Her little apartment. Her routine. Her sad little bar.

She doesn’t understand yet that this— Nightfall , me —is where she belongs.

And the truth?

There’s nothing for her to return to.

But saying never seems cruel.

Even if it’s honest.

So I give her the answer I know she won’t like, but that buys me time.

“We shall discuss that later. Now,” I add, gesturing to the library, “stay in here.”

“Sit, stay—what am I? A dog?” she snaps back.

I raise one brow in response. I don’t have to say anything.

She huffs, crosses her arms. “Fine. Just tell me why.”

And just like that, my already-thin patience frays.

I cross the distance between us in two long strides, crowding her against the nearest shelf, my body braced just a breath from hers.

She startles, eyes wide, lips parting, but she doesn’t move away. Doesn’t shrink.

Good.

She shouldn’t.

She should know exactly who I am.

I tilt her chin upward with the pad of my thumb, forcing her gaze to meet mine.

Her skin is warm. Soft. Infuriatingly inviting.

“There are many things in Nightfall that can hurt a fragile human like you, Myrrin ,” I say, voice low and dangerous.

“Because you are under my protection, any such act will be seen as an attack on me and my person. So, unless you want to provoke a war, you will stay here. Where it’s safe. Until I come for you.”

Her breath catches, but she holds my gaze. Proud. Defiant.

I like that too much.

“Now,” I finish, “nod that you understand.”

She rolls her eyes, muttering under her breath, “Can you be any more barbaric?”

But she nods.

And she’s smiling.

Just a little. Just enough to make my control slip again.

I force myself to step back.

And she vanishes between the shelves, hips swaying slightly beneath that silk I conjured, unaware— or perhaps entirely aware —of the effect she has on me.

I watch her longer than I should.

Then, with one last lingering glance, I turn and leave her to the books.

And if I walk faster than usual down the hall toward the chamber where my brothers wait with the fate of Nightfall in a glass box, well, that's no one's business but mine.

The moment I step into the antechamber beyond the library’s threshold, I feel them.

Not just their magic, but their moods.

Eager. Anxious. Angry.

Kael. Thorne. Dagan.

They’re waiting for me beneath the vaulted ceiling of the outer hall, where moonlight bleeds in through the narrow glass teeth of the ceiling.

Ancient banners hang in silence overhead.

The weight of memory lingers here— of oaths sworn, battles fought, crowns forged.

Kael is the first to speak, lounging as if he belongs to the room.

“You found your human quickly,” he says, eyes glinting with sea-glass amusement. “What did you do, whistle?”

“I followed the thread,” I answer simply, but Dagan snorts and turns away, disgust curling his lip.

“You’re going to trick a human into believing she’s your fated mate?” he growls. “You’d bind an innocent soul to a lie, enter a false zareth , just to grab power?”

I raise a brow. “And you wouldn’t?”

“I’d rather die with honor than rule as a fraud.”

“Good,” I murmur. “Then we understand each other, Lord Dagan. Die and leave the throne to someone stronger.”

Before Dagan can lunge, Thorne chuckles from the shadows, stepping forward with fire flickering along the ends of his hair like it’s alive.

“So, this human. What is she like? What did it take to woo her to your side?”

“What do you care, Thorne? She is mine now,” I reply, wary of giving him, or really, any of them my back.

“Careful, Alaric,” he says, voice teasing, dangerous. “You’re getting attached. What if I decide I want her instead?”

I go still.

The air drops ten degrees.

“If you try to take her,” I say softly, “I will put your fire out. Permanently.”

The threat lands. Thorne’s grin falters, then sharpens with challenge. But before he can reply, Kael raises a hand.

“Enough.” His voice carries the weight of oceans, deep and unbothered.

“We didn’t come to scratch at each other like feral beasts. We came for this.”

He gestures, and with a ripple of magic, a box appears in the center of the room.

A glass cube, sealed with binding glyphs etched in molten silver.

Inside it rests the crown of Nightfall, taken from the head of our lost Prime.

Ancient. Glorious. Unclaimed.

It pulses faintly with dormant power, as if it knows what’s at stake. As if it’s waiting.

“We must guard it,” Kael says, stepping forward. “The SoulTakers grow restless. Their scouts are sniffing along the outer planes. If they find it before a new Prime rises,” he murmurs, leaving the rest unfinished.

We all know what will happen then. Kael doesn’t need to tell us.

“They’ll devour the realm,” Dagan finishes grimly.

“So we bind it,” Kael says. “With all our magic. And we leave it here, safe at Alaric’s Eyrie. High above the shadows they cling to. The one place they’re least likely to look.”

I approach the box slowly.

The crown thrums in response, not quite recognition, but curiosity.

One by one, we raise our hands.

Each of us casts a ward, layering our power atop the last— earth, sea, flame, and wind .

Old magic. Sacred. Binding.

When the last symbol flares, Kael lets his hand fall and says quietly, “We all want it. But if we lose it, there won’t be a realm left to rule.”

For once, all three of us nod in agreement.

Even Thorne.

Even Dagan.

But as I glance back toward the library— where Jules is surely still flipping through ancient texts with those delicate, ink-hungry fingers —one thought crashes through me like a blade made of fire:

If they come for the crown, they’ll come here.

And worse— they’ll come through her to get it.

The SoulTakers won’t just sniff at the edges of the Eyrie.

They’ll scent the thread. The bond.

They’ll sense her brightness, her humanity, her fragile power, and they’ll twist it, corrupt it, use it against me.

The idea fills me with a feeling I haven’t allowed myself in centuries.

Not just rage.

But fear.

And beneath that?

Pure, unadulterated wrath.

It rises from the pit of me, dark and vast.

My Dragon stirs.

He’s been silent far too long, but now he rumbles, low and dangerous, beneath my skin.

Because he feels it too.

She is ours.

If they so much as touch her— SoulTakers, rebels, even one of my own brothers —destruction will follow.

Not strategy.

Not political precision.

No .

Destruction.

Plain and simple in its absolute devastation.

My hands tremble with the effort to contain it, my breath no longer smooth but shaking because the thought of losing her, of someone else laying claim to what is mine, ignites something primal in me.

The Dragon doesn’t care about thrones or legacy or balance.

He cares about the soft creature now roaming my inner sanctum.

The one who blushes when I look at her.

The one who licks her lips and says my name like she doesn’t yet understand the power she gives it.

I picture her again— vivid as starlight —those precious seconds when she stood bare, unaware she was being watched.

Her curves bathed in torchlight, the silk gown I conjured sliding over her hips like a kiss.

Fuck.

My cock thickens instantly, heavy and aching, and I press my palms flat against the cold stone wall of the Eyrie, grounding myself.

This isn’t just attraction.

It’s obsession.

Possession.

A mating bond.

The zareth?

I’m not sure.

But it is unwanted, unplanned, and unstoppable.

And it’s happening faster than it should.

I might have misjudged the Dragon’s connection to her.

Hell, I might’ve misjudged myself.

Because nothing— nothing —about Jules Strano has followed the plan.

Not her reaction to me.

Not her presence here.

Not the way she matters.

She's just a pawn.

But that doesn’t feel right.

She’s supposed to be a means to the throne.

But I think, well that is, I believe Jules Strano might actually be my viyella .

And after hearing Thorne’s careless remark, I am positive I’ll let no other have her.

Gods help anyone— anyone —who tries to take her from me.

I will burn Nightfall down to the bone before I let that happen.