Sora whipped around, her silver hair flying out of its clip, and pinned me with a glare.
“You will stay here,” she commanded. “In case the Veythar comes looking for you.”
20
CHAPTER TWENTY
The bunk beneath me dipped in the center, the thin mattress creaking each time I shifted.
I turned onto my side, then my back, then my side again, but sleep would not come. The fever from the severance still burned in my blood, but it was nothing compared to the memory of tonight.
His mouth on mine.
His hand at my waist.
His voice threading through my ribs like it belonged there.
My chest still carried the echo of that dream and no matter how steadily I breathed, it would not quiet. It was as if something inside me had been stretched too far and refused to settle back into its proper shape.
I pressed the heel of my palm against my sternum.
You are in control, I told myself.
My body did not agree.
A faint scraping sound threaded through the quiet, so soft at first I wondered whether it belonged to the settling of ancient stone.
I pushed myself upright on the mattress, the lantern-light trembling as though it too had sensed the shift. My gaze fixed on the chamber door. It remained closed, its heavy latch unmoved.
Slowly, I turned my head to the shadowed window.
The iron bars that guarded the narrow archway began to groan, the metal protesting under pressure that I knew no mortal hand could exert. They bent outwards, the gaps widening just enough for something dark and inky to slip through.
The bubbling mass dropped to the stone, a heaving, ink-slicked ball. It hissed, slithering toward the center of the room before the darkness pulsed. Odd shapes began to push through the murk—the knobs of a spine, the powerful arc of a neck, and finally, limbs unfurling from the writhing center. Where a gap had remained between the chest and shoulders, his head emerged.
I gasped and reached blindly for the wool blanket and dragged it over myself.
If I could not see it, perhaps it was not real.
But as a guttural growl vibrated through the floorboards, I knew it was no shield at all.
Within a heartbeat, the blanket was ripped from my grasp. It flew across the chamber and collapsed at his feet. The shadows recoiled, climbing his body in slender streams and vanishing beneath the ink on his skin.
Talon’s gaze moved over me slowly. “I went to your home.”
Moonlight cut across his face, catching along the hard planes of his cheekbones and the severe line of his mouth.
“You should not be here,” I said, swinging my legs off the mattress. My feet hit the stone floor, the chill of it biting into my soles. “If Keeper Sora finds you—”
“You were not there,” he cut me off.
“So you thought breaking through iron was the appropriate response?”
His answering growl rolled through the room. “Come here, Kaelia.”
“No,” I snapped. “You do not get to crawl through windows like some nightmare and demand things of me.”
That cruel smirk tugged at his mouth as he prowled forward. “You did not call me a nightmare when you were writhing beneath me tonight.”