Page 105 of Haunted

I was obsessed.

Possessed by her corrupting influence.

She played me well.

Niawen doesn’t react when I release her from my memories. Her face is placid, with dried tears from earlier.

She should feel disgust. She should hate me. Loathe me. Think that I am some perverse individual.

But she had to know.

I wait.

I will wait forever for Niawen.

She is the only one who can free me from my nightmares, stop the cycle of reliving them over and over.

I give them to you to do what you will.

I focus on the woman in my embrace. Her purity. Her beauty. Her softness that she hides behind. She is nothing like the empress. Niawen’s cheek against my chest fills my soul in ways that I can’t describe.

She presses her palm to my chest. My skin warms beneath her. I never want to let her go.

We fit together. This is as we should be.

I will give myself to her.

It will be a beautiful bond. A virtuous bond.

I let go of my tortured past.

Niawen takes a deep breath. I breathe with her.

Push away. Run. Yell. Cry, she tries to convince herself.

Stay with me, I don’t tell her but think to myself. I stroke her hair and memorize all the lines on her face, all the shades in her hair.

She does not run.

I cannot break this peace between us, this knowing that something is about to change.

For a long while, we hold each other. The room seems alive with our energy. Each breath, each pulse of our hearts vibrates into our surroundings, swirling reality into a blissful dream.

I run my fingers along her jawline. “I swear to you, I will never react with you as I did with her, never abuse you as I did with her. Do you believe me?”

“Yes.”

“Do you understand why I showed you?”

She nods.

“Before I open my mind to you, you must know the basis for my thoughts, for the patterns they’re stuck in. I still might think these things. I might think them about you, but I swear—”

“I know. I’m not going to run from you.”

“I wish I could blame my forcefulness on my darkness,” I say, “but that’s an excuse. I own my actions. I know what I became. There’s a hidden animal side to our makeup as emrys, as dragon riders. But we can control it.”

“Perhaps it’s our light that gives us the control,” she says. “As a Dark Emrys, the empress didn’t have light. She triggered, even amplified, your darkness. You’ll be safe with me, Caedryn. I know it.”

---