Page 24 of Stalked By Seduction and Shadows

The wind was biting against my skin and crushing against my eardrums. All I could do was grip tight, feel Adair’s strong arms around me, and trust that Sheela knew what the hell she was doing. My terror peaked as we finally reached our highest altitude, and Sheela’s wings stretched out as we gently coasted, no longer climbing. Then the fear began to loosen, allowing the other, equally powerful emotion to peek through the haze.

Delirious, intoxicating excitement. I was flying.

All my lonely nights spent staring up at the sky came rushing forward, and it felt like fate had finally scooped me up from the ground and given me my long-coveted wings.

For a moment, I forgot what had brought me here, weaving through the clouds. The pain, the loss, and the disappointment. Even Sheela and Adair faded away, and it was just me and the rushing wind. Me and the infinite sky. Me and the unknowable stars. I was blooming, burning, bursting—a streak of celestial splendor against the deep, dark night.

It was as though I’d cheated my own nature reaching this high, defiantly soaring above the earth, one wrong move away from the most gruesome death and grinning, anyway.

A low vibration hummed against my back, as if Adair were laughing.

At first, I thought it was going to be awkward to lean up against a stranger’s torso with their arms wrapped around me for hours. Strangely, it wasn’t at all. We sat in an easy silence.

We’d have had to scream at the top of our lungs to hear each other, but I wasn’t sure either of us would’ve said a word, regardless.

When we dipped below the clouds and I caught glimpses of Valentin, I marveled at how vast it truly was. An endless canvas of wild and untamed land, intermixed with the symmetrical patches of tiny villages and more populous towns. Our island was beautiful, rich with magick and the gods’ splendor, a great deal of it untouched, uncultivated, and free.

Here in the clouds, all I knew was freedom. At this height and this speed, there was no other way to be but achingly, beautifully untethered.

The sun fell early, beholden to autumn’s call for darkness and introspection. I was bathed in the sunset’s brilliance, clinging to its pink, purple, and orange hues for warmth as I shivered under my many layers. My toes had long gone numb, but I couldn’t find a reason to care about bodily discomforts when I was caught in Helia’s sublime display.

And when Aristelle finally came into view, sparkling against the night just as Adair had promised, I’d never seen anything so beautiful. My heart clenched and chills that had nothing to do with the frigid air erupted across my body. I lost my ability to breathe, to think, to put words to the feeling that had enraptured my every nerve.

It was as though I’d fallen under a spell, caught in a beam of undeniable magnetism that gripped my body and pulled. Sheela must’ve felt the pull too, because soon she was dipping forward, beginning her descent.

It was as though I’d entered the cosmos, caught between a field of celestial bodies above and the twinkling expanse of stars below.

Not stars—lights—of houses and temples, shops and taverns, streetlamps, and magick. I had no words for the city that manifested before us. The domed buildings made of onyx and quartz; the winding cobblestone streets; the towers that crept into the sky; the breathtaking sculptures of the gods that looked too enormous to have been built by hand; the simple but beautiful architecture of the rows of bright, stone homes and buildings that twisted up and down steep hills.

It didn’t look like a city that belonged to mortals or vampires. We were unworthy. This was a city for gods.

And yet, we dove lower, and the city grew impossibly big the closer we got to the ground. We hurdled right for this place that had already stolen my heart, despite everything I knew, every word of warning and hateful rant. It didn’t matter that Aristelle was the city of vampires, or that slave traders had taken my sister here, or that this was the only place in Valentin that Jaxon and I had never planned to venture.

I was caught in this beautiful and deadly city’s trap. I was Aristelle’s stunned and captivated prey, a willing sacrifice on her altar of sublimity.

13

RUNE

When I returned to the castle, I did not speak a word to anyone who approached me. Not to the stable workers who took Millie, my shadowbird. Not to the attendants who offered to wash my ruined clothes, cook me a meal, or bring me fresh blood in a body or a chalice. I ordered everyone away, even Mason, who stood leaning back beside my chambers with a scowl and curious eyes.

“I’m not to be bothered,” I said, and I left no room in my voice or my features for banter or backtalk.

Mason knew me well enough to know when I couldn’t be pushed—when solitude was the only thing I could tolerate and I’d rip the throats out of anyone who dared to disturb me from my withdrawal.

She nodded once and pushed off the wall, tucking all the words she’d been rehearsing away for when I’d reemerged.

In my rooms with the door closed behind me, I finally allowed myself to think of her. Little Flame. Scarlett. The sweet smell of her skin, the sinful scent of her blood and fear, both equally tempting. When I thought of how close she’d come to being taken by slave traders, the image of those old drunks ripping open her dress infected my mind. My tattoos throbbed, my rage threatening to spill out and destroy everything in a mile radius, reduce it all to ash with my fury.

Sadie would’ve been appalled. Everything she’d ever taught me thrown to the wind, all for this human woman with eyes that made me feel like I was burning just as brightly as she did. I wondered what Sadie would think of Scarlett.

The thought of them being in the same room horrified me as much as it intrigued me.

Scarlett entering my world in any capacity was an appalling vision. Luckily, she seemed nothing but disinterested in Aristelle when she spoke to the scouts. That wasn’t where she and her friend were headed, thank the gods.

She was nothing but a weakness, a demented obsession that would ruin me. There was no room for a lapse in control or focus in my world, where enemies lurked in every dark corner. I had half a mind to believe she was an enemy herself. I couldn’t conjure a single other logical explanation for my current state of madness. Perhaps I’d been alive too long, and I was beginning to lose it.

None of this could ever be discovered by either my born enemies or my clan of turned subordinates, not even Mason. Especially not Mason.

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