Page 89 of Claimed In Darkness

The world goes still.

That’s when I feel it.

A presence of something wrong, something familiar.

An aroma carried on the wind—rose oil and temple incense.

My breath locks in my throat.

How can I forget that aroma?

I know it better than I know my own fucking curse.

The space shifts.

The shadows move.

She steps into view.

And everything inside me stops.

My body locks, ice and fire colliding under my skin.

I can’t breath, and my muscles seem to spasm.

She is in front of me. Whole and alive.

Aereth.

My Aereth.

The woman I watched die.

The woman my father killed.

She should be rotting in the void. Below the cliffs.

Someone like her should be a ghost, a nightmare, a fucking memory.

But she is here.

Her dark eyes glow with something unnatural, her long hair whipping in the wind, her lips curved into something soft, something cruel.

"Hello, Zephiran," she murmurs.

She makes it sound as if she never left. Like she never fucking died.

It’s as if she didn’t tear my heart out the day she slipped through my fingers and fell into the abyss.

My chest tightens, something cold curling around my heart, something ancient and horrible and hungry.

This is not fucking real.

I swallow hard, forcing my voice out.

"Aereth?"

Her lips curve higher.

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