Page 43 of Shadowkissed

20

DANTE

The bed’s cold when I wake up. And she’s not in it.

My eyes snap open, heart jackknifing in my chest, lungs locking up like I’ve just been dropped into deep water. I sit up too fast, pain blooming where bruises haven’t fully faded, but I barely feel it.

“Liora,” I breathe.

The room’s still dark, early-morning light bleeding pale through the blinds. My hands are already pushing back the sheets, ready to shift, to run to find her..

I thought we were past this. I thought last night meant?—

Then I see her.

She’s curled up in the window seat, knees drawn to her chest, wrapped in a blanket that hangs off one shoulder. The moonlight catches her hair, spilling silver over obsidian strands. She looks ethereal. Haunted. Like something torn from a myth written in blood and starlight.

Relief hits me so hard I almost drop to my knees.

She didn’t run. She’s still herewith me.

I exhale slowly, scrubbing a hand over my face, then rise and move toward her. Quiet. Slow. Like if I come on too fast, she’ll vanish into mist again.

She doesn’t look at me as I sit on the edge of the seat beside her. Her eyes are fixed out the window, watching the sky like it’s going to tear open.

Maybe it is.

“You always stare out like that?” I ask softly, voice gravel from sleep and worry. “Or is that just a fae thing?”

She huffs under her breath. Not quite a laugh. But close.

“I like knowing the sky’s still there,” she murmurs. “That it hasn’t cracked open yet.”

Yet.

That word makes my gut twist. She’s not wrong.

The Veil’s thin now. Thinner than I’ve ever felt it. Even the mundane world’s noticing—weather shifting without reason, people dreaming things they shouldn’t, magic bleeding into places it hasn’t touched in centuries. ANd them realizing that their nightmares are real, now just unicorns and shifters, but the things that go bump in the night.

And all of it is tied toher.Tous.

I study her in the dim light—those runes tracing her arms like whispered threats and forgotten songs, the curl of her body against the glass, the way her shadows flicker faintly beneath the hem of the blanket, like they’re anxious too.

She’s beautiful in that terrifying, otherworldly way. Like a blade made of moonlight. Something too dangerous to touch but impossible to look away from.

“You thought I ran, didn’t you?” she asks suddenly, voice quiet.

I swallow. “Yeah.”

“I almost did.”

I nod. “I know.”

Silence stretches between us again.

Then she speaks, soft but steady. “The witches told me something the night I disappeared. What they’re preparing for.”

She turns to me now, and the look in her eyes?—

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