Page 24 of Stolen
His voice is low, rougher now. “In your deepest, darkest dreams you called out for someone to come to save you from loneliness and despair,Myrrin. I answered.”
The wind catches my hair. The sky shifts. The stars seem to pulse faster.
And for some reason I can’t explain, I don’t cry or scream or run.
Not yet.
Nightfall.
It feels familiar.
I don’t know how I know the name, but I do.
This place isn’t Earth.
It isn’t Hell.
It’s somewhere in between.
And I have a feeling I’ve just become a thread in a story much older—and far more dangerous—than any I’ve ever owned.
Chapter5
Alaric
The Eyrie
“I thought you might enjoy this,” I say, gesturing toward the towering library chamber just beyond the arched door.
I watch her greedily as she steps over the threshold—my threshold—with wide eyes and parted lips.
While I’d been surveilling her in the human realm, I noticed the way she lingered in bookstores, the way she read late into the night on her small cellular device.
She sought escape in stories.
Longed for them.
And now I’m giving her an entire library.
“This is incredible,” she breathes, her voice low, reverent.
Her entire posture shifts, softens, like something inside her has uncoiled. She all but shimmers with quiet joy.
“Is this all yours?” she asks, eyes wide with genuine curiosity.
“The Eyrie is my legacy,” I answer, standing a bit straighter. “And everything in it belongs to me.”
I shouldn’t care whether she’s impressed.
But I do.
“Your house has a name?” she says with a grin, and something tightens in my chest.
I clear my throat. “Yes, most places here do.”
She walks farther inside, trailing her fingers along the carved railings and weathered leather spines like she’s touching something holy.
The way she looks at it all makes the air around her glow.
