Page 68 of A Fate Everlasting

He looked at me differently now, like I was something fragile he’d die to protect. Maybe I was. But I didn’t need saving, I needed to feel real again. To feel like I was alive, not breaking apart. I just wanted to feel anything but the fear pounding in my veins.

His lips hovered just above mine, a breath away. His lids were half-lowered with want. The want to save me, the want tohaveme. In the sea of reflections, mine were too. I should have hated him with everything in my being. He was a Daemon. A murderer. But here, he wasn’t any of those things. He was warmth, gravity, safety.

I moved first, tangling my hands around his neck and pressing my lips to his. I felt the bite of his teeth, then warmth. It was everywhere, in the space between us, in the way his breath tangled with mine, in the unbearable slowness of it all.I wanted more. Needed more.His kisses grew more frantic, moredesperate. I met them with equal desire, my neck arching as they shifted to my jaw and my neck.

The ballroom beyond the doors no longer existed. The world had melted into silence, into the space between us. The only thing that mattered was the press of Dorian’s body against mine, the heat radiating between us like a force of gravity neither of us could resist. If he sank his teeth into my neck again, I might have begged for more.

He pulled away, just out of reach, keeping me suspended in the ache of almost. I moved to shadow him, but winced. Pain searedeverywhere, burning at my chest, my stomach, my hip.

“You need a medic,” Dorian hissed, lifting me easily. “Again.”

“I’m fine.” It was a lie. My vision was fading, blurring in and out of focus as I lolled against his shoulder. His footsteps echoed down the corridor as he ran, the sharp turns sending searing pain through me.

“Quick,” he called as we reached the medical suite. I sunk my head into his chest. “She needs another tonic. Maybe stitches.” He set me down on a bed and I groaned in protest. A bitter tonic spilled down my throat, and I felt only tugging as my wounds were stitched up.

When the medic was done, I was woozy but stable. “Thank you,” I uttered.

I shifted against the pillow, trying to sit up, but pain flared through my side. Dorian was beside the bed before I could blink. “Don’t,” he said sharply. His next words were gentler. “You’re still healing.”

I studied him. His lips were still parted like he hadn’t meant to speak. He looked…shaken.

“What?” I asked.

He opened his mouth. Closed it. For a moment, I thought he was going to say it, whatever impossible thing was clawing itsway up his throat, but his jaw clenched shut. “This was a mistake.”

He strode out of the room, letting the door slam shut behind him. I stared at the place he’d been like an echo of him remained.

But maybe he wasn’t talking about the kiss. Maybe he meant me.

32

The sound came screeching in the night. The iron groaned, shuddering as though unwilling, bending like something alive. It was hesitating, like it knew. Something that was never meant to enter this world had arrived.

I stumbled out of the medical suite. The music from the ballroom had halted, not in a gradual fade or with an elegant close but in a single jarring and discordant screech. The air shifted and something unseen, something felt more than heard, rippled through the stone beneath my feet. I didn’t stop moving. I couldn’t. I rounded the final corner, the ballroom doors looming ahead, thrown wide.

It was pandemonium. Silks and jewels blurred as students rushed the exits, gowns snagging on marble, chairs overturned. A goblet shattered near my feet, golden wine and burning ether mingling sickeningly in the air.

For a heartbeat, I didn’t understand what was happening. Then, I saw the doors leading out to the courtyard were wide open, the dark night bleeding in.The gates. They were opening.

A quick tug yanked me back.Ruby.I took her wide palegaze as it dragged over me, my ripped dress and my blood-streaked arms.

“Arabella,” she whispered. Her throat bobbed, her expression caught somewhere between horror and resignation. Her eyes tracked the blood on my arms, the torn hem of my gown, the sheen of panic that probably glossed my eyes. For a moment, I saw myself reflected in her frantic expression. “Why are you covered in bloodagain?”

I didn’t have an answer. So instead, I grabbed her hand, and ran. Students were everywhere. Some clung to each other, their whispers frantic. Some stood rigid, frozen, staring at the towering gates as they groaned open.

The air felt thinner. The wind howled through the courtyard, snuffing out the torchlight. The mist pooled unnaturally thick at our feet, curling over the stone. I felt the weight of the other students’ fear, the thick, choking silence as we waited, the collective breath held.

Then they came.

Seven figures, each cloaked in red so dark it swallowed the light and edged with golden embroidery so intricate it seemed to shift with every breath of wind. Their hoods were raised, obscuring their faces, but it didn’t matter how they looked. The Archdaemons presence was palpable.

The first of them stepped forward. Taller than any human should be, his frame was elongated and unnatural beneath his robes. The air around him wavered, like heat rising from scorched earth, distorting his presence.

A low, keening noise shuddered through the courtyard, barely audible, but there was a sound just beyond human hearing, just enough to chill my bones. Beside me, someone gasped, and another muttered a quick prayer.

Hopeless.

The second figure emerged. Herrobe did not touch the ground but hovered just above it, her feet obscured by endless folds of crimson fabric. Her head tilted ever so slightly, and I felt my stomach twist in that fraction of movement.

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