Page 94 of Aïdes the Unseen
The only thing I felt, saw, or heard was Graven and when he drove me to a shaking orgasm with his tongue, he thrust into me again. We rode the tempest, or at least I rodehim, until we seemed almost one and then we would collapse, clinging to each other to breathe.
Only to start all over again.
Chapter
Eighteen
IRINA
Ididn’t remember falling asleep.
Only the way his body curled around mine after. The way his breath stroked over the back of my neck like an old vow. The warmth that spread from skin to skin, bone to bone—too much to hold, too much to name.
And then—nothing.
Not sleep. Not rest.
A descent.
I was dreaming. At least, I thought I was. Maybe I was remembering.
It could be both.
But the dream wasn’t just one. It was many, layered like sediment and veined like a ruined cathedral window.
The world blurred around the edges.
In one breath, I was on a marble terrace beneath a bruised Italian sky. My hands were stained with ink, my gown cinched too tight. I was Siena-born, a scholar’s daughter, young, brilliant, bold. Everyone said so. They call meLivia. There’s aletter burning in my pocket—one I’ll never send. It began,My lord of silence, I remember you again.
In the next breath, the ink was blood. The terrace was a battlefield, a Roman one, or older. My name wasKleonike. I wore armor, and my brother was at my back, dying. I don’t weep. I can’t. I sing instead, an old lullaby our mother taught us. The mother who begged me not to go.
Another turn.
I wasÉlise.
Paris. 1795.
Rain.
Running.
Always running.
The blood at my side was real this time. I clutched a book; no, it was a mirror. A face flickered in its surface, not mine, not quite. It was someone older. Someone brighter. Someone who didn’t belong in my century.
I ducked into a doorway, but the door never opened. I know it won’t. It never did. Behind me, the footsteps approach. No, they weren’t footsteps or at least notjustfootsteps. Something else. Something that shouldn’t be here.
Turning to flee, I didn’t even make it a step before I halted.Hewas there.
Not Graven.
Not Ares.
Not anyone I knew.
He didn’t speak, not a single word. But he watched. Stared.
The air warped around him like light falling into a black star.
