Page 97 of Aïdes the Unseen
A soft, dry chuckle.“That’s what Élise said. That’s what Selene said. That’s what the girl in Delphi promised when she poured salt into the river to change her fate.”
“You can’t have me!”
“I don’t want to have you.”
Shock ripped through me. That wasn’t the answer I expected.
“I want to remind you.”
“Of what?”
His voice is low.
“That before you belonged to the dark… you were it.”
A gasp caught in my throat as I wrenched from the dark to the light. The sheets were cold and Graven was gone. The curtains were wide open to the slumbering city beyond where the lights glittered against the darkness. Jewels in the cityscape.
I’d dreamed, but about what and who, it didn’t seem tangible. The gossamer strands flew apart before I could fully touch them. Yet, the emotion of the dreams remained a constant.
A choice.
An echo.
A warning.
Rolling onto my side, I ran my hands over the sheets where Graven had been and stared into the dark. I wanted to know where he was, but I was almost afraid to search. What if I made him up? What if that life was the dream? My heart trembled at the thought. Somewhere, beneath my skin, the dream’s unease burrowed deeper.
Or maybe it was clawing its way up. Something ancient and indefinable had begun to stir. I knew, in a way that I couldn’t pretend was just my imagination or fear, that nothing could stop it.
Not now.
Maybe not ever.
Lying back against the pillows, I pulled the silken softness of the sheets to me. The dream still echoed in my bones. Other lives. Fractured selves. They brushed against my skin. Whispered in languages from so long ago I shouldn’t be able to understand their pleas or warnings.
A part of me pitied them, even as their images and feelings slipped through my fingers. Another part? That part hated them. Hated their helplessness. Hated how the tides of time drowned them over and over again.
I wasn’t helpless here or now.
I refused to be. Maybe I didn’t understand it all or believe any of it, but I had no regrets. Not a single damn one.
Graven’s scent still lingered on the sheets. My skin still hummed from where he’d touched me. His every caress touched me like I was sacred, treasured, and his. Each kiss carved something ancient into the hollows of me.
No shame or fear or hesitation invaded my languor. No, I felt triumph. If this cycle truly existed, this cursed wheel of blooming, burning, and being reborn over and over—then let it spin.
Let it tear apart this empire. Let it swallow those gods.
Because this life?Thisversion of me? I wasn’t hiding in the dark or weeping as I ran.
I smiled and rolled onto my back to stare up at the ceiling. My body ached, but it was the good kind. The ache of living, the pain of something tangible. Something hot, golden and wild. Not a dream. Not a memory.
Him.
Graven.
The way his hands shook as he touched my shoulder as though he couldn’t believe I was here. The way he’d whispered my name said it was a secret he was never supposed to say aloud. The way his mouth tasted like absence, and of longing, and want.
It wasn’t just desire.
