(Caelum Ashborne)
He shouldn’t think of the way she’d sounded in the chamber. He did anyway. Not in detail. Not in the explicit heat of the act—he’d run that path raw already and knew where it led. What rose now were flashes.
Her voice. Cracked open. The tiny, helpless noises that had slipped out when she’d tried to swallow them. The way her magic had clutched at his ember without knowing what it reached for.
The way his own body had betrayed him, spilling in the dark to the rhythm of someone else’s hands on her.
Shame crawled under his skin. It felt greasy and hot, an oil slick over the bones of who he was supposed to be. Shadows were meant to watch without wanting. He had crossed that line, and there was no way to uncross it, no matter how straight he held his spine.
He had stood in
