Chapter Three- A Room full of shadows
944 Words
Lyra
The guard shoves open a heavy iron door and gestures me inside.
“Your chamber,” he mutters.
Chamber?
I step forward cautiously, expecting a dungeon or a cell.
What I find instead steals my breath.
It’s… beautiful.
Dark, yes, but beautifully so—obsidian walls veined with silver, a canopy bed draped in soft shadow-silk, violet lanterns floating midair like captured stars. The air hums with gentle magic, cool and clean.
It's not a cell at all.
A room fit for someone important.
But I’m not fooled.
Gilded cage or iron cage—it’s still a cage.
The door slams behind me.
I exhale shakily and press my back to the wall. The encounter replaying in my mind: the shadows licking my arm, the prince’s voice wrapping around me like velvet and blade, the way his magic felt mine.
Sunfire flares under my ribs.
I clench my fists. “Not now,” I whisper. “Be quiet.”
It doesn’t obey.
It pulses with agitation, almost… drawn. Drawn to the Keep. Drawn to him.
That scares me more than anything else.
I pace the room, my thoughts spiraling:
He sensed me. He recognized what I am.
But he didn’t expose me.
Why?
A knock rattles the door.
I freeze. “Who is it?”
“It’s me,” a low voice answers—smooth, dark, unmistakable.
Kael.
My stomach drops. “Go away.”
The door opens anyway.
He steps inside without asking permission. Of course he does. Princes don’t ask. Especially not princes made of shadows.
He closes the door behind him with deliberate calm.
“So,” he says softly, “you’re comfortable?”
“Let me go.” My voice is steady, shockingly so.
“No.”
He leans against the wall across from me, arms crossed, eyes glowing faintly. He watches me like a puzzle he’s half-solved and half-obsessed with.
“You should be thanking me,” he adds.
“For what?” I demand.
“For keeping you alive.”
My breath catches.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Kael’s jaw ticks. “If any other mage had felt what I felt from you at the gate, you’d be dead.”
He steps closer.
“Sunfire is outlawed here. And in your kingdom too, is it not?”
Ice floods my veins. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Lie,” Kael says immediately.
I flinch.
He’s reading me again—through his magic, through my pulse, through my fear.
I turn away, hugging my arms. “Stop doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Seeing through me.”
His footsteps approach. Slow. Controlled. Like a predator, making sure not to spook the prey… yet.
He stops right behind me.
“You could make this easier,” he murmurs near my ear. “Just tell me what you are.”
I swallow hard. His presence burns at my back—cold shadow meeting buried flame.
“I’m nothing,” I whisper.
His voice drops, dangerously soft. “But you burn.”
I spin around, forcing space between us. “Why do you care what I am?”
Kael studies me for a long moment. His eyes are so intense that I feel stripped bare.
“Because the shadows know your name,” he finally says.
The room chills.
“What does that mean?” I whisper.
“It means you did not walk into my kingdom by accident.” His gaze hardens. “The moment you crossed the border, my magic pulled toward you. That has never happened before.”
A pulse of fear rocks through me.
Or is it something else? Something warmer? More dangerous?
Kael steps closer again, lowering his voice.
“I felt you,” he says. “Long before I saw you.”
My breath stutters.
His confession is intimate. Too intimate.
I back away, but he catches my wrist—not roughly - but firmly.
The shadows around his fingers flicker.
And Sunfire leaps inside me, hot and wild.
We both inhale sharply.
A shock ripples between us—the same violent pull as before, but stronger, like our magic recognizes each other even though we don’t.
Kael’s eyes widen with something like awe… and hunger.
“Again,” he whispers. “It reacts to mine.”
I yank my hand away. “Don’t touch me.”
His jaw tightens, not with anger—with restraint.
“You don’t understand what you carry,” he says.
“You don’t understand who I am,” I shoot back.
“I will,” he replies. “Even if I have to break every lie you’ve ever told.”
My pulse thunders.
He studied me one last time, voice low, edged with threat and curiosity intertwined.
“Rest,” he says. “Tomorrow, we begin.”
“Begin what?”
“Unraveling you.”
He leaves without another word.
The door clicks shut.
And for a long moment, I can’t breathe.
Because the truth is simple and horrifying:
Kael Draven is supposed to be the monster I kill.
But he looks at me like I’m the only light he’s seen in years.
And the shadows whisper that he’s not lying.
I don’t like losing control.
My entire life has been built on discipline—mastering the shadows, suppressing emotion, ruling fear instead of bowing to it.
But that girl…
The moment I touched her skin, even briefly, my magic responded like it had found something it had been starving for.
Light.
Real light.
Forbidden, dangerous, extinct—and yet living in her bones like a secret fire.
She presses...
- Writer
