The attic was quiet when I returned, the kind of stillness that settles only after something violent has passed. Dawn light slipped through the small, cracked window, turning the dust in the air into drifting motes of gold.
My hands still shook. My throat ached where Kael’s fingers had pressed, as if his touch had branded itself into the bones beneath my skin. I closed the door behind me and leaned against it, breathing hard. The scent of smoke and silver still clung to my clothes.
I walked to the mirror propped against the wall and looked at myself. My hair was tangled, streaked with thin lines of silver dust. My skin was pale, a faint shimmer lying beneath it, like light beneath thin ice.
But it was the bite mark that held my eyes, the mark he gave me before I went to the library, n
