Seris:
The ceiling burned with stars.
I'd summoned them in silence—an illusion, yes, but not false. Nothing that burned this slowly or beautifully could ever be called a lie.
The constellations blinked and shimmered above the bed like dying gods. Each represented a court, a kingdom, a possible move in a war we hadn't yet won. I was meant to study them, deciphering the royal's allegiance, and reading between the lines that Kaelen painted in blood, charm, and theater.
But I couldn't look away from her.
Ariane.
She was pressed into my chest, wrapped in the wreckage of our bodies and breath, her skin still damp from the way I'd taken her like she was air, and I'd been suffocating. Like worship. Like sin.
My hand drifted slowly across the small of her back, mapping her like I once mapped
