Chapter 3
743 Words
No one moved.
Not the creatures.
Not the city.
Not me.
Rain hung suspended in the air like shattered glass. The streetlights remained dark. Even the distant sirens had become a low, frozen hum.
And everyone was kneeling.
The creatures with silver eyes pressed their foreheads to the pavement.
The man who called himself Ronan Vale knelt beside me, one fist planted against the wet concrete, his head bowed.
My heart hammered.
At least, I thought it did.
I couldn't hear it.
I couldn't hear anything except the sound of my own breathing and another sound beneath it.
A whisper.
Thousands of whispers.
A thousand voices speaking in a language I didn't know and somehow understood.
Mine.
The word echoed through my head.
Mine.
The street.
The night.
The creatures.
The city.
No.
Not mine.
The thought horrified me enough that the world snapped.
Sound exploded back into existence.
Rain crashed down.
Car alarms blared in the distance.
I staggered backward.
The creatures screamed.
Not in pain.
In terror.
They scattered into the darkness so quickly it looked as though the night itself had swallowed them.
Within seconds, they were gone.
Leaving only me.
And Ronan.
Still kneeling.
"What the hell just happened?" My voice cracked.
Ronan slowly lifted his head.
The humor was gone from his face.
So was the arrogance.
What remained was something much worse.
Reverence.
"That's impossible," he whispered.
"I asked you a question."
He rose to his feet with a fluid motion that somehow made me more nervous than when he'd been kneeling.
"No one has done that in over a thousand years."
"I don't know what I did!"
He studied me.
And for the first time, I had the terrifying feeling that he wasn't looking at me.
He was looking at something behind me.
Something inside me.
The air changed.
I felt it before I heard it.
The temperature dropped.
The shadows deepened.
Then a voice cut through the rain.
"You shouldn't have awakened her."
The voice wasn't loud.
It didn't have to be.
Every instinct I possessed screamed danger.
Ronan turned.
And smiled.
Not because he was happy.
Because he recognized a worthy opponent.
"Fashionably late as always," he said.
A man stepped out of the darkness.
He was taller than Ronan. Broad-shouldered. Dressed in black. Rain slid off his coat without seeming to touch it.
But it was his eyes that stole my breath.
Gold.
Not brown.
Not hazel.
Gold.
And they were fixed entirely on me.
I knew him.
Not from memory.
From somewhere deeper.
Something ancient inside me stirred.
The man took one step forward.
The concrete beneath his feet cracked.
"Who are you?" I asked.
His expression changed.
Not much.
Just enough for me to see something raw and dangerous beneath the surface.
Pain.
Relief.
Obsession.
"My name is Kael Voss."
The name hit me like a punch to the chest.
I swayed.
For half a second, I saw something that wasn't there.
A throne.
A battlefield.
A man with golden eyes covered in blood, kneeling before me beneath a black moon.
The vision vanished.
I stumbled.
Kael crossed the distance between us before I hit the ground.
One second he was twenty feet away.
The next, his hand was around my wrist.
Warm.
Strong.
Terrifying.
The second he touched me, another shock tore through my body.
Not pain.
Recognition.
His eyes widened.
Mine probably did too.
Because I felt it.
Him.
His anger.
His loneliness.
His grief.
Centuries of it.
And underneath everything else—
Me.
He'd been looking for me.
For a very long time.
Kael released me like he'd been burned.
"No," he said quietly.
Ronan blinked.
"No?"
"No."
Kael's gaze never left mine.
"She's not supposed to be awake yet."
My stomach dropped.
"What does that mean?"
Neither man answered.
The rain grew heavier.
Then a third voice spoke from behind us.
"You two are asking the wrong question."
We turned.
A man stood beneath a flickering streetlight holding a black umbrella.
Perfect suit.
Perfect posture.
Perfect smile.
He looked like he belonged in a boardroom, not a nightmare.
His eyes, however, were ancient.
He regarded me with the calm interest of a man who had finally located something he'd lost centuries ago.
"Because," he said softly, "the question isn't why she awakened."
He smiled.
The expression was beautiful.
And utterly terrifying.
"The question is who woke her."
For the first time all night, Kael Voss looked afraid.
- Writer
