The same night. Where dreams break skin.
The moon did not rise. It arrived—like a god who no longer asked permission.
It spilled through the window above Jasmine’s bed in thick sheets of silver, catching in the soft waves of her hair, gilding her throat, her collarbone, the curve of one hip slipping from beneath the quilt. Her sleep was not quiet. Not the sleep of peace. It was a sleep stretched thin by the edges of hunger. Of something coming. Something watching.
Her fingers twitched first. A single, slow curl like a secret tightening around her.
Then her breathing shifted—no longer soft and steady, but caught... trembling on a rhythm not her own. She lay there, half-tangled in velvet sheets that remembered the sweat of pleasure, the scent of Elora’s oils and power, her limbs splayed
