Chapter 87 THE GODDESS STIRS
When I finally lay her back against the stone, the moonlight paints her like a blessing and a curse. I kiss her slowly, deeply, until the world fades and there is nothing but the sound of her breathing and my name on her lips.
I trace slow kisses from her lips down to her clit. She grabs my head in an instant, driving my face deep between her thighs. I can feel the warmth. I can taste her sweet essence.
The longing between us was no longer mistakable.
My fingers find their way into the warmth of her soft walls leaving her gasping in disbelief and pleasure. My tongue traces around her left nipple as my fingers go in and with so much precision and rhythm. I slid my fingers in and out. She becomes too wet. Too slippery. Her yearning is undeniable now. She reaches for my zipper and unzips my pants.
Everything else that happened afterwards was too ecstatic to remember. All I remember was how slippery Selene was and it felt like I was in a different world while going in and out. We both reach climax and I drop right beside her.
I hold her afterward, her head on my chest, my arms locked around her as if I can physically keep fate from touching her.
“I love you,” she whispers.
The words break me open.
“I love you,” I answer. “More than the world. More than prophecy.”
She shifts slightly, her hand resting over my heart.
“Then listen to me,” she murmurs. “If it comes down to it, do not choose the world. Choose me.”
The moon flickers violently overhead.
A sharp pulse of pain tears through her body. She gasps, clutching her chest as silver light flares beneath her skin.
I sit up instantly, heart slamming.
“Selene.”
Her eyes widen.
The third bleeding has begun.
SELENE'S POV
All the times I longed for Damien was worth the wait. I had never felt such intense love making. It was more than sex to me. I could feel our bodies being in sync.
Once we were done I needed seconds. I needed to go again. To make up for all these months of fantasizing about this day.
But the goddess had other plans. I felt a pulse of pain tear through my body.
By the time I became myself again, I was back in my chamber.
The mirror has never frightened me before.
It has always been what it is now: glass and silver, polished smooth, fixed obediently to the stone wall of my chamber. A thing meant only to reflect, never to speak. Never to wait.
But tonight, it waits.
I feel it the moment I step inside, before the door has even closed behind me. The air is heavier here, charged in a way that prickles along my skin and settles at the base of my throat. Moonlight spills through the narrow window in a pale ribbon, pooling at my feet, catching on the edges of furniture, sliding up the surface of the mirror like a slow, deliberate touch.
I cannot sleep.
My body is too restless, my thoughts too sharp, my power humming beneath my skin like something caged and furious. Every breath feels too shallow, every heartbeat too loud. It is as though I am stretched too tightly over something vast and unstable, one wrong movement away from tearing apart.
The mirror gleams softly.
I tell myself it is nothing. But just exhaustion and fear. The lingering echo of the Goddess’s voice threading itself through my thoughts until I can no longer tell where she ends and I begin.
Still, my feet carry me forward.
Each step feels heavier than the last.
I stop an arm’s length away and lift my eyes.
My reflection stares back.
Silver hair loose around my shoulders, eyes ringed with shadows I cannot hide, Moonfire pulsing faintly beneath the skin along my collarbone like a living vein of light. I look thinner than I remember. Sharper. As if something has been carving pieces away from me without my noticing.
I inhale.
My reflection exhales.
A heartbeat later my pulse stutters violently.
A cold sensation slides down my spine, slow and intimate, like a fingertip tracing bone. My hands tremble as I lift them, watching with sick fascination as the woman in the mirror mirrors me a fraction of a second too slowly, as if she is deciding whether to obey.
“No,” I whisper. “Not this.”
The word barely leaves my mouth before her lips curve upward.
I do not smile.
My reflection does.
The smile is measured, knowing and predatory in its calm.
“Goddess,” I breathe, dread coiling tight and sharp in my stomach. “Stop this. Please. Stop.”
The figure in the mirror tilts her head, the movement fluid, graceful, wrong in a way that makes my skin crawl. Her hair shifts as though suspended in water. As though gravity has forgotten her.
Then her eyes ignite.
Brilliant silver floods the glass, blinding and cold, a light that does not belong to anything mortal. The room vibrates, a low thrumming hum rippling through stone and air alike, and pain detonates in my chest.
I gasp, clutching at the edge of the table beside me as fire tears along my ribs, radiating outward from my mark in sharp, punishing waves. The world blurs. My knees threaten to give way.
My reflection leans closer.
I do not move.
Her mouth shapes words slowly, deliberately, as though savoring each one.
“He will end you.”
The sentence lands like a blade driven straight through my lungs.
I stare at her, breath shallow, every muscle locked in place. “No,” I whisper, the word thin and shaking. “No. Damien would never. He would never—”
Her laughter is soft and musical, a sound that does not reach her eyes. It rings like crystal cracking under pressure.
The silver in her gaze brightens, spilling light across the floor, climbing the walls, washing the room in something ancient and merciless.
“Shadow ends Flame,” she croons.
My legs buckle.
I stagger backward until my spine collides with the stone wall, the impact knocking the air from my chest. My heart pounds wildly, each beat sharp with terror and disbelief.