Chapter 5

Sleep was a country I could not cross.

I lay on the furs still clothed, the filth of the excavation clinging to me like a second skin. The fire had burned low, glowing faintly red now, along with the candles, like a dying heartbeat.

Far off in the castle, some distant, deep part of it, a wolf was howling, weaving nonsensical patterns of sound in the night, and I sat up, my heart pounding in my ears in frantic rhythm. I was tired, but my mind refused to still, spinning through images of golden eyes and a deep laughter that had sounded like both a threat and a surrender.

I had to move, to delude myself into thinking that I still had some fragment of agency.

The chamber revealed more of itself as I paced the limit of my chain.

Shelves bowed under the weight of ancient books, there was a writing desk in one corner, with dried ink pots and black feathers, a suit of armor atood silence in the alcove, its wolf shaped helm watched me with hollow eyes.

Behind the hearth was a tapestry, vast and black, its silver thread and deep red paint depicted a wolf atop a mountain of bones while dying stars rained around it.

But what caught my eye was a faint line of light tracing a small part of the wall beside it.

I pulled at the edge of the fabric, my fingers catching on the rough thread, and the moment I stepped back, it revealed a small space that seemed to be some of sort strange safe.

I should have left it the way it was, but I was a scholar first and a prisoner second, and curiosity had always been a dangerous vice.

I plucked at a scroll, my eyes tracing the neat spiky characters marked on the parchment.

The dying star does not weep for its own light, for it falls in silence, grateful for the dark.

I frowned, my heart skipping a beat, reaching for another scroll as something… wrong, prickled at me in my chest.

I have worn this crown of teeth and shadow for a hundred years, and still, it cuts.

My breath caught in my throat as I stared at the page, the scrolls were his; the Wolf King’s, the monster that had stared at me with a glint of madness in his eyes. He had written poetry, raw lines that were prayers for death.

I was still holding a scroll when I heard footstepsz

He stood in the doorway, shirtless and bare, and the world stilled at the sight of him. I could think of nothing but the slow slide of his tongue over his lower lip as he stepped forward, into the room of firelight and shadows. My breath caught in my throat at the gleam of firelight on his skin, tracing the lines of old burns and slashes and claw marks in some strange tribal markings, words in an ancient language only he could read. My mouth was dry, a strange warmth blooming in my abdomen like some foreign fire, and his body was a strange, beautiful silhouette in front of me, the most exquisite brand of pain the chisel of some sculptor’s hands could make. His eyes were impossibly dark and deep and fathomless as the void, and my skin prickled where he stepped closer, his dark hands folding over his broad chest, just above the old scars, pausing a moment too soon as if he were reaching for something that wasn’t there.

“You are not to touch my things.”

His voice was soft when he finally spoke, and it nearly undid me entirely when he crossed the room to me, his breath ghosting over my shoulder as he spoke.

I barely registered the warning when he plucked the scroll from my fingers, his skin grazing mine as if it were something searingly hot, and I gasped when his fingers grazed my cheekbone, but he did not stop, not when a muscle in his jaw tightened like he was biting back something dark and angry, his nose flaring at the scent of my hair. I swallowed hard, my pulse hammering wildly in my ears.

“I could not sleep,” I murmured, my voice barely more than a whisper, my fingers twitching at my sides. “So I walked around and found this safe. I should not have…”

“No,” he said, something like steel in his voice as he dropped the scroll. “You should not have.”

There was a pause, and my fingers curled into fists at my sides when his eyes left my body to trace my face.

“You burn me,” his voice was rough. “Every fiber of your being is poison to me, and yet I find myself here, unable to step away.”

My knees trembled, I wanted him to close the distance between us, but my bones ached already with the anticipation, my skin prickling where his gaze traced my lips. My heart thundered in my ears, and his bare torso looked impossibly good in the candlelight, the lines of his ribs and hips tracing dark patterns across his stomach, promises of bruises and scars and things that only he was allowed to touch me with. I hated myself in that moment, more than anything in my life, because my body betrayed me and leaned forward of its free will. He obviously saw the movement because his fingers curled up against my cheek as all I could think of was how it would feel to have his lips on mine.

“I have always wanted to die,” his voice was thick with something like pain as his fingertips hovered just above my cheek, the air between us crackling with tension. “Every day for a long time, I have prayed for the Beast to consume me, to end this endless war with myself. And then you touched a relic in a forgotten forest, and everything unraveled.”

“Now, I want to live,” he said quietly, like a secret he could no longer contain. “That is the cruelty you have wrought, you have made me want to live.”

He inhaled deeply before standing up and quietly leaving the room.

The door didn’t close, neither did the ache he left behind stop.