Chapter 9: The Echo and the Inferno

LYRA

My bedroom is silent in a manner that's louder than the slamming door. It's screaming in my ears, a shrieking echo of what has just happened… of what I let him do, what I did. I'm leaning against the rough wood, my breath coming in irregular, ragged gasps, and my fingers are at my mouth. They're burning. Actually burning, like his mouth branded me. I can still taste him… pine, night, and something dark and sweet, something that's just Kael… and it's everywhere, sunk into me. I scrub at my mouth with the back of my hand, hard, until the skin burns, but it doesn't help. The heat just spreads, down my throat, into my chest, a slow, throbbing ache that feels like betrayal.

"It meant nothing," I whisper to the vacant room, my voice low, the words a lie even to my own ears. "Just a strategy. Another means of breaking me."

But my body does not care. It's vibrating, alive, remembering the implacable wall of his chest under my hands, the bruising but possessive manner in which his hands grasped my hips, the feel of his tongue taking my mouth… and god, that noise he made, that low, animal growl… it's imprinted in my bones.

"A trick," I repeat, louder, pushing off from the door and pacing like the caged animal that I am. "He's a monster. He's always been a monster." I have to hold on to that, remember… the image of him standing over my father, the frozen gold in his eyes, the smoke, the blood. "He stood there. He watched him die. He let him die. He is a killer."

But a second voice, smooth and lethal at the back of my mind, whispers, Then why did you drop the knife, Lyra?

I freeze, my heart slamming against my ribs. "I didn't," I breathe. "I… I couldn't." The truth is a knife to the gut. I held a knife to his heart. I cut him. And I dropped it. I chose to drop it.

There is a gentle tap at the door. "My lady? Your breakfast."

It is Elara. I take a sharp, shaking breath and try to grapple my face into something solid, something that isn't made up of screaming and fire. "Come in, Elara."

She comes in with the tray, and her eyes find me at once. She takes in everything… the wild knot of my hair, the panicked aura surrounding me, the fact that I'm all but shaking.

"My lady? Are you ill? You look… distraught."

I force a laugh. It comes out thin and shrill. "I'm fine. Just… the Alpha enjoys his little games, doesn't he? A twisted kind of entertainment." I turn away and fiddle with the food on the tray, my hands shaking so hard I nearly knock over a cup.

“The Alpha does nothing without reason, my lady," Elara says warily. "Even his… games have purpose. They are rarely as simple as they seem."

I stiffen, my back to her. The words brush against something tender. "And what, exactly, is the purpose of this humiliation, Elara?" I snap, spinning around, fury rushing in like armor. "To remind me of my place? To break what's left of my defiance?”

She holds my gaze, unflappable, and within her eyes is a spark… not of terror, but of understanding. "Humiliation, my lady? Or perhaps… a test?"

A test. The resonance of his words, his actions with the knife. I sneer, harsh, hiding the manner in which my stomach turns. "A test of what? How much I can endure? How nicely I can swallow his filth?"

A test of your strength," she says, her own voice lowering, almost secretive. "Of your will. Of what truly lies beneath the anger." She moves a step nearer. "He does not try to break what he finds unworthy of his focus, my lady. And your attention… it is fiercely pursued."

My mouth goes dry. A test of my will? The thought appalls me, since it implies he finds something in me… something besides a trophy or a pawn to manipulate. And the way he was watching me, the heat in those gold eyes… it wasn't to destroy me. It was to… behold me.

"He is a predator," I whisper, the fight drained from my voice. "He preys upon what he wants."

"And what he wants," Elara says, her eyes shrewd, "he is generally drawn to, almost irresistibly. Even when it's dangerous. Especially when it's dangerous." She moves to leave. "I'll leave you to your dinner, my lady."

"Elara," I call out, stopping her at the door. She faces me again. I need to ask. I need to know. "Does he… always get what he wants?"

She doesn't smile, doesn't soften. Her answer is bare, almost like a judgment. "Not always. But he never gives up."

The door shuts, and I'm alone again. The silence now is heavier. I fall into a seat, poking blindly at the food. My mind is a whirlwind, replaying his hands, his mouth, the crushing weight of his body holding me against the wall, the whirling heat, the fireworks behind my eyelids when he kissed me… really kissed me… and I didn't fight. My body arched into him, a traitor to my own ruin, willingly sucked in.

“Inferno," I whisper, remembering what he called it. He was right. It was. It still is.

I touch my swollen lips, heat rushing into my cheeks again. He kissed my rage and hungered for it… fed from it… and left me with this… this pulsing, confusing need. I try to bring my father's face to mind, summon the hate I've lived on, but the image is distorted, pushed out by the vivid memory of Kael's eyes darkening with desire… for me.

"He's a liar. A manipulator," I tell the room, but the words are empty now.

That traitorous voice comes back, louder, clearer. Did he break you, Lyra? Or did you yield in another way?

"Enough!" I snarl, slamming my fist onto the table so hard the dishes tremble. "I will not think of him. I will not feel this."

But I do. I feel it everywhere. The ghost of his touch blazes on my skin. The memory of that kiss is a steady, low ache between my legs… heat gathering and spreading, shameful and undeniable. He is the enemy, the man who allowed my family to die, and yet my body betrays me with every wild heartbeat, hungering for the very thing that ought to ruin me.

I walk towards the window and catch my reflection in the glass. I barely know the woman staring back… eyes shadowed, lips bruised as though someone's been kissing them for hours. The scar on my cheekbone cuts through the facade of calm, clean and brutal. That scar has forever been a reminder of what's broken in me… but now something else pulses beneath it. Something alive.

There's a heat under my skin… his heat… like he branded me from the inside out. I don't know if that makes me weak or newborn.

My eyes land on the obsidian dagger resting exactly where I'd placed it. The knife that would've murdered him. The knife he placed in my hand. I move across the space, drawn to it as though it still hums with the quiet of his voice. My hand hesitates over the hilt, close enough to feel the chill of the metal without touching it.

"He gave me his life," I whisper to the woman in the mirror. "And then took something else instead."

My fingers touch the blade and a shock travels up my arm… memory, adrenaline, something darker. That dagger is more than a threat or a token. It is a confession. His, and mine. Proof of how real that moment was… how much of me I revealed when I did not walk away.

I pull my hand away and clamp it against my heart as though I can contain the throbbing within. What we have going on isn't a game, no matter how much I try to make it so. It's a pulse. A crash. Whenever we're close the air sizzles like something is going to combust.

And the worst part. the part I cannot say out loud. is that some dark, primal part of me does not want to extinguish it. It hungers for the flames. Wants to let it incinerate everything. Wants to burn, even if it kills me.