The Gilded Wolves

he wondered whether he was beginning to lose his mind. Impossibly, he thought he could smell Laila. Sugar in the air. A faint aroma of rosewater. She was haunting him.

This was what a kiss that meant nothing supposedly felt like. As if he could not touch her enough, taste her enough, as if this movement alone would leave his body riddled as an addict’s.

Séverin’s hands gripped her waist, as if she were an anchor. As if he were drowning. And maybe he was.

He remembered how he reached for her instead of Tristan, how he shielded her against one he’d sworn to protect.

“Lust is safer than love, but both can ruin you.”

Lust taught him that a broken heart made a fine weapon, for its pieces were exceptionally sharp.

Already, he walked through the halls of L’Eden as if he had seen enough ghosts for a lifetime. Why give him demons to see too?

Sometimes she wondered if grief could break someone, for all of them bore fractures, new hollows.

For the song of her heartbeats, he’d never wash Tristan’s blood from his hands.

Without them by his side, they’d never find the Fallen House. And with them at his side, they walked with death ever at their shadow.