The air shifted.
As though the night itself had drawn breath.
Elena froze. Her palm stayed pressed to the shimmering barrier Lucus had raised, a thin gold pane humming under her touch. The ruined hall around them felt smaller with every heartbeat—arched ceiling cracked like old bone, slabs of stone leaning inward, dust hanging in the air like pale ash. Lysoria's sea-bite threaded through the cold, salt and damp and the faint iron tang of things left to rust.
From the seam of darkness—something stirred.
Slow. Deliberate. Almost feline.
And then he stepped free.
A silhouette becoming man.
Moonlight carved his jaw, kissed the sharp line of cheekbone, and slid across a silver ring at his hand. Shadows curled at his boots like obedient hounds, licking outward, claiming the floor as if the stone itself remembered him.
His voice followed, velvet smoke with weight enough to steal breath.
"Well," he murmured, eyes glittering like fractured glass,
"so this is where daylight hides his pretty little treasure."
Her chest seized.
She had thought she was ready—after the whisper in the market, after the shadow that skimmed her dreams and left them humming. But Kael—man of the night—was no dream. He was a storm. Magnetic. Intimate in his danger, as if peril leaned close and breathed against her ear.
Her wrist seared.
The sigil beneath her skin pounded, an alien drum against her veins. She bit her lip, pressing down, as if pressure could pin the pain. It only throbbed harder.
Answering to him.
Lucus moved. Light coiled in his palm, and the barrier rippled—gold washing the air in widening rings. He set himself squarely between them, every line taut.
"You shouldn't be here," he said, low and unshakable. "Leave."
Kael tilted his head, unbothered, a cat savoring a trapped sparrow.
"Leave? When I've just found what belongs to me?"
His gaze slipped past Lucus and struck true.
"Lena."
Her breath hitched.
That name—Lucus's, always warm, always trusted—twisted darker in Kael's mouth. Possessive, the way a shadow could claim a flame it refused to let die.
Her knees wavered. Fear tangled with something sharper.
Lucus reached for her—paused a breath from contact. Asking.
She nodded.
His hand closed around hers, firm and sure. Warmth surged up her arm like sun. Anchor. Oath. The tremor in her chest found a rhythm to follow.
"You're safe with me," he murmured.
The barrier's glow caught in his eyes, a pale aureole around a promise.
Kael's laugh unfurled, low and edged.
"Safe?" He prowled nearer. Each step sent a whisper through the gold pane.
"Safe is a cage. Do you think she was born to be locked away? She doesn't need protection—she needs to breathe."
Lucus squared his shoulders, voice steady as steel.
"And you would give her breath only to steal it back. I know what you are."
"Do you?" Kael leaned in until the barrier's light split his face—half fire, half night.
"Tell me, daylight's pretty shield… does your light always tremble when I breathe against it?"
The taunt slid beneath her skin like a hand. Heat rose in Elena's throat. She shouldn't hear this. Shouldn't feel strung between them like a bell waiting to be struck.
The barrier flickered.
Not from weakness.
From tension—Kael's words planted like iron seeds.
Lucus drew a slow breath and steadied the glow. Kael smiled anyway, victory without lifting a blade.
Her wrist blazed hotter. The mark clawed at her pulse.
Lucus's warmth.
Kael's pull.
Her strength faltered, breath breaking on a sharp edge.
Kael's gaze softened—not safer, just layered.
"You feel it, Lena. The rhythm in your veins. The call you cannot silence. Daylight can cradle you all he wants. But the night already knows your heart."
Her breaths came uneven. The truth of it frightened her more than his shadows.
Lucus tugged her close, his body a barricade of heat and scent—clean citrus and morning.
"You don't get to claim her," he said, fury edging calm. "Not now. Not ever."
Kael's eyes glinted, his mouth curving in a smile—half daring, half promise.
"Not ever? We'll see."
The gold pane hummed harder, straining between glow and gloom. The hall itself leaned in and listened—stone sweating cold, pillars groaning, dust spiraling like white ash in torchless air.
And Elena—
She stood in the center of it.
Safe and steady.
Dangerous and irresistible.
Her fingers tightened on Lucus's. The truth bucked hard in her chest: some part of her did not want to resist at all.
Silence went heavy again, the kind that pressed on eardrums. A single drop of water slipped from a crack overhead and struck the floor like a tick of a clock.
Kael broke it.
"Do you always guard her this tightly, daylight? Or do you fear what she'll choose when the cage door swings open?"
Lucus didn't flinch.
Broad stance, unyielding line.
"My duty is to protect her," he returned, strain edging his voice. "Not to indulge your provocations."
Kael's chuckle lingered like incense smoke.
"Provocations? You stand here pretending she belongs only to you." His eyes tracked back to Elena, unhurried and unkind.
"But we both feel it. The night has already claimed her veins."
Claimed.
The word landed like iron in her gut.
Elena's hand flew to her wrist. The sigil seared under her palm, pulsing with a rhythm she could not command or deny. Her breath stumbled. Her heart missed—then remade—the beat. Hers. And not hers.
Lucus's hand closed over her forearm, steady and warm, skin to skin. The anchoring weight widened the world a fraction.
Kael watched everything.
Every tremor.
Every broken breath.
His smile deepened, slow and devastating.
"Look at her. Every tremor already answers to me."
"Step back." Lucus's order cracked like thunder in stone.
Kael leaned closer, his breath fogging the barrier. The gold pane shivered.
"Tell me—does your perfect wall always quiver when I breathe against it?"
Elena's cheeks flamed. The words slid under her ribs like a blade. Tightened until she thought she might splinter.
Lucus's shoulders locked. The light in his palm guttered for a fraction—
not failing, but no longer untouchable.
"Enough," he snapped, voice roughened by something that wasn't fear.
Kael laughed softly, triumphant.
"So the knight bleeds."
Their voices collided, blade on blade.
The barrier hummed, caught between sun and shadow, a thin bell pressed from both sides.
Elena's body mirrored it.
Heart racing.
Wrist sizzling as if the skin would split and pour light.
"No." The word scraped raw.
She pressed her palm hard against the mark, as if flesh could smother fire.
"This is mine. Not either of you."
For one heartbeat, defiance held.
Then the sigil throbbed back—harder.
Mocking.
Her knees dipped.
Lucus caught and held, fury flashing in his eyes like struck flint.
"She doesn't want you," he ground out. "She will never be yours."
Kael's smile curved, intimate and cruel.
"She doesn't have to want me. Her blood already does."
Elena shook her head until vision stuttered. Denial strangled in her throat. The mark betrayed her—flaring hotter, brighter—tears burning the corners of her eyes.
Not surrender.
Helpless rage.
A rope pulled taut between them.
Lucus's hand settled on her shoulder, firm and precise.
"Don't listen. I'll never let him claim you."
Kael tilted his head. Shadows brushed higher across the barrier, restless fingers trailing glass. He spoke to both of them, voice like silk hiding a knife.
"Never let? Tell me, daylight—when you hold her, when you feel her pulse beat against yours…" His mouth sharpened.
"Are you sure it's hers you feel? Or mine—thrumming beneath, waiting for you to admit it?"
Lucus faltered. Only a heartbeat.
But she felt it—the minute tightening of his grip, the fear that words alone could unmake his hold.
The hall quaked.
Gold struck silver-blue in invisible waves.
Light and shadow collided, soundless and violent, the stone answering with a long groan.
Elena's chest seized.
Her pulse outpaced thought.
The sigil scalded brighter with every breath.
She clenched her teeth. I will not break. I will not—
But the curse was merciless.
It had already slipped her grasp.
It was dragging all three of them together.
Binding not one to another—
but all to each other.
And none of them—
not even Lucus with his unbreakable light—
could sever it.
Heat sharpened.
Pressure climbed.
Her world narrowed to the drum at her wrist and the hands holding her steady against it.
The mark blazed higher.
Three heartbeats thundered inside her chest.
Hers.
Lucus's.
Kael's.
Not two.
Three.
The sound found the stone. It made the cracked ribs of the hall hum, dust sifting in silver rain. Moonlight slashed the floor in pale bars. The barrier feathered and drew tight, feathered and drew tight, as if it too tried to breathe in time.
Elena gasped. Light spilled under her skin, racing her arm like quicksilver fire. She tasted copper and salt and something sweet as bruised flowers.
Lucus's barrier wavered.
Kael's shadows swelled.
"Stop—please—" Her voice splintered.
But neither man could.
The night leaned in.
The gold pane sang, thin and high.
Because the curse wanted all of them.
Light.
Shadow.
And the fragile heart strung between.
Her pulse climbed the last step and hung. A held note. A blade poised above a knot.
A stone slipped free from the ruined ceiling. It fell, struck, shattered—sound like a bell answered by another, deeper in the bones of the hall. The echo rolled back to them as if the place itself remembered this moment.
Elena squeezed her eyes shut—then opened them, because the dark behind her lids was worse. Lucus's profile shone, jaw set, eyes steady on hers. Kael stood just beyond the gold—smile too calm, gaze too sure—as if the night already knew the shape of what it would take.
Her fingers slipped in Lucus's grip; he tightened, and she felt his heartbeat through his palm. Another answered from the other side of the barrier, low and sure, a counterpoint that should not be hers to hear.
Three.
There it was again.
Three.
Her father's voice ghosted up from memory, a winter whisper: Some bindings never break, Lena. Once chosen, the heart remembers forever.
The mark flashed, bright enough to bleach the world. The hall blurred, real and not-real at once. She felt the pull the way a shoreline feels the tide—inevitable, patient, wild.
"Breathe," Lucus said, the word reaching her through noise, pain, and fear.
"Breathe with me."
Kael's mouth tilted, shadow pooling deeper.
"Or with me," he murmured, invitation like sin and salvation in one.
Her lungs stuttered, then remembered. Inhale snagged. Exhale ragged. Light trembled on the barrier. Shadow lapped in slow, seductive waves.
The curse tightened another notch.
The hall listened.
The city beyond the cracks breathed salt air through broken windows.
Three heartbeats struck together.
For the first time clean.
For the first time sure.
Not a choice.
A chord.
Elena's mouth opened, but the words had no language—only heat and ache and a pull like falling without a promise of landing.
Lucus's thumb swept once over her hand.
Kael's gaze didn't blink.
The gold pane flexed and held.
The night pressed closer.
And the curse—hungry, old, suddenly intimate—drew taut around all three of them.
The last of the dust settled like quiet snow.
The next beat waited.
Balanced on the edge of breaking, Elena understood one thing with awful clarity:
This would not let go.