A cold jolt shot down my spine.
"What the hell are you even saying?"
His lips twitched. Half a smirk. Half a threat. His expression stayed calm. But there was something sharp behind it. Something old.
I sucked in a breath. The air tasted of damp earth and woodsmoke from distant chimneys.
"I do not even know you."
"Not yet," he said.
He stepped even closer.
My heel scraped against stone as I flattened myself against the wall. The rough, cold surface bit through my dress. My palms stung where they met the rock as I braced myself.
"You feel it, do you not?" he murmured. His head tilted slightly. Silver eyes narrowed as if he was listening to something beneath my heartbeat.
My throat tightened.
I did feel it.
That pull. That wrong, impossible magnet dragging me toward him.
As if invisible threads had wound themselves around my ribs long before tonight. Long before I ever walked this lane.
His hand hovered near my skin. Close enough that heat rolled off his fingers. It brushed over my wrist like a phantom caress. The night was cold, but he was not.
"What are you?" My voice was barely a breath.
His smirk deepened.
Something primal twisted in my chest. Fear sharp enough to sting. Fascination sharp enough to terrify me. I had grown up hearing stories of spirits in the hills. Of old gods in the woods. I had never believed them. Not like this.
My heartbeat slammed against my ribs. My lungs felt too tight. Too small.
He was too close. Too powerful. Too real.
His fingers touched my throat. Soft. Almost gentle.
I gasped. My breath caught as fire and ice raced down my spine. His touch did not feel human. It felt like it reached deeper. Like it slipped past skin and bone and found something under my heartbeat.
His fingertips pressed lightly over my pulse.
"So fragile," he murmured. His voice was low and sinful.
A tremor ran through me. Sharp. Uncontrollable.
"Let me go," I whispered.
His silver eyes flickered. A faint curve touched his lips. Dark. Knowing.
"You speak as though your voice could undo what has already been done."
My breath snagged.
His touch burned. Not with pain. With heat that spread slowly. It curled under my skin. Like he was unraveling me with nothing but his fingers.
His gaze dragged over my face. He watched every reaction. Calm. Patient. Studying me like I was some prophecy finally being fulfilled.
Then he lifted his hand from my throat.
The absence hit like a blow.
A cold rush tore through me. My knees nearly gave out. The lane felt too big. Too empty without his touch anchoring me in place.
His expression did not change. But the tightness at the edge of his jaw betrayed him.
He felt it too.
The loss.
"What did you do to me?"
My voice came out raw. Scraped thin.
He stepped closer again. Slow. Controlled. The mist shifted around him as if it knew who it belonged to.
"I marked you."
My lungs forgot how to work.
"You… what?"
He extended his hand. It hovered over my wrist again. Still not touching.
The air seemed to pulse.
Heat flared under my skin.
A sharp, searing burn shot up my arm.
I yanked my hand away with a gasp. "No. No. That is not possible."
He said nothing.
He only watched me. His eyes were bright like cold fire.
I shook my head hard, as if I could fling the feeling off like water. "You do not get to just—"
"I already have."
His voice deepened. A quiet rumble that seemed to roll through the stones beneath our feet. Beneath it, something stirred. Possessive. Old. Unyielding.
I clenched my fists. "You do not even know me."
His gaze sharpened.
"You believe that?"
A chill crawled down my spine.
I wanted to deny him. I wanted to call him mad. But some stubborn, treacherous part of me whispered the truth.
He was not lying.
The moment I stepped into this lane, my fate had already been decided. Maybe long before that.
My breath trembled. "This is insane."
His eyes softened. Not with warmth. With inevitability.
"You were never meant to walk a path apart from mine."
"Stop." My voice cracked. "You sound crazy."
"Do I?"
No smirk now. No arrogance. Only certainty.
He raised his hand again. My body reacted instantly. Traitorously.
A sharp pull in my chest. My pulse stuttered.
My feet shifted toward him before I forced them still.
His fingers hovered near my skin. The mark ignited.
A burning flare tore through my wrist.
I gasped and grabbed it with my other hand.
Then I saw it.
A symbol glowed beneath the surface of my skin. Faint at first. Then stronger. It pulsed in time with my heartbeat.
Old. Sinister. Alive.
My stomach twisted.
"What… what is that?"
His gaze darkened. His voice dropped to a low, ancient echo that felt like it came from the bones of the earth.
"The mark of my Claimed."
My knees buckled. I caught myself on the stone wall. My breath shuddered out in broken pieces.
My voice frayed into a whisper. "What are you?"
A shadow crossed his face. Quiet and heavy. The mist around us seemed to lean toward him. Drawn to something older than the night itself.
"I," he said. Silver eyes burning. "Am your fate."