Page 26 of Iron Roses
It looks like—
Blood.
I don’t mean to touch it. I just… do.
My fingertips brush the stain, drawn to it by something I can’t explain. The moment skin meets stone—
The world erupts inside me.
A jolt explodes through my hand—sharp, electric, unnatural. My arm seizes, fingers curling violently against the marble as my body convulses backward.
I cry out. Another shock slams into my ribs like being impaled from the inside. My knees buckle. I hit the ground without catching myself, my palms slapping the stone.
A scream tears from my throat—I can’t breathe.
Something unseen drives into my back, just under my shoulder blade. My body twists. My nails scrape against the floor. I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know where I am. I can’t think—I can only feel.
The fire moves through me like memory, like violence—hot, invasive, and final.
Another stab slices across my abdomen. Then higher, near my heart.
I try to crawl away—anywhere—but my body won’t obey. My vision blurs, then tunnels, then splits into flashes. Red. White. Red again.
I scream again, but it breaks off halfway. Then nothing.
My body drops limp against the floor.
And the darkness takes me under.
****
The world is white.
Soft and endless—no horizon, no ceiling, no source. Just light. Blinding. It smells like… lilies. The kind we left on her grave.
My feet don’t remember moving, but I’m standing. My back presses against a wall—or the idea of one. The room forms around me. A bed. White sheets. White curtains breathing softly in a breeze I can’t feel. Everything here pulses faintly, like it’s alive beneath the stillness.
She lies there.
Giovanna.
Hair like silk, dark and fanned out around her. Skin flawless, untroubled. Her chest rises and falls in rhythm with a breath that doesn’t belong to me but syncs with my own.
She’s dressed in white. A sheer, flowing slip, thin straps barely clinging to her shoulders. The hem skims her ankles. Her hands are folded loosely over her stomach, but one slides slightly as if welcoming the heat beside her.
Beside her, a figure sits at the edge of the bed.
Cassian.
His posture is folded slightly inward, one hand resting beside her shoulder, the other on his thigh. He’s dressed in white too—a linen shirt unbuttoned at the throat, sleeves rolled just enough to show the veins along his forearms.
He looks down at her with something that doesn’t belong in the waking world.
He bends.
His lips meet hers.
And I feel it. I feel the warm sensation of his lips on mine.
