I wanted him to look.
I wanted him to say something. Anything. To explain what I had done wrong. Or right. Or what I was supposed to be now that I had been taken, touched, seen.
Instead, he pulled the bedding aside and slid beneath it without a word.
I stood there too long, unsure what to do with my hands. Or my thoughts.
The room was still warm from the day. My skin prickled faintly, like it remembered every place Auren had touched. The silk at my shoulder felt suddenly suffocating.
I reached up and unfastened the clasp.
The outer robe slipped away first, pooling soft around my ankles. I let it fall. The inner layers followed—slow, uncertain. I folded them, though my fingers trembled, and laid them gently over the low bench near the foot of the bed. The air kissed my bare skin and sent a ripple down my spine.
I hadn’t expected to feel this awake.
Not jittery, not frightened. Just… brimmed. Like something had been poured into me and had nowhere to go. My thoughts came sharp and fast, and every inch of my body felt tuned too high. My fingertips tingled. My chest rose a little too quick. I could hear myself, hear the warmth moving across my skin from the inside. It wasn’t arousal—not exactly. Or maybe it was, in a way I didn’t have words for. But it was more than that. A humming, golden restlessness. A kind of need I hadn’t known how to imagine until tonight.
Auren lay still, his back toward me, the fine sheet draped low around his hips. The muscles of his back rose and fell with each slow breath. His silver hair caught the moonlight from the high window. He didn’t look asleep—but he didn’t speak, either. Didn’t move.
I stood there a moment longer, bare in the lamplight, watching him.
And I thought—If I touched him now… would he become that other Auren again? The one from the altar?
The one who trembled when our mouths broke apart, who held my hips as if his hands were praying.
I wanted that boy back.
Even if it was just a moment. Even if it was only physical. If that was the part he knew how to give, I would take it. Gladly. I didn’t need kindness. Not now. I just needed him to see me again.
I wanted to ask.
But the words clung to the back of my throat, wet and unwelcome.
I climbed into bed without them.
The sheets were cool. The mattress beneath me softer than anything I’d ever known. I eased onto my side, careful not to brush against him. The space between our bodies felt impossibly wide. My skin ached in the silence, as if my whole body were listening—waiting for a sound, a breath, a turn of his shoulder. Anything.
But Auren didn’t move.
I closed my eyes, pretending I could fall asleep just like that. Pretending I wasn’t aching.
Pretending I didn’t want to be touched again.
Not taken.
Not used.
Just seen.
The bond curled faintly inside me, quiet now, but present.
I pulled the sheet over my hip and lay still, hoping he might turn to face me. Hoping I might find the boy from the altar again, just once more, before morning.
But the hush stayed unbroken.
And slowly, without meaning to, I drifted down into the dark.
The light came pale and early, filtering through the sheer canopy and the high windows beyond. A hush still clung to the rooms, broken only by the faint crackle of something warm being kept beneath a silver dome.
