Page 52 of Shadowkissed

But she’s too good at slipping away. Too good at thinking she has to carry it all alone.

Not this time.

I don’t realize how long I’ve been sitting there until my hand starts to cramp around the pen. I toss it down, stretch my fingers, and lean back.

But the moment I close my eyes, I feel a pull behind my ribcage. A hollowness that wasn’t there before. The bond. It’s stretched too far. Too tight. And suddenly, I’mso fucking tired.

My limbs feel heavy. My chest aches. The room swims, like the shadows are slipping sideways just out of view. What the hell?

I try to stand, but my knees give. I barely make it to the couch before I collapse. My head thuds back. My eyelids drop like bricks.

“Shit,” I whisper again, voice thick. “What the fuck…”

Everything starts to blur. The walls. The ceiling. The echo of her laugh I swear I still hear when the wind cuts just right.

And then I see her standing above me.

Hair cascading like night itself. Runes glowing faint beneath translucent skin. Eyes that catch every secret I’ve ever tried to bury.

“Liora…?”

I don’t know if I say it. Or think it. Or dream it.

But the moment her name forms on my lips, the darkness swallows me whole.

25

LIORA

Idon’t remember leaving.

One minute I was in his arms, breath still shaky from the nightmare. The next—I was outside, barefoot, standing in the street, the world hushed like it knew what I was about to do.

I didn’t run. Not at first.

But something pulled me. Something dark and sharp, like a voice inside my bones whispering,You know what you have to do.

And I do.

Seraphiel wasn’t bluffing. He never does.

He plays with his food—yes. Twists truth until it’s prettier. But when he gives a warning? A promise? A threat? It’s gospel. And this time it was about Dante.

Return to me… or he dies.

I’ve seen what Seraphiel does to the ones who matter. The ones we try to keep safe.

He doesn’t just kill them.

Heunmakesthem. Warps them. Breaks them so deeply they can’t remember who they are—only who they belong to.

And I can’t let that happen to Dante. Even if it breaks me. Especially if it does because at least Dante will still have a chance, a life. Even if it doesn’t include me. It’s the bond that ties us and that’s what I need to erase.

I cross into the old fae grove just outside the southern boundary—where the Veil first tore centuries ago, and magic still leaks like oil through paper. It’s dead quiet, except for the low pulse of raw energy humming beneath the earth.

The grove’s forbidden for a reason. Fae magic lingers here untouched.Unclean.Wild. But I need it.

I kneel in the middle of the rune-carved stone, fingers trembling as I draw the sigils I never thought I’d use. The kind of magic Thorne warned me would cost more than blood.

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