Page 19 of Blood Marked

He didn’t.

Selene’s eyes lingered on him a beat longer, then she turned and walked back toward the hall.

Kael watched her go, the ache in his chest coiling tighter.

She was fire in a place that devoured warmth.

And gods help him, he didn’t know if he wanted to save her…

Or burn with her.

NINE

SELENE

Selene slipped past the last torch-lit corridor like a shadow between breaths.

No guard posted at her door tonight. Either someone had gotten lazy, or Kael had assumed she’d learned her lesson. Maybe both. Either way, she wasn’t wasting the opportunity.

The citadel above the Veil was a fortress—stone walls and sharp edges meant to intimidate. But beneath it, under winding stairwells and carved tunnels, the Veil city pulsed like a secret heart, alive and ancient and humming with the kind of danger that whisperedrun.

She’d seen glimpses from high balconies and shadowed windows. But tonight… she wanted more.

The world she’d been thrown into wasn’t made of council meetings and ceremonial silks. It was bone and blood and survival dressed in moonlight.

She needed toseeit.

To understand it.

Or at the very least, stop feeling like prey perched in the middle of a predator’s throne room.

The stone passageway curved into a stairwell that spiraled deep into the mountain’s belly. Each step was slick, damp with moss, and echoing. No guards. No warnings.

They probably assumed no one would be stupid enough to wander down alone.

Selene adjusted the dark cloak she’d stolen from a guard rack earlier, hood up, hair tucked beneath it. Her Mark throbbed faintly beneath her tunic, like it was annoyed with her disobedience.

Join the club, she thought grimly.

After ten more minutes, the air changed.

It smelledwarmer. Richer. Like earth, smoke, and animal sweat. Sounds reached her ears—laughter, shouting, the distant howl of something she hoped wasn’t aimed her way.

And then light.

She emerged into a cavern so massive it stole the breath from her lungs.

The ceiling stretched like a cathedral of shadow, glittering with bioluminescent moss that dripped down columns of stone carved into twisted animal shapes. Pathways wound between glowing pools and crumbling archways. The buildings weren’t like human ones—they were woven into the stone itself, grown organically like living structures, bone and branch and obsidian.

This was Aethermoor.

Not the ceremonial part the council talked about.

The real one.

Selene slipped into the flow of bodies moving through the main square. Shifters of every House passed by—wolves in half-shifted forms with golden eyes, lean panther folk cloaked in silk and shadow, towering bears, even a few bat-shifters with pale skin and hollow stares.

No one gave her a second glance.

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