Page 21 of Blood Marked

She couldn’t breathe.

Was this what Kael lived with? What he was raised on?

Was this the future they'd tied her to?

She stumbled back through the corridors of the lower city, moving fast now, too fast. She didn’t remember half the turns she took. Didn’t care.

She reached the stairwell with a chest full of fire and bile, her boots loud on the worn stone.

By the time she reached the citadel proper, her cloak was soaked from underground mist, her boots caked in grime, and her hands shaking. She kept her hood up as she passed through the empty antechambers and silent halls.

But as she rounded the final corridor to her chamber, her steps slowed.

There were guards at the door now.

Of course there were.

Two wolf-blooded sentinels stood at attention, their gazes flicking to her without surprise.

She straightened, forced her expression smooth.

But when she opened the door, the air in the room shifted.

He was there.

Kael.

Waiting.

He stood near the hearth, arms folded across his broad chest, the firelight carving shadows across the lines of his jaw and thehard set of his shoulders. His ash-blond hair was mussed, like he’d been pacing before she arrived.

His eyes snapped to hers.

And when he spoke, his voice was low and dangerous, a blade sliding from its sheath.

“Where the hell were you?”

TEN

KAEL

“Where the hell were you?”

Kael didn’t mean to sound like he was snarling, but the second the words left his mouth, they cut through the quiet like a blade across stone.

Selene stood just inside the doorway, her cloak dripping water onto the polished stone floor, her cheeks flushed from the cold—or fury. He couldn’t tell which.

“Out,” she said, voice like flint.

He moved toward her, slow, deliberate. Not looming. Not quite. But enough to remind her what she’d walked into.

“You had no guard. No escort. You left the citadel.”

“I’m not your prisoner.”

“You sure as hell aren’t free to wander the Veil like some starry-eyed tourist. That’s not a city, Selene—it’s a powder keg.”

“I walked,” she snapped. “Not far. Not stupid.”

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