Page 32 of Fate & Monsters
The warmth had faded.
Only cold tension remained, and the oppressive hush of the castle walls pressing in around me. My sheets were tangled, my legs damp, and my palms still tingled from where dream-fingers had traced them.
Was it only a dream?
It hadn’t felt like one. Not when I could still hear the voice.
You are divine…
Unlike my other increasingly frequent dreams, this time it hadn’t been Mavros. Where the beast prince’s voice was gravel, heat, and thunder held back by fraying control. This had been silk and rot, syrup-thick and sweet, a lure masked as reverence.
A magic-using hunter. The Crimson Mage.
I pressed a trembling handto my mouth, as if I could wipe the memory from my lips. Shame bloomed low in my belly. Not because I had dreamed of him, but because, for a moment, I hadn’t wanted to wake.
That terrified me.
I slid out of bed, limbs aching from the tension I hadn’t released even in sleep. The chill of the floor bit at my soles as I crossed the room, needing distance from the sheets, from myself.
Through the door. Down the hall. Past stone-eyed statues and hushed gargoyle-head sconces that flickered like a held breath. The castle felt more alive in the quiet. Watchful, ancient, aware. My heartbeat was the only sound.
I leaned against a column, skin pressed to cool stone, and closed my eyes, wanting to forget.
But the whisper came again, curling through the icy silence like smoke.
You are divine.
And for the briefest, most damning moment I couldn’t tell if it was the wizard I feared. Or the changes in myself.
During our afternoon reading lessons Mavros sensed my unease.
He hadn’t said so, but I saw it in the way he watched me—as though waiting for a storm that never broke. As though he knew I was stillunraveling in places I couldn’t name. Tormented by dreams and lurking phantoms.
Agonized over the changes in my body, yet curious to feel those sinful things while awake.
Instead of remaining in the castle library, he brought me somewhere quieter. Hidden behind a veil of curling vines and broken stone arches, he revealed a secluded pond adjacent to the garden. A place that felt like a secret the world had forgotten. Light streamed in through ruined pillars overhead, slicing through the haze in golden beams. They caught the surface of the pond before us and turned it to liquid fire—ripples glowing orange and gold, as if the water itself burned.
I stared, breath caught in my throat. “It’s beautiful.”
Mavros offered a weak smile. “I came here all the time when I was young.”
“And now?”
His grin faded. “Not nearly enough.”
Instead of offering an explanation he simply sat beside me on the mossy bench, one large hand holding open a leather-bound book. The words he read were smooth and rhythmic. It was some old tale from Infernian history, but I heard none of it.
Not really.
Not when he was this close. So close. So large. So warm.
His leg brushed mine as he shifted, and I swore I felt it all the way up my spine. There was a strange, molten heaviness blooming low inmy belly. A slow, pulsing warmth that reminded me of my dreams of him. It was there, coiled and insistent, whenever he looked at me like that. Whenever his voice dipped low. Whenever I caught the scent of ash and spice and him.
I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. His presence seized my mind and blurred the world around us.
The words on the page meant nothing. All I heard was the thrum of blood in my ears and the faint sound of his breath—deep, even, frustratingly calm. As if he wasn’t affected at all. Did he not feel this?
I stood abruptly.
