Page 20 of Taken
Perhaps he was proving a different lesson all along.
Perhaps the truth the old prophecies hide is more blunt and merciless.
The women the Fates choose are not only conduits of power.
They are ends—the prize Fate set out when it wanted us to learn humility.
I do not say this aloud.
I do not let it soften the steel I need for the work to come.
But the thought circles my mind while I stand, hands heavy with the certainty of what I have done, the risk, and the woman I have taken.
I weave a small, intimate spell—something gentle, almost embarrassed in its tenderness.
It lifts the salt and brine from her skin like a hand brushing hair from a child’s forehead.
The wetsuit dissolves into steam and reknits into cloth that will not chill her.
The seam of the keep hums.
The magic smells of crushed shells and warm hearthstone.
She stirs beneath my fingers, her lashes fluttering like caught gulls.
She is still unconscious, but her breathing evens out now that shivers no longer rack her limbs.
I call my magic again, drawing a corridor of currents that thread through the keep and carry us to my bedchamber as if the house itself wishes to shelter her.
The servants avert their eyes.
Even the shadows seem to lean away, giving space to what I have done.
I look at her and, fuck, my body tenses.
She is undeniably beautiful.
Closer, the details of her unwind like a map.
Skin pale as pearls with a scatter of freckles at the bridge of her nose, lips soft and full, lashes long enough to cast tiny storms across her cheeks.
When I lay her on the sheets—silk gleaming with a faint ocean sheen—my hands tremble as I brush them over the softness of her shoulder.
My runes burn in sympathy, a constellation of need and caution.
I will not let myself become the thing the histories warn of.
I will not let want collapse my reason into ruin.
Desire is but a current.
Destiny is a channel you must carve with care.
I tell myself this like a prayer and like an order.
First, I must woo her.
Not with coercion, not with the blunt force that broke kingdoms in older times, but with patience and truth—if truth will ever be possible after what I have done.
