A Sliver of Shadow (47 page)

…
Incubus …

…
I was crouched in the darkness outside a white picket fence with thorny edges, my hands bleeding from my failed attempts to scale it. Anything to get back to the place of my birth, the warmth of the Dreaming womb and the inadvertent love of a mother who never knew me
…

…
I was learning to feed, gleaning off the dreams of others, taking all that I could and leaving only a hollowed longing for an unobtainable sexual perfection
…

…
I was singing on a stage, holding the attention of everyone. So easy to let my power roll out, lust and desire curling through the room like the flicking tongue of a snake. I could taste the scant edges of their dreams, the weight and the measure as I decided whose dreams I would visit tonight, what Contract I would make
…

…
I was wrapped in her arms and the darkness, her Dreaming Heart welcoming me like a beacon of light in the shadows. I would never belong there, but for a moment I could pretend
…

“Ion.” The name fell from my tongue with an easy roll. He uttered a low cry and his form wavered, his body vibrating in my arms. Golden eyes tore into me, and for a moment his humanity was stripped away to reveal blue-black skin and ebony hair tangled in a set of crystalline antlers, intertwined with twigs and red thread. He reached up to pull something from behind a cupped ear and pressed it into my hand.

A rush of energy pulsed through my limbs once.

Twice.

And then he faded, a ghostly shadow slipping away.

Remember me
…

His voice echoed in my mind even as the white bed seemed to open up, swallowing me into darkness. The scent of rose petals and earth and decaying leaves assaulted my senses. I was falling, my fingers scrabbling at nothing as I hurtled into oblivion.

I’d been crying in my sleep. The damp trace of tears still clung to my lashes. Dimly, I rubbed at them with my hand as I sat up in my bed, trying to remember what had just happened. My body thrummed uncomfortably and I knew it had been an arousing dream of sorts, but more than that I couldn’t say. I would have to ask Talivar about it in the morning.

The elven prince had a way of being able to see to the heart of my thoughts, even when I couldn’t quite understand them myself. Not that he was here now. For propriety’s sake we currently had separate bedrooms, although I didn’t actually recall him sleeping with me before.

Not like that was anything new. I never remembered anything.

There’d been some sort of accident in my recent past, one that had apparently taken my long-term memory. No one seemed to want to elaborate on the details, though. Considering I was supposed to marry the man, it was a bitch of a thing not to remember the actual proposal.

Flopping down in frustration, I stared out the carved window at the moonless night, a rustling of branches the only sound. Usually I found it comforting, but right then it mocked me with its secrets, as though it knew more of me than it cared to tell.

I shifted onto my side in irritation, something hard digging into my back. Puzzled, I reached beneath me to find
something small and round. It jingled, a lost and lonely chime that made my heart ache. I lit the bedside candle and held the object up to the flickering glow, swallowing hard when I realized I was holding a bell, tangled in red thread.

Fantasy. Temptation. Adventure.

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