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My throat is tight. Must I? “There are some things…some things that no one should speak into existence, not even in a place like this. They are…private shames. Private aches.” To speak of this feels like another kind of stripping, another violation.

“Shame is a veil, often self-imposed,” it rasps, its gaze unwavering. “The archive does not judge, merely records. But for the records to be true, no thread can escape examination. The moments of vulnerability, of surrender, are where the soul often reveals its deepest truths, its most potent energies. Continue, child, without shame. Let the memory breathe in its entirety. It is…necessary.”

Its last word hangs there, a command cloaked in arcane reasoning. Necessary. For what? For its dusty tomes?

I take a ragged breath, the dust of ages filling my lungs. Fine. Let it have it all. Let the archive gorge on my ruin.

I close my eyes again, forcing myself back to the warmth of the bath, to the ghost of Remiel’s touch. “I haven’t told you how the night ended in Paris, have I?”

“We still have to feed,” I had said in Paris, and the words hung in the dead air between us.

Remiel didn’t flinch. He just stared at me from across the room, his eyes stripped of all light and all judgment. All I saw in them reflected the same hollow abyss in my soul.

The silence stretched, unbearable.

Sera was lying on the bed, a beautiful, terrible doll in her coma, and the vials on the nightstand pulsed with faint, stolen light.

I do not know who moved first. It does not matter.

One moment, a chasm separated us, and the next, his hands were tangled in my hair and pulled my head back with a desperate, rough force. His mouth crashed down on mine, not with passion but with punishing force. It was not a kiss. It was an attempt to erase, to silence the screams we still heard in our heads.

He pushed me out of Sera’s bedroom and into mine and clicked the door shut.

And crashed back into me.

We tore at each other’s clothes with a frantic, clumsy urgency. This was not about desire. It was about oblivion. About affirming life within souls that felt like they were in a morgue.

It was a frantic, graceless fucking, a fight against the encroaching numbness that threatened to swallow us whole.

There were no soft words, no whispered names. Just the harsh sound of our breathing and an unspoken terror. We had been two broken things, trying to feel whole by pressing our jagged edges together.

As I lay in my bathtub, engulfed in the steam of eucalyptus, I remembered his weight. The reassuring pressure of him. His chest pressed against mine. Every muscle in his powerful body had been trembling with a restraint almost painful to witness.

His mouth, a brand of heat and longing, had trailed down my neck, nipping and sucking with possessive hunger until I was certain he’d leave marks. Over my collarbone. A sensitive curve. Then to the swell of my breast. His tongue flicked over my hardening nipple before he took it entirely into his mouth, sucking with a primal hunger that made me arch off the bed. A silent scream tore through me.

“Let me hear you,” he whispered against my heated skin, his voice shaking. “Please, Cassia. Let me hear you break.”

I moaned for him like a fucking siren, my cries echoing a soundtrack to my undoing. His fingers delved deeper, teasing my entrance before finally—blessedly—sliding inside. I clenched around him, my hips rolling and meeting his thrusts with an answering rhythm.

“More,” I commanded or begged, my voice ragged. “Please, Remiel. More!”

He gave it to me. He gave me everything.

He slipped his cock inside with a groan from the very depths of his soul. It was low, guttural, and so fucking perfect that it had undone me. He started slowly, so exquisitely slowly—withdrawing until I could barely feel the ghost of his presence before thrusting back in deeper. I arched beneath him, my nails raking down the muscles of his back, as he filled me, branding me.

“Fuck,” he hissed, his control fracturing. “You feel like…like fire, Cassia. My…fire.”

He shifted his weight, one of my legs carelessly thrown over his shoulder, as I gasped. The new angle, the deeper penetration, sent splinters of agonizing pleasure, stealing my breath. He thrusted harder, the raw power making my breath catch. The headboard hammered against the wall with a frantic beat, and my body rocked upward with every powerful stroke.

“Look at me,” he said, his voice rough. Urgent.

I did. Through a haze of pleasure and pain, I met his wild, tempestuous gaze. Sweat glistened on his chest, catching the dim light. His fingers were tangled in mine, even as his other hand gripped my breast. My free hand clutched the sheets. Then at his wrist. Then again at his powerful shoulder as he drove me higher relentlessly.

“I…I…” I could not finish the thought and just moaned, my words lost in the rising tide.

The climax hit like lightning—white-hot, obliterating. My scream echoed in the room, strangled with a need so profound it was terrifying. I’d dug my nails into his chest, marking him with crescent moons and claiming him in return.

His rhythm stuttered with a final desperate wave. And when he came, he cried my name as if it was a secret kept buried for too long, a confession torn from the depths of a tormented soul.