The sanctuary door groaned open at exactly sundown, and Ren was already waiting, seated on the edge of the cold altar with the silver dagger resting loose in her palm.
“You’re early,” Lucan said, stepping inside.
“You’re always early too. I thought I’d match you.” She turned the dagger over once, letting candlelight catch the blade.
“I told you I’d choose the terms tonight.”
His eyes tracked the knife with open wariness.
“That’s not a term. That’s a weapon.”
“It’s both.” She pressed the tip lightly to her own palm, watching him go very still across the room.
“You want to know what I am, Grand Inquisitor. What my blood really does to you. So let’s find out properly this time. No accidents. No glass. Just this.”
“Caelia—”
“Do you want it or not?”
His jaw tightened, and for a moment she thought the composed Inquisitor might actually win out over the addicted man beneath him.
Then he crossed the sanctuary in three long strides, stopping directly in front of her, eyes fixed on the blade like a starving man watching bread.
“You’re baiting me,” he said quietly.
“Is it working?”
“You know it is.” His voice had already gone rough.
“You’ve known since the moment I tasted your blood in my study that it would work.”
“Then stop pretending you have a choice.”
Something dark and unhinged flickered behind his eyes at that.
Ren didn’t wait for permission.
She drew the blade across her own palm, quick and clean, and watched gold light well up bright against her skin, dripping in slow, luminous beads onto the marble.
Lucan made a sound low in his throat that wasn’t quite human.
“Lucan.”
He was already moving, and this time there was no restraint left in it at all — he sank to his knees in front of her, right there on the cold sanctuary floor, gripping her wrist with both hands like he needed the anchor to stay upright.
“Say it,” he breathed against her palm.
“Tell me to stop, or tell me to take it. I can’t decide for myself anymore.” This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
“Take it.”
He didn’t hesitate a second longer.
His mouth closed over the wound, and Ren gasped at the sensation — not pain, nothing close to pain, just heat and pressure and something dangerously intimate as he drank the light straight from her open palm like it was the only thing keeping him alive.
“Lucan—” His name came out breathless, half a warning, half something else entirely.
He groaned against her skin, and she felt the vibration of it travel straight up her arm, straight down her spine.
His grip on her wrist tightened, thumb pressing hard against her pulse, and when he finally lifted his head his eyes had gone fully feral — violet swallowed almost entirely by that burning ember red, pupils blown wide, mouth stained gold.
“More,” he rasped.
“You’re already kneeling on the floor like a beggar. How much more do you want?”
“All of it.” His hands slid from her wrist to grip her waist, hauling her forward on the altar until she was flush against him, still kneeling, looking up at her with an expression so raw and unguarded it made her chest ache.
“I want all of it, Caelia. I don’t care how that sounds.”
He used my name.
Not Lady Caelia.
Not some formal title.
Just Caelia, said like it belonged to him.
“You’re not thinking clearly,” she said, though her voice had gone unsteady.
“I’ve never thought clearly around you. Not once, from the very first day.” He pressed his mouth to the inside of her wrist, tongue tracing the last traces of gold from her skin, and Ren felt heat pool low and molten in her stomach at the sight of the Grand Inquisitor of Aethelgard kneeling before her like this, hungry and desperate and completely undone.
“Do you understand what you’ve done to me?”
“Tell me.”
“I used to feel nothing but pain. Every hour. Every day. Five years of it, and I told myself I’d earned it, that it was the cost of what I do.” His grip tightened at her waist, dragging her closer still, until her knees bracketed his shoulders where he knelt beneath her on the altar’s edge.
“And now the only thing that makes it stop is you. Your light. Your blood. Your voice saying my name like it means something.”
“It does mean something.”
“Prove it.” His eyes burned up at her, dark and demanding.
“Let me have more.”
Some distant, sensible part of her screamed that feeding a man’s addiction only made the addiction worse, made him more dangerous, more unpredictable, more likely to destroy her along with himself.
Instead she reached up and undid the clasp at her collar, baring more skin, more temptation, watching his eyes track the movement like he’d forgotten how to breathe.
“Then have it,” she said.
“All of it. Every drop you can stand.”
Lucan made a broken sound and surged up off his knees, catching her mouth in a kiss so fierce it stole the air straight from her lungs.
He hauled her fully onto his lap where he now sat perched on the edge of the altar, dark ash magic curling loose and hungry around them both, wrapping the two of them in a cocoon of shadow that swallowed the candlelight whole.
“Lucan.” She gasped against his mouth as his hands slid from her waist to her thighs, pulling her flush against him, the reaction between them sparking violent and electric everywhere their skin touched.
“The magic—”
“Let it.” His voice had gone wrecked, mouth trailing hot and desperate along her jaw, down the line of her throat.
“Let it burn. Let it wrap around us. I don’t care anymore what it means, holy and dark tangled together like this — I only care that it’s you.”
She tilted her head back, giving him better access, and felt him groan against her pulse point, teeth grazing skin without quite breaking it, a promise held just barely in check.
“You said I could set the terms tonight,” she managed, breathless.
“You did.” His hands tightened on her thighs, dragging her closer, until there was no space left between them at all, gold light and black ash sparking and hissing where their bodies pressed flush together on the cold altar stone.
“I’m simply choosing to lose every single one of them.”
“That’s not how terms work.”
“I don’t care.” He pulled back just far enough to look at her, feral red eyes locked on hers, one hand rising to cradle the back of her head like she was something infinitely precious and infinitely dangerous all at once.
“I told you once I’d rip you apart if you were a fake. I don’t think that’s true anymore.”
“What’s true, then?”
“That I’d rather burn the whole Empire down than let anyone take you from me.” His forehead dropped against hers, breath ragged, dark magic still coiling thick and possessive around them both.
“Ghost, Saintess, heretic — I don’t care what you are anymore, Caelia. I only care that you’re mine.”
Ren’s heart slammed against her ribs, tangled up in something far more dangerous than fear now — something that felt disturbingly close to wanting exactly what he was offering, consequences be damned.
“Then prove it,” she whispered against his mouth, echoing his own words back at him.
“Show me.”
The dark cocoon of ash magic tightened around them both, swallowing the last of the candlelight, and Lucan answered her with a low, hungry growl before his mouth found hers again — and this time, neither of them pulled back at all.