Chapter 14 · He Dreams Her Death

The assassin's throat made a wet, clicking sound, and his finger was still pointing at the service door when Kael's boots hit the stone beside her.

"Move," Kael said. It wasn't a request.

Seraph didn't move. Her hand was still raised where the ring had scorched a thread of gold light into the dark, and Kael's fingers closed around her wrist like a manacle, dragging her arm up between them.

"What," he said, low, "is that."

"A ring." Her voice came out steadier than she felt. "It was my mother's."

"Your mother's." He turned her wrist over, watching the shard glow and dim under his stare, like it knew enough to hide from him. His thumb pressed into the soft skin below her palm, and she could feel his pulse there too, fast, faster than a man giving orders should be. "Funny. I've never seen an Ashveil family ring burn like a coal."

"Kael—"

"Don't." His grip tightened, and the pain of it was almost a relief, because pain she knew what to do with. "I've had the same dream three nights running.