The shimmer on him seemed to grow brighter.
I came in closer, taking the pencil from him and setting it aside so I could place his freed hands on either side of my waist.
“I don’t know if we should be . . .” He trailed off, nervous. Disarmed.
I brought my lips down to his and murmured against them. “I don’t want to think anymore, Zan. I just want to let go.” And then I kissed him. Slowly, carefully, thoroughly. Until the light coming off him became actual heat.
He pulled me closer, and our kiss deepened, punctuated by shallow breaths stolen between parted lips. I threaded my fingers through his thick, dark hair and let my kisses wander to his ear and then down his neck and back to his mouth again. Wherever we touched, I could feel the dispersion of my anxieties and inhibitions into his light, leaving me in a state of thrilled dizziness, drunk with the desire to let my entire soul dissolve into his.
Now that I was aware of it, I could see a glimmer in our every touch.
“Aurelia.” He murmured my name against my lips like a double-edged entreaty—Stop and Don’t stop together at once.
“I love you, Zan,” I whispered, turning his face to mine so he could see the conviction in my eyes as I untied the ribbons of my nightgown and let it slowly slip to the ground. His gaze was a storm of green and shimmering gold, his eyes blazing bolder and brighter, scorching my skin as they raked across the bare expanse of it.
I whispered, “I want you. I want this,” and then I kissed him again with all the worshipful conviction of a pilgrim star kneeling at the Empyrea’s feet. He sighed and relaxed into me as his apprehensions melted and fell away. This was right. We were right. And we had waited for far too long.
He said under his breath, “Are you sure you want this? Aren’t you afraid that things could end badly for us?”
“I am afraid,” I said. “But I am not unsure.”
He rose to his feet and pulled me tight against him; his hands, finally free of their inhibitive fetters, roved the curve of my back as my clumsy fingers worked the last buttons of his linen shirt and eagerly sought the warm skin beneath it. Each touch felt like a revelation and a provocation in one; as if a long-locked book was falling open before me and every magic word I discovered inside made me want to devour the next and the next, until I had consumed its entirety and forever committed it to memory.
We stumbled together, tangled in each other, to the bed. He lay down first, bare-chested but still wearing his leather breeches, and I followed by placing a leg on each side of his hips and leaning over him, my still-damp hair enclosing us in a curtain as I traced curling patterns of glimmering gold across his chest. There was dried blood on his torso, but beneath it, his skin was pristine; there was not a mark or bruise left upon him. I could feel the intoxicating piper’s call of his pulse under my fingertips, and my own spark went singing after it, across the muscle and sinew and into his bone and the blood in his veins. He could not see the light the way I could, but he must have felt it. With an agonized sigh, he hooked his arms around me and, in a twist and a roll, pulled me down on the bed while he stretched out above me. Our positions reversed, my hands were free to explore the chiseled planes of his jaw, his cheeks, his shoulders, and marvel at the beautiful, sharp bow of his mouth as he brought it down hard on mine . . . With every kiss, I could feel the craggy border of life and death coming into relief. Was this what it felt like to die? If so, I’d die again and again, willingly and without reservation.
But shadows began to fall all around me. Why was I suddenly so cold? And my eyelids were growing heavy. A ringing began in my ears, muffling Zan’s voice. “Aurelia?” he asked, but he sounded so far away. “Aurelia!”
I could not answer. I could not move. My blood was slowing, slowing . . .
And then my heart gave a final shudder and ga
ve out.
* * *
I dreamed I was back at Greythorne, standing in my red dress on the steps of the Stella Regina.
There was nobody around; no priests, no clerics, no noblemen. I cracked the double doors open, and a shaft of thin moonlight fell across the marble nave and up to the altar, whereupon a single person was kneeling in prayer as bells clanged overhead.
But—I was wrong; this was not the Stella Regina. There was no stained-glass depiction of the Empyrea overlooking the altar. Rather, the entire chapel was a work of intricate carvings and dark reliefs, murals of monsters and mythic beasts, angry angels and fallen kings. They peeked through shrouds of cobwebs and glared at me from beneath layers of dust.
And as I got closer, I could see that the altar wasn’t an altar at all; it was a long, elegant box of thick glass and spun gold.
A coffin of crystal, with someone lying inside it. Silent, still, face obscured by the darkness.
The sound of my footfalls against the black marble alerted the worshipper to my presence. He reluctantly rose to his feet, still staring at the glass casket. “So it begins and ends,” he said. “Just as you said it would.”
“Simon?” I asked hesitantly, squinting to see him through the darkness. “Where are we? Is this . . . real?”
He turned slowly, his face finding the light like a waxing moon. “This,” he said, waving his hand at the bleak chapel, “is the Great Sanctorium of the Assembly. And it is real enough, if not real in the way you currently understand it. This is the spectral plane. The in-between place. A borderland between the Now and the After. Some people call it the Gray.”
I lifted my hand in front of my face, trepidation growing. “I’m a . . . ghost?”
“You’re a shade of yourself, in a way, yes. I know it’s a lot to take in, but we are both here for the exchange,” he said. “My life for yours. Bound by blood, by blood undone.” Watching me, his face softened. “Ah, don’t fret, child. I knew the risks when I facilitated the spell.”
The blood spell that had killed my mother was now taking Simon, too. “I’m not dead!” I cried. “I can’t be dead! This is just another dream. Like the Screaming Dream and the Drowning Dream. I just have to wake up, that’s all, and everything will be fine . . . You will be fine!”
“Aurelia,” Simon said gently, “you know what I say is true.”