The fire crackled softly, casting long shadows across the walls.
I lay still, barely breathing, as Keal stood beside the hearth. His golden eyes stared into the flames as if they held all the answers he could not say aloud.
"I shouldn't tell you," he murmured finally, more to himself than to me. "But how can I expect you to understand, if you don't know what you are?"
The air thickened, heavy with old magic.
And then—
The room faded.
And I fell into his memory.
---
[FLASHBACK BEGINS]
The village was little more than crumbling stones and broken dreams, tucked deep in the ancient forests where no human dared venture anymore.
Keal moved silently through the night, drawn by something he did not understand, something older than bloodlust, older than hunger.
A pull. A summons.
In the heart of the ruins, he found her.
A child, no more than a few weeks old, swaddled in silken cloth stitched with silver threads that shimmered like starlight. The air around her pulsed with a faint, golden glow, and even the wind seemed to hush in reverence.
Markings spiraled across her tiny wrists—runes older than time itself.
The Mark of the Celestials.
Keal had dropped to one knee, overwhelmed by the sheer force of destiny humming in his bones.
This was no ordinary child.
This was the last heir of a bloodline thought long lost — the bloodline meant to bind the eternal and the mortal together.
His bloodmate.
His fated queen.
He had reached out, almost afraid to touch her, afraid to shatter the fragile, glowing miracle before him. But even then—
Even then—
The child had opened her luminous violet eyes and smiled at him.
And in that moment, Keal — the King of Shadows, the Slayer of a thousand kingdoms — had fallen.
Not with lust.
Not with hunger.
But with a deep, aching devotion that had haunted him through every century, every war, every endless night.
He had left her there, hidden, protected, her fate not yet ready to intertwine with his.
He had waited twenty thousand years for her to awaken.
For this moment.
For Kyra.
---
[FLASHBACK ENDS]
---
I gasped, the vision ripping away like a curtain torn from its hooks.
Keal stood before me, silent, watching me with a gaze that burned hotter than any flame.
"You were always mine," he said softly, almost reverently. "Long before you were born, long before you knew how to breathe... you were mine."
Tears blurred my vision. Part of me wanted to scream, to deny it, to call him a liar.
But deep inside — deep in a place no one could touch — something ancient stirred.
A memory older than memory.
A promise written in the stars themselves.
And for the first time, I realized with a terrible, beautiful certainty:
I had been running from a destiny that had already claimed me.
staggered back from him, my heart slamming against my ribs like it wanted to escape my chest.
"No," I whispered, shaking my head. "This isn't real. You... you can't decide my life for me!"
Keal's expression didn't change.
He stood still, watching me with the patience of mountains, of oceans, of time itself.
"I didn't decide," he said quietly. "The bond was written long before either of us understood it."
"I don't care!" I cried, voice breaking. "I don't want this! I don't want you!"
For a moment — just a moment — something raw and almost human flickered across his face. Pain. Regret.
But it was gone as quickly as it came.
"You think you can run," he said, his voice low and dangerous now. "You think you can sever what the gods themselves wove?"
He stepped closer, each movement slow, deliberate, until he towered over me.
I refused to flinch, even as the bond between us thrummed so violently it made my knees weak.
"You carry my mark now," he said, reaching up — not touching, but hovering his hand just above the center of my chest. "In your blood. In your bones. You are tied to me, Kyra, not by chains of steel, but by something far older. Far stronger."
I swallowed hard, hating the way my body responded to the heat of him, the pull of him.
"You can hate me," Keal murmured, his voice a dark caress. "You can fight me. But you will never escape me."
He leaned in closer, his breath cool against my skin, and whispered the words that sealed my fate:
"Because without me, you will wither and die."
I gasped, the air burning in my lungs.
"And," he added, softer now, cruelly tender,
"Without you, Kyra... I will become a monster the world cannot survive."
The room spun around me. My body trembled—not from fear, but from the terrible weight of what I now knew.
I wasn't just his prisoner.
I was his salvation.
And he was mine.
Tears burned in my eyes, blinding me, and for the first time, I realized the cruelest truth of all:
This wasn't a prison built by Keal's hands.
It was a cage crafted by fate itself.
And it had been waiting for me for twenty thousand years.