Chapter 2 · My Stalker Is the Dark Lord (2)

"Shadow hounds!" Lucas shouted. "Run!"

The hounds went straight for Liora. She didn't have time to wonder how a mortal prosecutor knew the name of a supernatural species. She rolled, snatched a length of rusted pipe from the floor, and swung—the shadow claw caught the pipe, jarring her hands numb, and she flew backward, her spine slamming into the telescope mount.

One of the hounds lunged. Its claws aimed at the mark on her collarbone.

It was going for her rune.

Liora's pupils shrank. In the heartbeat before impact, a long-fingered hand appeared from behind her, palm open, fingers closing like a fist around nothing.

All three hounds froze mid-air. Quivered. Shattered into black ash that the rain washed down the drain.

Kael stood behind her, drenched, crimson eyes burning in the dark.

"I said," he rasped, looking down at her, "don't go out at night."

He pulled her up with a gentleness that had no business on the same body that had just un-made three monsters. Then he straightened, staggered, and slammed a hand over his heart. Black veins crawled up from under his collar, spreading over his throat like living vines. He choked, and a mouthful of black blood hit the rain, hissing, steaming like magma dropped in ice.

"Kael!" Liora grabbed his arm. "What—"

"Old wound." He wiped the blood from his lips so fast it was almost invisible. Pushed the veins back down. His voice was steady again. "War wound. A thousand years old. Hurts when it rains."

He was lying. She could tell—she'd read twenty-eight years of corpses, and she could sense a lie with her skin, not her eyes. His fingers were shaking where they pressed against his chest. Shaking more than they had when he'd crushed three shadow hounds.

But she didn't call him out. Because she'd noticed something worse.

The black veins were receding. Visibly. In the seconds his hand had touched her.

She was his medicine.

The realization hit her like lightning, and before she could catch it, sirens cut the night. Lucas's voice came from the ruins: "Liora! Mr. Ashveil! Are you both—"

Kael released her, stepped back, and was the cold, unreadable Shadow Sovereign again, as if the stumble and the black blood had never existed. He looked at her, and something moved in his crimson eyes that she couldn't name.

Low. For the rain and her ears only:

"Curse me, kill me, but never leave me."

"…What?"

"You'll understand someday." He stepped back into the downpour, and before the dark took him, he looked back once. "When you remember."

At 11:00 p.m., St. Andrew's Hospital.

Liora's left arm had a claw wound, three stitches. The surgeon was a woman with soft eyes like moonlight on a lake, white coat, a warm smile. She introduced herself as Iris Milan. "Hello. I'm tonight's attending. Don't worry—I stitch wounds like yours twenty a day."

"Thanks," Liora said. "It's shallow, I can handle—"

"The rune under your collarbone is glowing." Iris's voice was gentle, curious. "Like a lighthouse. It lights up everything inside you… and calls everything outside in."

Liora went still. "You can see it?"

"A little. I was born seeing a little." Iris smiled and leaned in, dabbing antiseptic with feather-light hands. Her voice stayed soft, almost casual. "That rune is very old, dear. It's a lock. It locks your life to one fate—and on the other end of the chain is a monster that doesn't belong to the mortal world. Blade and shadow. Blood and dark. It will swallow you whole."

"…He says he's loved me for twelve thousand years."

"Of course a monster would say that." Iris lifted her eyes, clear as first snow. "The blade remembers what the heart forgets. Your family left you the blade, didn't they? The Voss dagger. That's what you should trust."

Liora wanted to argue. Wanted to tell her about the man who'd crushed three shadow hounds to save her, who'd brewed tea for three thousand years. What came out instead was: "…A blade?"

"Tomorrow, it will appear at your bedside." Iris finished her work and patted Liora's hand. "Good night, Liora. Sleep well. Don't think about anything."

Liora woke frozen.

She was in her own apartment. The curtains were wide open, the rain had stopped, and moonlight lay across the floor like a cold sheet. She didn't remember coming home. Didn't remember changing into pajamas. Her mind was a blank page, and her temples throbbed, as if someone had erased part of a memory with a heavy hand.

On the nightstand was a photo album. A childhood album. She didn't remember owning one.

She opened it. Stopped on a page.

Five-year-old Liora in a yellow raincoat, standing at the old house's gate, grinning with a missing tooth. Behind her, in the shadow of the rain—a figure. Tall. Thin. Black-haired. And at the level of its eyes, two tiny pinpricks of crimson light.

She turned the photo over. On the back, handwriting she didn't recognize:

I will find you in every life. — K

Liora held the album with cold fingers. Across the street, at the top of Ashveil Security Consulting Group, one window was still lit, watching her like an eye in the dark.

She thought of the hounds' teeth. Of Iris's "tomorrow, it will appear at your bedside." Of the badge engraved in her own handwriting.

Then she looked down at her collar. The rune was pulsing. In rhythm with her heartbeat.

"Who are you, Kael Ashveil," she whispered to the dark outside. "And who… is afraid of us being together?"

The dark didn't answer.

But across the sky, a shooting star fell, soundless, and died on her windowsill.