She hesitated, searching my face for an answer I wouldn’t give her. Finally, with a stiff nod and a resigned smile, she turned and disappeared back to our party, leaving me alone with the growing darkness.
The shadows deepened, and the world fell unnervingly silent.
Cathán.
Her voice slipped through me like a silken thread, low and familiar despite my never having heard it before. A name in the dark, a caress on my soul. I turned, and there she was, stepping from the void like a whisper made flesh. Veiled as always, her face hidden, her figure shrouded in flowing black smoke that moved around her form. She didn’t walk—she drifted forward, her presence an unnatural pull deep inside me.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I said, though my voice wavered under the weight of her presence.
“I am always with you,” she said, her words brushing against something deep inside me, something I didn’t know was there. “You summon me from across the void.”
“I did no such thing,” I said, though the lie tasted bitter.
Her laugh was low and throaty, warm but sharp at the edges. “Didn’t you, though? Every time you close your eyes and dream of me. Every time you touch the woman meant to be your wife and wish it was someone else. Every time you fight what you feel. You’re reaching out for me.”
She stepped closer, her edges blurred as though she was more shadow than woman. The air thickened, heavy and charged, as if the earth itself was holding its breath with me.
“You’re nothing more than a dream,” I said, though the words rang hollow. “A nightmare.”
“Am I?” she asked, reaching out a hand cloaked in shadow. Her fingers stopped just shy of my face. “Touch me, and see.”
I shouldn’t have. I knew that. But her pull was stronger than common sense. Stronger than my duty. Stronger than the fear tightening my chest. My hand moved of its own accord, trembling as it brushed hers.
The moment our skin met, the world splintered. Heat and cold, pleasure and pain, creation and destruction…It all collided in an instant so intense I nearly cried out and fell to my knees. My spirit seemed to unravel and knot back together, and for a fleeting moment, I wasn’t Cathán—I was something far older, tied to her in ways I couldn’t comprehend.
