Kaelen woke with a gasp, her hand flying to her throat where the phantom pressure of Isolde’s lips still burned.

The world resolved into the wrong shapes. Not the cool, damp earth of the grotto floor between the graves. Not the weight of Isolde’s naked body tangled with hers. She was on her thin pallet in the Kaleen longhouse, the rough wool blanket scratchy against her skin. The central fire had burned down to embers, casting the vast space in deep, shifting shadows. The air smelled of woodsmoke and cured leather, not of sex and sacred stone.

Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic, trapped bird. She pushed herself up on her elbows, her amber tattoos flickering with a low, distressed glow that illuminated the panic on her face. She scanned the room. Across the expanse of the hearth, on the cold, distant pallet Marlowe had assigned, was a still, dark shape. Isolde. Sleeping. Or pretending to. A full twenty feet of empty, hostile space stretched between them.

The dream—the confession, the desperate kiss against the stone, the feel of Isolde’s mouth on her, the covenant sworn before the dead—it had been so vivid. The taste of her. The sound of her name, gasped. The solid, terrifying truth of their pact. It had felt like a bone-deed, a reality rewritten.

It was nothing. Ash. A cruel fabrication of her own starving heart.

Kaelen’s breath hitched, a raw, painful sound in the silent hall. She brought her fingers to her own lips. They were dry. Chilled. They had not been kissed swollen. She touched her own skin, her stomach, her thighs. No lingering warmth from another’s hands. No tender ache. Just the cold emptiness of the sanctuary and the heavier, colder emptiness inside her chest where the dream had been.

They had not reconciled. She had not pushed Isolde against the cavern wall and told her the truth. She had not fallen to her knees for her. Isolde had not accepted her, had not whispered ‘Let the dead witness.’ After Marlowe’s confrontation in the grotto, after Kaelen had agreed that their connection was a transaction, Isolde had retreated behind a wall of perfect, glacial control. And Kaelen had let her. They had been avoiding each other ever since.

The forbidden covenant was a fantasy. A desperate, sleeping wish.

Across the room, the dark shape on the pallet shifted. Isolde turned onto her side, facing away from the fire, away from Kaelen. The movement was fluid, controlled. Even in presumed sleep, she did not sprawl. She conserved space. She conserved herself. The line of her shoulder under the thin blanket was a ridge of unyielding stone.

Kaelen watched her. The need to cross the space was a physical pull, a hook behind her sternum. To shake her awake. To say the words she’d only been brave enough to say in a dream. To see if the ice in those winter-gray eyes would melt, or if it would shatter into a thousand cutting pieces.

She did not move.

Her magic stirred, a restless, anxious heat in her veins. Her tattoos pulsed, casting faint amber light over her clenched fists. She had lied to Marlowe to protect Isolde, and in doing so, she had broken something between them more thoroughly than any outside threat could. The chasm she’d manufactured felt realer than any dream.

The longhouse was silent except for the soft crackle of dying embers. Somewhere in the distant reaches of the building, someone snored softly. This was her reality. The exile. The suspicion. The woman she craved lying across a cold room, locked behind a discipline Kaelen could not fathom.

She let her head fall back against her rolled-up cloak. She stared at the smoke-blackened beams overhead. The dream had been so detailed. The scrape of stone against Isolde’s back. The exact taste of her skin—frost and ozone and something uniquely, devastatingly *her*. The way her control had unraveled, not in a chaotic burst, but in a deliberate, glorious surrender. Kaelen could still feel the ghost of Isolde’s fingers in her hair, pulling, claiming.

Her body throbbed with the memory. A hollow, aching throb. Between her legs, she felt a slick, traitorous heat that belonged to the dream, not to this cold pallet. She pressed her thighs together, a futile attempt to quell the phantom sensation. It only made it worse. It emphasized the absence. The need was a live wire, sparking against the damp kindling of her loneliness.

She was hard. Aching. For a touch that had never happened.

Shame washed over her, hot and immediate. She gritted her teeth. This was pathetic. To be brought to this state by a figment. To be lying here, in the heart of her coven, painfully aroused over a Blackwood witch who currently despised her. A witch who was probably lying awake over there, listening to her struggle, and thinking her weak. Predictable.

But the dream-Isolde hadn’t thought her weak. She had looked at her with a hunger that matched Kaelen’s own. She had taken. She had given. She had whispered ‘yes’ against her skin like a prayer.

Kaelen’s hand drifted down, beneath the rough blanket. Her own touch was a poor imitation, a rough echo. Her fingers traced the line of her stomach, dipped lower. Her skin was hot. She was wet. So wet. Her breath caught as her fingertips brushed over her clit, a sharp, bright shock that made her hips jerk involuntarily.

She froze, her eyes flying open to stare across the room. The shape of Isolde had not moved. Kaelen’s heart pounded in her ears. This was madness. Reckless. Anyone could wake. *She* could wake.

But the ache was a demanding pulse, and the memory was so vivid. Her fingers slid lower, through slick folds. She imagined it was Isolde’s touch. Not the dream-Isolde, but the real one. The one with the calculating mind and the stormy eyes. What would her touch be like? Not frantic, like Kaelen’s. Precise. Strategic. She would map her. Learn what made her gasp. She would take her apart with the same focused intensity she used to craft a spell.

Kaelen bit down on her lower lip to stifle a moan as she pushed two fingers inside herself. The stretch was good, but it was wrong. It was her own rhythm, her own need. She wanted the surprise of another’s. She wanted the weight of Isolde’s body over hers. The scent of frost and parchment in her nostrils. She wanted to see that silver-streaked hair come undone, to feel those careful hands lose their carefulness.

She moved her fingers, curling them, seeking. Her hips rocked in a slow, desperate counter-rhythm against her own hand. The blanket formed a tent over her moving arm. The sounds were obscenely loud in the silence—the soft, wet slide, the rustle of wool, her own ragged, controlled breathing. Every nerve was alight, hyper-aware of the distance between the pallets. She was performing, even in solitude. A silent, shameful plea sent across the dark room.

Her eyes stayed fixed on Isolde’s still form. A wild, reckless part of her willed her to turn over. To see. To understand the effect she had, even in her absence. To witness the chaos she inspired.

Isolde did not turn.

The climax, when it came, was a tense, shuddering wave. It rolled through her, tightening her muscles, arching her back off the pallet. She pressed her face into the cloak to muffle the choked sound that escaped her throat. It was pleasure, sharp and bright, but it was laced with a bitterness that made her eyes sting. It was a release of tension, not a fulfillment. It left her emptier than before.

She lay there, spent, her fingers still inside her, as the tremors subsided. The afterglow was just a return to the cold. The slick heat between her legs began to cool. The phantom sensations faded, leaving only the dull, familiar ache of reality.

Slowly, she withdrew her hand. She didn’t look at it. She pulled the blanket up to her chin, turning onto her side to face the wall, away from the hearth, away from Isolde. Her tattoos dimmed to a faint, dormant glow.

Dawn was still hours away. The convergence point awaited them. The ancient force draining the world required their alliance, their fragile, broken truce. They would walk together. They would fight together. They would perhaps even touch, out of necessity.

But the beautiful moment in the sanctuary had never happened. The covenant was a dream. And as the first gray light of morning began to bleed through the high, narrow windows, Kaelen Reed understood that some chasms, once opened, could not be crossed. Even in dreams.