The world lurched.
Cecilia wondered if she'd ever get used to this. It was never gentle. Just a bit violent, sickeningly, as if reality itself had been yanked out from under them and replaced with something else. The corridor of Winter's Keep dissolved into nothing.
And then—
Cold.
Cecilia's lungs seized.
Water, freezing, surrounded her, filled her ears, pressed against her skin like a thousand tiny knives. She was submerged and almost drowning.
Her eyes flew open.
Darkness. But beneath the water, through the distortion, she could see him.
Arkai.
No—not Arkai. Not the man she had just held, just spoken to. This was something else.
His eyes burned crimson in the black, twin embers of a fire that should not exist. His body loomed over the bathtub, massive and terrible, darker than the darkness itself.
His hands, his claws, gripped her thighs, spreading them apart.
