Of Blood and Aether (Harbingers, #1)

by Harper Hawthorne

I thought about the way she looked at me lately, like I had personally hung every star in the night sky. Like I had crafted the constellations she so adored with my bare hands.

I realized there was one thing in this world that I wanted more than Arken’s body. I wanted her heart. I would die for it. I would kill for it. I didn’t deserve it—I could live a thousand lifetimes and still never possibly deserve it, but that wasn’t enough to stop me.

I didn’t have the capacity to be apathetic around her. Arken Asher had torn through all my darkest nights, shimmering across the skies like a violent meteor—brilliant, awe-inspiring, and dangerous. Something worth wishing on. Someone worth living for.

For Arken, I would go to war with my own demons. I would fight the Fates, the gods, and the very Source itself—if that’s what it took for me to hold onto her.

i’m on the floor

I studied her like an artist might study their muse, eyes wandering from her collarbones, up the length of her neck where I could still see evidence of my affection blooming against her skin in the form of bruises and bitemarks.

I would sate every craving, slake every thirst she had ever had in her life. I would erase any memory of past lovers, past pleasures, past orgasms… and replace them with my own. I would ruin her for anyone else. She was fucking mine.

“I have fucked my own fist to the thought of you every godsdamned day since I met you, Arken Asher,” he breathed, before proceeding to lick the arousal from my fingers. “And you still taste sweeter than I could have ever imagined.”

“Getting close, kenna?” I asked as her cadence slowed, noticing how she began to still beneath my touch. The Scáthic had just slipped out. Not that she could possibly speak the language, and even if she had noticed the term in her current state, she wouldn’t have realized that I’d just called her my lover in my mother tongue.

“Sometimes I think we really were,” she murmured dreamily, clearly still adrift in her own submissive headspace. “What’s that, sweetheart?” I asked quietly, stroking her hair. “Made for each other,” she sighed.

Do you feel it too, then? Have you felt this tether between us? That inescapable pull? All this time? I wanted to ask.

“Táieach kyn chroí, myon-Caindélach,” I whispered. I love you, Little Conduit.

My blush deepened as I realized that the dark little creature stirring in my chest didn’t want to cover it up. Or conceal it. Or heal the wound with arcana. Not when the bite had made me come harder than I think I ever had before.

i’m so happy for her

I unfurled a scrap bit of parchment and a response that left me gutted. I’m fine.

OH HELL NAH

I should have known better. I had known better. Whether I’d acknowledged it or not, I knew I was in love with her. From the moment her life hung in the balance.

I wanted to kiss every bruise and bite, and remind her that for each and every mark I had left on her flawless skin, she had left her own permanent mark on my entire fucking existence.

“Oh, gods no. Never sleep with an Archeron,”

IM FUCKING DYING, IS THIS INTENTIONAL????

“Aww,” he said slowly, cocking his head. “Did you really think you could change me so easily, Little Conduit? That’s almost… sweet.”

i am so fucking mad

That tether. That pull. That inexplicable way that I’d been drawn to her like a moth to the flame, unable to stay away from her this whole damn time. The Catalyst and the Conduit. Bound by a fate of inevitable destruction. Arken was the second Harbinger.

FUCKING DUH

Arken was his other half, in the worst possible way. A mirrored reflection of his crooked soul, and damning evidence of a fate he had fought so desperately to escape.

“I am comforted to know that you have finally found something you’ll fight to protect,” Abraxas explained. “Your solys.” Your guiding light.

“You didn’t have to, Kieran. It is woven into your aura. That Light… It is inextricable from you, now. You found the Conduit. The other Harbinger… Gods. Their presence is exquisite. They have imprinted on your soul.”

YA HEAR THAT KIERAN, YOU DUMB FUCKING IDIOT