her neck like a slow caress.
And how did he think splaying his fingers low over her belly was supposed to not distract her?
When she did finally tear her attention from Stolas, it veered straight to the painting.
What did it look like? Was it placed in a gilded frame or rolled up? Did the Morgani Queen know what she had?
She would have to ask Ember later if she’d ever seen such a painting. Even if Ember didn’t know what it was, she would probably know where her mother kept prized art—
“Focus.” His gravelly voice rumbled through her back and somehow gathered beneath his huge palms, as if his words were their own type of magick. “Don’t fight your thoughts, let them roll through you with each breath. Release the tension I feel coiled tight in every muscle. Relax your jaw. Your eyelids.”
His commands had the opposite effect. The more she concentrated on not tensing her shoulders and jaw, the more they seemed to contract on their own.
“This is pointless,” she muttered as her eyes snapped open to . . . darkness.
Where were the stars? His bedroom? That gaudy, oversized bed—
Oh. His wings—they were draped around them like an inky cage of shadows. With her eyes narrowed she could make out the fine filaments of the glossy feathers, each one painfully beautiful, a masterpiece of indigos, greens, and purples.
Impulsively, she reached out two fingers to touch one—
A growl vibrated through Stolas and into her body, causing her to jerk back her hand. “Concentrate!”
She huffed out a frustrated breath. “I’m trying.”
“Your attention span is alarmingly short.”
Bell would agree, she decided. He’d also scold her for her defeatist attitude. Closing her eyes once more, she vowed to accomplish this task or spend all night trying.
This time she did as he suggested. Breathing in her thoughts and then letting them flow through her, a river of worries and stress raging across her mind. Funneling past until they all blended into one. Only this time, instead of trying to dam them, she relaxed and let them go.
Soon her rhythmic breaths drew her attention. She couldn’t imagine what was fascinating about breathing, but once her mind fell into that steady in and out rhythm, a soft white calm descended.
She imagined opening her throat wide as she pushed her navel out, drawing the warm air deep deep deep into her chest.
With each full inhalation her belly rose, lifting Stolas’s hands.
In and out.
In and out.
In the far recesses of her mind she became aware of her heart slowing, and Stolas’s own heart punching softly at her back in time with hers.
The river of thoughts became darkness rushing through her. A soothing cascade of liquid nothingness. Time slowed. Her body growing lighter as her mind drifted on that river.
Drifted and drifted until she could feel the presence of something beneath the flowing rush of her consciousness. Something thick and hollow and hard . . . a cage of mud and stone.
And inside that hollow prison something stirred. A primordial presence.
She felt its wary excitement as she found the lock. Felt its gratefulness as the lock clicked open. Still breathing softly, still focused on nothing but the rush of that obsidian river of nothingness, she set it free.
A snap like hollow bones wrenched in two pulsed in the center of her sternum. Her eyelids flickered as she opened her eyes, blinking at the darkness. Stolas’s wings were still blocking the light, so she reached an impatient hand out to quietly signal him to open them . . .
Only to watch her fingers glide through misty shadows. Shadows that playfully curled around her thumb and pinky.
They weren’t wrapped in his wings; they were wrapped in her Shadow Familiar.
Heart racing, she watched it swirl hesitantly around them. Jet black tendrils resolved from the nebulous form, their touch like icy butterfly wings on her skin.
She felt Stolas stiffen behind her as the blackness reached out suddenly to stroke the ragged cliff of his cheekbone. The gentleness of that touch went against everything she witnessed the other night. It moved from his face to his horns. Touching. Exploring.
Trying to figure him out as it examined his feathers, even his pale hair—bone-white beneath the moonlight.
Stolas didn’t move, not even to blink. And when her familiar finally left to explore the room, his only reaction was a soft exhale.
This creature was different than before. Instead of endless rage, it was oddly . . . inquisitive. And careful—it cataloged the room like a lone wolf in unfamiliar surroundings,