Heir of Beasts

Pt. 4- Ch. 1.1- Love and Lightning

WARNING: This chapter contains cursing and sexual content.

Part 4: Reincarnation

Ch.1- Shira

When I wake for the first time, moonlight still gilds the window beside the bed a faded silver. The bed itself, a sumptuous monstrosity of rich red velvet and gold brocade, looks almost black beneath my fingers. I just lie there for a moment, watching the darkness beyond the window, and the light, too. Seeing so much and so little all at once.

Under the roof of a hotel built by a consummate madman, a place so idiosyncratic that it would be completely unique were it not for the four other locations tessellated across three continents, I saw a play. I met an actor. He broke us into the penthouse suite, and I laughed when he kissed me.

When Irei Nara kissed me, I didn't laugh. I didn't even breathe.

I turn over in bed, half expecting to see it empty, to have this night become nothing but a particularly vivid dream. But he's still as a stone beside me, snoring lightly, dark lashes brushing his cheeks as curls of onyx hair fall in messy whorls over his sleeping face and the pillow beneath.

I've always liked the night. The setting sun obscures the landscape, casting shadows where there were none, but I still think there's something strangely honest in it. Like you can look into the mechanical heart of the world as it lies still and sleeping, trace the path of its gears so that when the sun rises you understand the mechanism by which the whole thing turns.

I've always liked night, but this night I like most of all. It's perfect in a way nothing has been since the night my world came crashing down, and I realize I'm holding my breath again, waiting for something to shatter the stillness and silence. The peace. An assassin with a curved blade, a Grand Counselor about to throw me out of Kama, my mother returning to me either empty handed or with an army at her back. And I think that I would do almost anything to keep the truth I found in this particular darkness safe.

Irei pulls me against him, mumbling in his sleep. My arm cramps, but I just smile and wade back into dreams I won't remember when I wake.

When I wake for the second time, the sunlight is so bright I draw the heavy duvet up over my head. "Shut the fucking window, Rei," I mutter. "I'm going blind here."

"Well, aren't you just an angel in the morning?" he taunts, smiling wickedly but mercifully drawing the blinds. When I come out, the light in the room is muted, almost golden. It makes his dark skin glow, accentuating the sharp jut of his cheekbones, the curve of his jaw, the elegant slope of his neck.

"What're you looking at?" he asks me, quirking a dark brow. "Is my hair mussed and sticking up in all directions?"

"Your hair is fine," I murmur, giving him a soft smile. "I was just..."

"Just?" he prompts, raising his brow a little higher. "Well, out with it, Moonbeam."

"You're just... you're fucking beautiful, Irei," I admit, blushing despite the fact that I'm already naked in his bed, my thighs smeared with the evidence of what we did last night. "The sunlight makes your skin look golden. You have a severe profile, but it softens the edges and you just... you glow."

He actually blushes. I smirk, proud I was able to fluster him. There's a mischievous side to my personality that I didn't know about until he kissed me. It's impish, delighting in the way a swath of exposed skin turns his eyes heated, or how an unexpected vulgar comment shocks him to a hungry silence.