Auren POV

Guilt and want coiled in my chest like a living thing. I could feel it suffocating me.

Every fiber of me wanted to crawl back into bed with Lorien and hold her there until morning. The only thing stopping that what kept my hands from doing the one honest thing was the memory of Sylira, limp and spent beneath me. The image hit like cold water: past and present colliding, a nausea I couldn’t shake. After what I’d done to Sylira, I didn’t deserve Lorien. Not by a long ...