Mailah lay there for a long moment, the silence of the cottage pressing in on them. The kitchen felt different now—charged, stripped of its mundane veneer. The air smelled of rosemary, sweat, and something older, something that tasted like ozone and deep, wet earth. Grayson remained braced over her, his hands still trembling slightly as they smoothed the hair away from her damp forehead. His eyes, usually a sharp, piercing blue, were clouded, darkened by the lingering remnants of the demon nature he fought so hard to contain.
She watched him, trying to map the terrain of this new Grayson. The man who had married her in that sudden, frantic ceremony—the man who was now staring at her as if she were the only solid thing in a disintegrating world—was a stranger, yet he felt more like home than any life she had ever known. She had expected a quiet existence, a simple life near the sea, not this. Not the void, not the shadow, not this intense, desperate hunger that consumed them both.
