Page 146 of A House of Gold
The dual sensation, him inside me, his thumb circling that bundle of nerves, is too much. I come apart with a scream that echoes through the ruined cathedral, my body clenching around him so tightly he groans.
"Fuck, Raven." His rhythm falters, becomes erratic. "I'm…"
"Yes," I breathe. "Please."
He buries himself deep one last time and comes with a guttural sound, my name falling from his lips like a prayer. I feel him pulsing inside me, feel the warmth of his release, and through the binding I feel his pleasure crashing over both of us in waves.
For a moment, we just breathe. Connected. Sated. The lust finally quiet.
Then everything changes.
My vision whites out. The cathedral disappears. Croesus disappears.
And suddenly I'm somewhere else entirely.
A place of pure light. Blinding, overwhelming, impossible to look at directly.
But I can see shapes in the light. Figures. Seven of them, but also... not seven. They're overlapping, bleeding into each other, like multiple images superimposed into one.
And there's a voice. Multiple voices speaking as one, harmonizing in a way that shouldn't be possible.
"The fallen must be reunited."
I try to scream, but I have no mouth here. Try to run, but I have no body.
The figures shift, and for just a moment I see them clearly, seven angels standing in a circle, but they're not separate, they're connected, pieces of a whole that's been shattered and scattered.
And in the center of the circle, there's something else. Something bright and terrible and ancient beyond comprehension.
A star falling. A morning star.
The light.
The first.
The–
I slam back into my body with a scream that tears from my throat. I'm still in the cathedral, Croesus still inside me, butI'm shaking violently, terror mixing with the dregs of lust in a nauseating cocktail.
"Raven!" Croesus's hands cup my face. "Raven, what?"
"Saw–" I can't get the words out. Can't breathe. "I saw..."
All seven angels are moving now, surrounding me. I can feel their alarm, their fear, bleeding through whatever supernatural senses they have.
"What did you see?" Seraph demands, his perfect face tight with something I've never seen there before, genuine fear.
"Light," I gasp. "Figures in the light. Seven of them but also one. And a voice saying, saying–"
"What?" Kael crouches beside me, his heat washing over my bare skin. "What did it say?"
"The fallen must be reunited."
Silence. Complete, absolute silence.
Then chaos.
Kael swears viciously. Seraph goes pale. Even Caspian straightens from the shadows, his exhaustion replaced by something sharper.
