Ghost panted as he woke to the rise of the moon, running a hand through his hair as he dropped his gaze down to his pants. A groan rolled out of him as he tried to ease the rock hard erection back to its normal state, but his mind racing through his dream from the night before made it difficult. Warm, bare skin pressed to his naked upper chest, nothing but a single lace bra dividing them, and Helia's moan as she straddled him and ground her body against his arousal.

Great, now it was harder.

Part of him knew it was wrong, but he dropped his hand to the outside of his pants anyway, arching into his palm as Stone's name left her lips in a huff of air, his mouth sucking at the vein just below her skin. "Helia," Ghost whispered, his fangs lengthening as he imagined plunging them into her throat, and her name didn't feel so wrong on his lips as he wrapped his hand around his shaft and thrust. With the feeling of his mouth on her throat, her breasts squished against his chest muscles, and her core stroking up his length as she arched into him, it took all but moments until the tightness of his hand had a shallow orgasm rolling out of him. Pleasure had a whine easing out of him as the shame and self-loathing sank it.

Ghost had no right to feel such things while Stone was in the void.

Or was he?

Helia had not been at the Skytower library the night before, but from Stone's memories, he knew she'd been training with Pyre and sleeping. If his memory served him well enough, she might be there tonight, searching out information on Stone. It was as best a chance as any to prove if she was real or fabricated, and he threw himself into the showers before he'd even taken his clothes off. Hot water poured down his ice cold skin, and he peeled away his clothes with a grunt of displeasure at his moist undergarments and pants. For years, he'd spent his days sleeping in darkness, seeing nothing but an empty void until he woke in agony, but at least it had been quiet.

"Helia," the single word on his lips had his member at attention so quickly that he dropped his forehead to the shower wall and flexed his hand to keep it from grabbing himself again. Just her name had those images flashing on repeat, the way her hands had dug into his skin, the sweat beading her lower back as he held her close, and the quick beating of her heart as she gave herself to Stone's hands and control.

This wasn't right.

Something wasn't right.

Ghost had brushed it off as his mind forming a fantasy to soothe himself, to ease the years of pain by showing him Stone, by giving him back his brother's soft voice and flashing his smiles in a mirror as Helia worked through his hair. But this, this was too vivid to be imaginary. The only way to truly know was to go to her, to Helia Cinder, the heiress to Pyre Cinder's line and a grand mage with not an ounce of respect for his kind. If he was wrong, she would kill him.

But that wouldn't be too bad.

Then he could join Stone.

Ghost found his normal attire where he'd left it, years ago, folded up in the bottommost drawer of the room the Arc's had prepared for him. The bed was made, the floors neat and free of dust, and his clothes had been recently washed. How often had someone been rewashing them during the years he'd stuffed himself into that dark room? They'd taken such care to keep a place ready for him if he ever desired to return to the world, but without Stone there was no point.

Ghost slipped his full body suit on his skin for the first time in years, and the fabric stretched over his muscles, running the tight, stretchy fabric into every crevice and concealing his body with only the sheerest layer of solid black. It was exponentially more comfortable than the jeans and various shirts he'd been wearing in the darkness. Ghost only changed when Silvia Arc threw clothes at him, but she did that often. This was better, covering every piece of skin from his toes to his fingertips, and once he pulled the mask up over his nose, the only skin visible was a strip of tan skin containing his grey eyes.

Stealth was his forte, even if he could no longer be truly invisible without Stone, and he slipped out of the Arc Castle undetected. The border guard rounds were like clockwork, the movement and shuffle of magic ingrained in his mind. Darkness spun up from the ground as he called his magic, wrapping him as tightly as his brother once embraced him, and it near choked the life from him in agony until he arrived in Skytower.

The once fortified home of the Fleet mages had dwindled to a common living space for humans, vampires, and mages alike. Magic auras filled the streets and mingled in a way that would be impossible within the battlegrounds. Even within the Arc castle, not enough mages circulated to create such a mesh of life. Most of the integration was because the vampire-mage alliance had set up several centers for displaced vampires who came to live within its walls after human society had shunned them.

Despite the alliance's best efforts, the world was more chaos than before, which took doing when it had almost tumbled into the afterlife. It just might have teetered into the void had his brother not fought the specters back from inside the dimension of the dead.

Ghost remembered fondly the moment Stone's energy had reached out of the void and plucked the wayward specters back to protect the ones he loved. How Ghost had wanted to join him then, to toss himself into the afterlife just to feel the man's arms around him, but he'd been needed here. The void was only death for Ghost, whereas Stone could subsist until he found his way back to the living.

Ghost slid around some of the oldest buildings he'd ever touched, but they had been built up and supported throughout the years so they didn't crumble. They led all the way to the northeastern edge of the city where the college took up most of the streets and courtyards. The back door of the library wing led out into closely cramped dorm apartments and alleyways, and that was where he perched on a building to wait.

This was where Helia came and exited from, sneaking in and out to avoid attention, which would be paid to a grand mage entering such a place. For a mage to reach such a high title, they had to train rigorously every day of their lives, all with the sole purpose of crushing vampire kind. No other motivator produced such strong magic within a human, and Ghost sighed as he sank his face onto a hand. How crazy was he to sit here, a silent assassin on the highest reaches, waiting for a creature built to destroy him.

It was uncanny that Ghost's visions were so vivid while he slept, containing names and abilities of real mages and vampires, but not out of the realm of possibility. Stone was a huge book nerd and he'd spent every moment by Talamayas' side reading everything from mage histories to scrolls written in languages so dead he needed another tome just to understand them. There was no book written by mages or vampires that Stone hadn't read, and while his brother had delved into human histories and fiction for a period, he did not focus on it if it was not pertinent to Talamayas' safety and power. It was also impossible to read every book in existence if they accounted for regular human writing even with both pairs of eyes.

Knowledge had been so important to Vice. Ghost had spent every day scouting, travelling and experiencing while Stone filled their mind with tales and truths that Ghost was now replaying. Helia and Horus Cinder were well documented heirs to the Cinder line and had been for a few decades, though Helia was the youngest. Both held unimaginable power and magic at their fingertips. With Pyre, they made a family of three grand mages, which was an arsenal capable of wiping a moderately sized vampire house from existence with the backing of their generals and people.

In a way, it was reminiscent of Talamayas' power structure, the Sol house ruled by two men strong enough to be house heads even if Shan had stepped down from the position. Below them, most fighting vampires were general class, putting them a leap ahead of any other vampire house and making them capable of decimating any foe even before accounting for the less powerful Sol vampires that outnumbered any house in multiples. The Cinders and the Sols represented power and dominance for their kinds that had others shaking in their boots, such an unlikely pairing that Ghost was beginning to think that he should have never left his room.

There was no way that a woman as powerful and shrewd as Helia Cinder would care for one of vampire kind so tenderly, nor trust Stone's fangs at her throat or allow his touch to control her body's movement in any respect. Ghost thumped his head on the brick chimney as the image of Stone setting Helia on his lap and positioning his arousal between her legs had the spandex stretching around a growing bulge. That's just what he needed, a grand mage finding him in assassin garb, appearedly waiting to kill her, with a rock of a hard on.

Voices forced the feeling to ebb as he commanded himself to calm in preparation for a fight if it came to that. Thankfully, his dick complied, shrinking back to where it belonged as he recognized the first voice.

"Are you sure you don't want company for the walk?" Zane Fleet asked, Helia's friend at the college. Ghost remembered him from the night before, chastising Stone for insisting he'd never had a lewd thought concerning Helia. What could a man that reeked of sex with different women understand of an emotional attachment so profound that it transcended mere human lusts and desires? A saint, the man had called Stone, and perhaps he was.

Rage simmered as Ghost imagined breaking the man in two for even pretending to know what Helia's naked form looked like. All of the years of training to be invisible and emotionless had faded in his years of loneliness and self-loathing. Without Stone, he couldn't be that precision assassin devoid of the bothersome construct of emotion.

"Zane, I can walk on my own. What help could you even provide?" Helia Cinder's snarky tone sent lightning up Ghost's spine, and he held his hand between his legs to discourage his member from waving. The voice was too parallel to his dreams, too perfectly commanding. Ghost had never met the woman, so such identical cadence reinforced the idea that Stone was alive and that their relationship was real.

"I can be a pair of eyes and a shield, Helia," Zane grumbled with annoyance. "I'm no grand mage, but I'm an heir just as you are and more than capable of combatting society level vampires if they sought you harm."

"Yes, but this town is Alliance protected, Zane. Even if some vampires thought to hassle me, they'd be kindling, you know that. I appreciate the chivalry, but I'm okay. I'm just dropping by the eastern spell depository before heading back to the battlegrounds for some shut eye."

"All right." Zane let out a sigh that sounded struck and disappointed. Ghost knew that Zane liked Helia more than as a coworker, and his fangs peeked out from his lips as he opened them in a jealous snarl. It was a wasted gesture with a face mask, and less so when he knew that Helia only cared for Zane Fleet as a friend, but vampire instincts were unintelligent at times. That was why compete calm was best, as Talamayas had taught him.

Helia gave the man a curt wave as she headed off down the alleyway, and Ghost slipped silently along the rooftops to follow. The flow of her tight, red curls fluttered in the air as she hurried along, and Ghost pulled his mask down to inhale every brush of their scent. Charred ash and a hint of vanilla dabbed just against the base of her neck had his fangs lengthening in near uncontrollable lust for her blood. Ghost hadn't been drinking enough.

Stone didn't feel the urge to taste her blood, to sink his fangs into her flesh and suck the sweet nectar as he made love to her, though the shallow bruise just below her hair showed where Stone had marked her. Just that small proof of Stone's existence was enough to have Ghost's blood nearly boiling for the woman, and he shoved a fist in his mouth to keep the urge at bay.

Helia Cinder was real, her care for Stone real, and she'd saved Ghost's other half from the void. The weight of Ghost's debt stoked his desire to drink from her, to claim her as his and protect her from any other who might dare touch such supple skin. Ghost needed others to know she was his, to back away in caution from the mark on her skin. The small bruise from Stone would heal and disappear, but Ghost's fang marks would linger far longer.

"Who's there?" Helia demanded into the dark, turning to face where he hid, and he cursed his bloodlust for giving him away. "This is society, so if you intend anything nefarious, you'll be in a world of trouble from the Alliance, whether I'm in it or not." It was like the Cinders to flaunt position, but Helia's fire was so much of a tease that Ghost didn't feel threatened.

Flame magic flickered and flared as Helia stretched it out to search for an aggressor, meaning Ghost had little time before he was discovered. Ghost waited for an ebb to slip up behind her, and he used a hand to cradle her head and keep her facing the brick. A gasp of air escaped her as he flattened her to the wall with his body, but he hadn't meant to be so rough. Instinct had taken over, and he had to drop his hands to the wall on either side of her head to keep them from roaming her body. The woman's next move was to slide out under one of his arms, but he barred her escape by locking her in with a knee between her legs.

Helia stiffened when his knee grazed higher than intended, and Ghost nearly ripped his lip off biting down into it to keep from kissing her neck. With her back flush to every one of his begging muscles, her magic mixed with his in a powerful but pleasant roll. It would push any other vampire away, but the aggression within set fire to his loins, and he regretted ever approaching this woman as he hardened against her back. Helia noticed, of course she did, and her breath cut off as her magic surged inside of her to melt him at any second.

"It's just me, Helia Cinder." Ghost dropped his face to breathe the words onto her ear, rubbing his face against the side of hers before pressing his lips to the back of her neck. The words gave her pause, eased her magic some but not all the way as she processed.

Helia knew his voice. It was the same as Stone's.

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