A light in the flame

I couldn’t stop the Rot. I wouldn’t be able to stop Kolis. I had no duty—no higher purpose. I would die. And, worse yet, I would be the cause of untold horror. I was nothing but—

A rush of citrus and fresh air was my only warning. Nyktos’s weight suddenly crashed into me, hard and solid. The ground raced up to me as his arm folded across my waist. He twisted, and then all I could see was the twinkling of stars between a spiderweb of bare branches.

Nyktos hit the ground first, and…gods, that must have hurt. He absorbed the impact of my weight against the rocky surface with a grunt. The back of my head bounced off the wall of his chest, momentarily stu

“Did you seriously just try to run?” Nyktos’s breath stirred the hair on the top of my head. “From me? Why? Why would you do that?”

“Why not?” I shot back, cringing at how utterly childish that sounded.

“Are you fucking kidding me right now?” he snarled. A tremor ran through me as I strained against his hold. “You fled the safety of the palace and ran straight into the second place I warned you never to enter. Was my very short list of rules that confusing? Or are you just that incapable of following rules meant to save your life?”

“Fuck your rules,” I spat, tremors skating through me.

“And my sanity right along with them,” he bit out. “Do you even understand how close you were to death, Sera? Even if you killed the Shade above you, there were at least a dozen more waiting. If I hadn’t felt you and intervened—yet again, if I might add—”

“No, you may not.”

“You would be dead,” he seethed. “They would’ve torn into you, and no amount of my blood would’ve saved you. There would’ve been nothing left of you to even bury. For me to even—” He cut himself off as the fury backing his words punched into the air around us in a wave of icy-hot energy. My eyes went wide as the ripple hit the trees above, shattering them into ash.

Holy shit. My throat dried as I watched what was left of the trees fall to the ground like snow.

“What were you thinking, Sera?” He shook me.

What had I been thinking? That I could actually escape the Shadowlands—escape him? Somehow make it to Kolis alive?

“Answer me.” I realized he wasn’t shaking me. It was his body. It shook under mine. “Why were you ru

I tried to sit up, but his arm shifted, holding me flat against him. Even in the chaos of my mind, I realized that he’d trapped my left hand against my stomach. Not my right hand. Not the one that held the dagger. That was a purposeful choice. No accident. The dagger may not be able to kill him, but it had hurt him before. A skilled warrior such as he would’ve removed the threat of a dagger first and foremost. It was what I would do. But he’d chosen not to. “I wasn’t ru

“Then what were you doing? Striving to be the most difficult person I’ve ever crossed paths with?”

“Yeah, that’s exactly it. Not that I was actually trying to save you, you jackass!”

Nyktos went completely still and silent, and I realized my mistake right then. His chest rose sharply against my back. “You couldn’t have—no, Sera. No.”

I felt the moment the shock hit him. His arm loosened around my waist, and I knew it was my chance—my last chance.

Digging the heels of my boots into the ground, I launched myself upward, breaking his hold. I was free for a heartbeat before Nyktos caught my left forearm. Cursing, I twisted as he moved to sit up, clamping my knees onto his hips. He caught the thick braid hanging over my shoulder as I thrust the dagger down.

Nyktos’s eyes went wide as I pressed the edge of the blade under his chin. My hand didn’t shake. No part of me on the outside did. The inside was a different story—everything in there trembled.

“Let me go,” I ordered.

Moonlight-bright eyes locked onto mine. “No.”

“You need to let me go, Nyktos.”

“Or what?” One side of his lips curled up. “You’re going to slit my throat?”

Frustration and hopelessness crashed into a bitter tide of desperation and anger. “If that’s what it takes.”

“Then do it. Slit my throat.” He wrapped the braid around his hand, putting just enough pressure on my neck to force my head down toward his. “Just make sure you cut deep. To the spine. Otherwise, all you’ll accomplish is getting us both bloody.”

My heart lurched. He couldn’t be serious.

“Do it,” he growled, his lips peeling back over his fangs. “Severing my spine is the only opportunity you’ll get to make a run for it.”

A tremor hit my arm, and I swallowed a gasp as he lifted his head. A bead of shimmery, reddish-blue blood appeared on the side of his throat.

“But you’d better run fast. Because I won’t be down long,” he warned, those wildly churning eyes never leaving mine. “You’ll have about a minute. If that. But just so you know, you won’t make it out of the Shadowlands, liessa.”

Liessa.

It didn’t just mean Queen in old Primal language. It also meant something beautiful. Something powerful. Hearing him call me that rocked me.

Nyktos struck then.

Grasping the hand that held the dagger, he flipped me with such shocking ease that it was clear he could’ve done it at any moment.

“That wasn’t fair,” I cried out.

He came down over me within a heartbeat, trapping me. “What about me makes you think I’m fair?”

“Everything.” Panic was a strange thing, sucking away one’s strength one moment and giving near godlike power the next. I lifted my hips and clamped my legs down on his waist. I rolled him and popped to my feet with a shout, then jumped back, turning.

A low rumble from the sky shook the bare branches of the remaining trees, rattling them like dry bones. I looked up, catching only a brief glimpse of blackish-gray wings through the slowly drifting ash. Nektas. My heart seized—

Nyktos rose to one knee, twisting as he swept out his leg, catching mine. My feet went out from under me, and I hit the ground on my ass. Nyktos was fast—so damn fast. He rolled onto me again, but this time, he was smarter. One broad thigh wedged between mine as he captured both of my wrists, pi

“Drop it.” Eather spilled from Nyktos’s eyes and seeped under his skin, illuminating his veins as a thin trickle of blood coursed down his throat. “Drop the dagger, Sera. I don’t want to make you do it, but I will. Drop it.”

He could do just that, using compulsion. Panting, I forced my grip to relax. The hilt of the dagger slipped from my palm. It was over. Even if I managed to get free and somehow incapacitated Nyktos, I wouldn’t make it far. Not with Nektas in the air. “Happy?”

His eyes became pure silver with no discernible pupil—just glowing orbs. Those essence-lit veins continued spreading over his cheek and down his throat. In an instant, the minor wound there was gone. Only the faint trace of blood remained. “Tell me I’m wrong, Sera.”

My muscles went weak and my neck limp.

The essence bled out around him in thick tendrils of black laced with silver. Shadows churned under his skin. “Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me!” he shouted, the shadows spreading until his flesh was the color of midnight streaked with starlight, and the fingers around my wrists became as hard as shadowstone. “Tell me you were not going after Kolis!”

“I had to.”

“Wrong,” he snarled, the flash of fangs a shocking white against his skin.

My lips parted as he took his true form. Twin sweeping arcs rose behind him—as wide as he was tall. Solid, teaming masses of power that blocked out everything beyond him. I hadn’t been this close to him in the courtyard when he took this form, but I’d been close enough that I recognized the striking lines of his features beneath the churning, hard flesh: the height of his cheekbones, the lush, full lips, and thick, reddish-brown strands of hair that fell against the curve of his jaw.