Standin’ there in the dark, pretendin’ I didn’t want what I wanted.
Lark had crawled under my skin without even tryin’. I wanted her laugh in my head. Her scent in my sheets. Her eyes on me instead of every shadow she kept chasin’.
I wanted her.
The real question—the one sittin’ low and heavy in my chest—how the hell does a man like me go about gettin’ a woman like her?
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
THE GIRL HADforgotten how to look overher shoulder. I’d been watching long enough to notice that.
She moved through the world now like a stray ember—small, defiant, untended. Her hair flowing free, her eyes bright. Freedom had changed her shape but not her purpose. The Flame had once chosen her for me, for service, for devotion. That didn’t fade just because she ran.
I waited until she disappeared through the door before letting the breath leave my chest. The same air she breathed, and I’d almost missed it.
Once, she’d knelt before me by the fire. Her voice had been soft when she spoke the verses, her hands trying not to tremble under the heat.My vessel of light,I’d called her.My gift from the Flame.
And then she’d sinned.
I could still feel her teeth on my arm, the flash of her defiance. My fingers brushed the scar now, and I smiled faintly. Pain had always been the Flame’s way of reminding me I was chosen. I never minded. I welcomed it. That’s what made Lark so perfect for me, her fight. I craved it. Fed on it.
She thought I burned the night she escaped. Thought I was gone. But fire does not destroy the faithful, it refines them.
We’d rebuilt before. We would again.
The Flame had tested me with loss, stripped me of comfort, left me only my purpose.
And purpose is all a man needs.
I pulled the photograph from my coat pocket, grainy, distant, but unmistakable. Her, caught in front of a fire. Her sin made flesh.
“Soon,” I whispered. “You’ll come home. You’ll kneel again. You’ll remember who you are.”
A car passed, its headlights washing over the tree I hid behind before fading back into the dark. I didn’t move until the silence settled again.
Somewhere beyond the house, I heard the low thunder of a motorcycle, the man’s machine. The one who stayed too close, who spoke to her like she wasn’t already claimed.
A slow smile pulled at my mouth. The Flame would not be denied its vessel.
I stepped back from the tree and slipped into the night with the calm certainty of a man already blessed.
***
THE MAN WAITEDwhere I told him to, just off the highway, past the broken sign that once marked the edge of Charleston County. The night hung heavy with humidity, the air humming with insects.
He didn’t speak when I approached. None of them did. Not until I gave permission.
“You came,” I said quietly. “Good.”
A nod from the shadowed figure.
“What have you learned about the others?”
“Scattered,” he said. “But still in the area.”
“I want locations,” I murmured. I stepped closer, close enough to catch the faint scent of his cologne. “The Flame doesn’t die. It only waits for kindling to reignite.”
He swallowed. “And her?”
