I didn’t understand.
He tugged and slipped the breeches down my legs. He kissed my inner thighs, teeth scraping against my skin, and I didn’t want him to stop anymore.
He pulled my undergarments down and smiled with untamed hunger, one finger slipping between my folds, causing my visionto blur.
“You are so wet for me,” he whispered. “I will taste all of it. Every piece of you.”
He buried his face between my legs, his tongue gently lapping once at the bud of my pleasure, already swollen from desire.
I moaned and arched my back, presenting myself to him. My fingers tangled in his thick blond hair, seeking something to anchor me.
But he had stopped. I looked at him—poised, still kneeling before me—his eyes holding mine captive. Though he kneeled, the power was entirely his.
“Let go, Evangelina,” he ordered.
Now I understood what he’d meant. He wanted me to shatter the blackiron box I’d built around my power and let the echoes pour through me.
How he knew I was a seerling, I had no idea. Perhaps he'd seen me lose control when he’d made me come apart, or perhaps he’d always known.
They said seerlings lacked control, that our gift was a curse turned inward. But the truth was worse. I could reach into the past of anything that breathed or bled, feel what it had felt, hear what it had heard, see what it had seen. That was the real reason we were shunned—not for the visions we failed to control, but for what we could never unsee.
Kael didn’t seem to care. Yet I wasn’t ready to open myself to him. Not now. Not here.
He traced kisses down my lower belly, into my inner thighs. He bit my flesh hard, sucking my skin, and granted me a low growl. “Then I’ll make you.”
He lapped at the bud between my legs again, once, twice, multiple times. Pleasure began to swell the faster his tongue worked me. His hands settled on my hips, fingers digging into my flesh to keep me in place. I began writhing, grinding against his mouth just to feel him more.
Then, like a wave about to crash on high cliffs, I felt myself drawvery close to that release. One hand tangled in his hair, the other gripped his shoulder, and I moaned in broken, uneven gasps, still fighting to quiet myself.
He growled, perhaps sensing how close I was, and he flicked his tongue faster than humanly possible.
I opened my eyes wide, light swelling behind them. This was it. I was about to lose control, to let all the echoes flood into me…
Then a loud, deafening roar—if it could even be called that—tore through the forest.
It yanked me back to reality, my vision snapping into focus. “What… What was that?” I pushed Kael away.
He rose swiftly to his feet, wiped his mouth, and glanced over his shoulder.
The roar came again, broken and metallic, a sound that seemed to scrape the air itself.
I tugged my breeches back into place and fastened my torn tunic as best I could.
“Where is it coming from?” I whispered, fear rising like fire through my veins.
Kael flicked his hand in warning for silence, then moved forward slowly, soundlessly, between the trees. I followed close behind.
Beyond the treeline, the ground turned dry and slick with black tar. The sight that met us was nothing short of desolation.
A village had stood here not long ago. Its palisade of upright logs lay shattered or strangled in black vines.
The stench hit next, dead flesh and rot. It was the smell of hospices during the plague, the air that hung over mass graves.
Kael halted before what must have been the village gate. I caught up to him, watching the way his eyes darkened, his jaw tight, his brows drawn low.
Before us, the streets glistened with oozing tar. Houses of wood lay burned and broken. Beneath a fallen beam, I glimpsed a blackened hand, charred, unmoving. A corpse.
We advanced through the ruin, stepping over one body afteranother, each one both burned and rotting, as though fire and decay had claimed them at once.
