She opened her mouth, but I didn’t let her answer.
I gripped her waist, lifted her from my lap, and placed her carefully on her bedroll. She made a small sound of protest—half frustration, half plea—but the blood was already pounding in my ears.
“This is like the roof in the west wing. Ihaveto go, Isca. I’m sorry.”
I didn’t wait for her to ask again. I stepped back from her—one heartbeat, two—and vanished.
I appeared in a stand of trees nearly half a mile from camp. But it wasn’t far enough. I burned with too much magic.
So I cast again. The world blew past my vision, and I emerged in a field further south. Then again. And again.
Each jump drained a fraction of the tension in my veins, but not enough of the curse’s building pressure. Not nearly enough.
I didn’t stop until I stood in the heart of an ancient wood. The silence compared to the camp was immediate and almost jarring. I heard no scuffle of animals, no people, nothing. There was only me and the roar of need running through my veins.
Gods only knew how far I’d gone. Moonlight carved a silver lance through the canopy overhead. The trees here grew thick and twisted, knotted with time. Moss blanketed the forest floor, swallowing sound, andmist curled around my boots like ghost-hands reaching up from the land of the dead.
I braced one hand against a towering boulder—the only thing able to withstand what I was about to unleash. My other hand fumbled at the laces of my trousers.Pathetic. They were barely halfway undone before the heat surged up again, too strong to cage.
I slammed a palm into the stone.
Fire erupted in a blast of raw magic, lighting the boulder in a shimmer of orange and blue flame. It was this or destroy something that could break.
Just like that night after our encounter in the library and after she’d let me touch her in my room, I had to seek release several times, burning through my magic, through my desire, destroying more each time as I unraveled.
Just thinking of the way she’d quivered, of her little sounds, and the feel of her lips as she welcomed me in, made my conflagration burn all the hotter. If she were ever to allow me to truly join with her, I would have to take her to an isolated place to vent my devastation safely.
By the time the curse loosened its grip, the boulder’s surface felt almost pliable from the intense heat I’d directed at it. A shield kept my skin safe, but it still glowed faintly with the aftershocks of magic.
I leaned against another nearby stone and let my head fall forward, breathing in slow, deliberate pulls of forest air. Her presence was a phantom sensation on my skin, a taste on my tongue. She echoed in my very being.
I want to make you feel the same way.
She hadno ideawhat she was asking.
I took one last breath, gathered my magic into myself again, and took the first leap toward our camp.
When I stepped back into the tent, her floral perfume and the memory of our joined breath hit me first. My magic stirred again at the familiarity, at her, at the feeling of home she carried everywhere.
Isca was curled in her bedroll, one hand resting on my bed as if she’d reached for me in her sleep. Even in rest, she glowed. Her golden waves shimmered in the firelight. Her lips, slightly parted, still carried the soft flush of my attention. She looked like peace incarnate—and to me, she was.
I stayed near the entrance, afraid to move too quickly, afraid I might wake her. My body still hummed with the aftermath of my release, but now it was a softer thing.
She’d given herself to me in a way that felt deeper than mere touch. And I’d been forced to run from heragain. Not because I didn’t care for her. How could I not? But because the curse loved her too.
It had tasted her in the air, on my hands, in the surrender of herplease. It wanted more. I’d spent years believing I could cage it, separate myself from the thing rotting in my blood. But as I looked at her now, sleeping, unaware, I realized the truth:
We will never let her go.
Maybe I’d become more like the beast inside than I’d realized. The monster that had burned through battalions and constantly tested my control stirred again now, at the thought of losing her.
The curse growled with something too close to a demand.
I clenched my fists and breathed through it, forcing the wild magic down before it could claw its way out and ruin everything, like it always did. It wanted to possess, to claim, but it needed to understand that now was not the time—even though she said she wanted it.
She trusted me. Even when I barely trusted myself.
I crossed the tent quietly, slow enough not to disturb her, and sat on the edge of the bedroll. Her fingers twitched as I gathered the blanket over her shoulder. I let my knuckles brush her cheek, feather-light, and she sighed softly.
