Hold it like I would hold a patient on the edge of panic, on the edge of death.
“I’ve got you,” I whisper, forearms shaking with the strain. “I’ve got you. Come back to me, Thorne. Please.”
The fire bucks.
It surges up my arms, searing through every vein. My back arches. A scream tears out of my throat—not of fear, but of too much.
Too much heat. Too much love. Too much everything.
“Please remember who you are,” I choke out, tears boiling on my cheeks. “You are Thorne. Lord of Fire. Demon Prince of the Broken Plains. Keeper of the Flame. My mate. My viyen. My heart. Come back to me.”
For a second, nothing happens.
Then—the world shifts.
The wildness in his heart flickers.
Then steadies.
The flames around us falter. The blinding light inside his ribcage dims from white-hot to ember-red.
His roar dies mid-sound, breaking off into a ragged exhale that rumbles through the ground and my bones.
Slowly, painfully—the giant skeleton begins to shrink.
Bones soften. Melt back into muscle and skin. Wings of fire fold inward, dissolving into sparking ash that the wind picks up and scatters across the camp.
I keep my hands where they are until the very last second.
Until the moment my palms are pressed not against a cage of living flame—but against the hot, solid chest of a man I love more than is probably healthy.
Thorne collapses to his knees in front of me, gasping, sweat, and soot streaking his face. His bone mask is gone. His eyes are his again—molten ember with that deep, aching gold beneath.
“Shula,” he rasps.
Then he folds forward and wraps his arms around my waist, pressing his forehead to my stomach like he did before in the camp. His whole body shakes.
I drag in a trembling breath.
“I’m here,” I whisper, tangling my fingers in his soot-damp hair. “I’m here. I’ve got you.”
Around us, the camp is eerily quiet.
The SoulTakers have been pushed back—at least for now. The soldiers stand frozen. The other Lords stare, all in varying states of shock, scorched and panting.
No one speaks.
Thorne tilts his head, cheek pressed to my thigh, eyes closed as if he can’t bear to look at me just yet.
“You reached into my fire,” he says hoarsely. “You held my heart in your hands. You could have been destroyed.”
“Yeah,” I say softly, brushing ash from his hair. “But that wouldn’t have helped anybody.”
I swallow past the lump in my throat.
“And anyway,” I add, voice shaking but sure, “your heart’s mine now. I’m not letting anyone—even you—burn it out.”
His hands clench at my hips.
