Just like that.
No preamble. No softening. No bullshit.
“Come,” he growls.
My heart slams so hard it physically hurts.
Of all the lines anyone could possibly say to me—pickup lines, pleas, threats, lies—that one lands like a hook straight through my ribs.
“If someone is hurt,” I say automatically, nodding, training taking over even as my brain scrambles to keep up, “I can help. That’s what I do.”
His gaze sharpens, something fierce and approving flickering there.
“Many are hurt where I am from,” he says. “Entire cities. Entire bloodlines. I have no time to woo you, Delia. No desire to dress this in pretty words or half-truths.”
“That’s… not reassuring,” I mutter.
“I am not here to reassure you.”
I swallow. “I don’t understand. What are you saying?”
He steps closer, and the heat rolling off him is unreal—not like fire, not like pain, but like standing too close to something alive and powerful.
Dangerous in a way that makes my skin hum.
“I come from another world where many are right now suffering and in need,” he says. “Will you answer the call and aid me in the saving of my realm and my people?”
Another world.
Not a city.
Not a country.
A world.
My stomach drops.
“Oh God,” I whisper. “This can’t be happening.”
“It is happening, Shula,” he says quietly, and the word does something strange to me—settles low in my chest, warm and electric. “And it must happen now. Come with me.”
My pulse stutters.
“W-why me?” I ask the question absurd even as it tears out of me. “You don’t even know me.”
He studies my face, my stance, the way my weight is already angled toward him like I’ve decided something my mind hasn’t caught up with yet.
Then he steps forward.
Close enough that I can see the flecks of molten gold in his eyes. Close enough that I can smell smoke and stone and something undeniably male beneath it all.
“Because you will be good for Nightfall,” he murmurs and for one instance I swear I see a shadow or image flash over his too handsome face—like a skull.
“O-okay,” I whisper.
Then the world erupts.
Flames roar around us, swallowing sound and light.
