This man is absolutelydeadly.
And I’m apparently reckless enough to want him anyway.
A gentle knock comes ten minutes later, soft, almost apologetic. I don’t bother getting up to answer it. The lock disengages from the outside, and Ivy slips in, her bark-textured hands already glowing with that green light that promises healing without question.
She doesn’t say anything at first. Just crosses to where I’m sitting, sets down a small basket of supplies, and begins examining the frost burns with clinical efficiency that suggests she’s done this before, has treated injuries inflicted by the president’s ice on beings who pushed him too far.
“You’re so brave,” she says finally, her voice carrying that deep resonance of ancient forests as she spreads cooling salve over the worst of the burns. “Foolish, but brave. Most people don’t survive confronting Raze when he’sthatangry.”
“Most people probably have better survival instincts than I do.”
A faint smile curves her lips, barely there, but present. “Perhaps. Or perhaps you understand something the rest of us are still figuring out.” She works in silence for another moment before adding, “The flame hasn’t burned that bright in decades. Not since before the curse took full hold. Whatever you are to him, it’s changing things. Shifting patterns that have been locked in place for longer than most civilizations have existed.”
I want to ask what that means, to demand answers about flames, curses, and why touching him felt like touchinglightning, but exhaustion steals my voice before I can form the questions.
Ivy finishes treating the burns, wraps my arms in soft bandages that smell faintly of herbs and earth, then she rises to leave.
She pauses at the door, glancing back with eyes that see too much. “He hasn’t told any outsiders his name in over a century,” she says quietly. “Whatever’s happening between you… it matters. More than either of you are ready to accept.”
Then she’s gone, leaving me alone with bandaged arms, aching shoulders, and the terrifying knowledge that I possibly made everything exponentially more complicated by refusing to break when any sane person would have.
The flame in the dome, a few rooms away from me, surges so bright that I swear I can feel it from here, gold and crimson pulsing through stone and distance like a heartbeat matching my own.
And in the silence of my gilded cage, I finally understand what the witch’s curse really means.
True contentment.
The flame only reignites when Raze finds it.
Which apparently requires a stubborn photographer who refuses to bow, refuses to break, and refuses to pretend that the chemistry between them doesn’t exist.
This is going to end in disaster.
I can feel it right down to my bones.
But as I lay back on the bed and close my eyes against the complications gathering like storm clouds, I catch myself wondering, what would have happened if I’d reached up and touched his face instead of telling him to leave.
Would the ice have melted?
Or would we both have burned?
Chapter Ten
RAZE
The Next Evening
Like some pathetic fool who can’t stay away, I find myself standing outside her door. My hand hovers over the lock, frost already creeping across my knuckles despite my best efforts to maintain control. Every rational instinct screams that visiting her again is a mistake, that the chemistry crackling between us yesterday created complications I don’t need, that I should send Ivy or one of the brothers if she needs anything instead of personally checking on a prisoner who’s already gotten under my skin in ways I refuse to examine.
But the flame in the dome burned brighter after our confrontation. Gold threading through crimson in patterns I haven’t seen since before the curse took hold. And some traitorous part of me needs to understand why, to see if proximity to her creates the same surge of life in magic that’s been slowly dying for decades.
The lock disengages under my touch. I push the door open to find Roxy sitting at the desk, bandaged arms resting on top of closed ledgers, staring out the barred window at mountains painted gold by the setting sun. She doesn’t turn when I enter or acknowledge my presence with anything except the slight tensing of her shoulders that suggests she knows exactly who just invaded her space.
“Come to freeze me again?” Her voice carries none of yesterday’s fury, just exhaustion threading through words delivered with the same flat tone reserved for bad news that no longer surprises. “Because fair warning, I’m too tired to fight back properly tonight.”
The statement lands harder than it should, guilt twisting in my chest like a blade I didn’t know I was capable of feeling anymore. I’ve frozen countless enemies over the centuries, turned flesh to ice without hesitation or regret because they threatened what was mine. But seeing the bandages wrapped around her arms, knowing I put those marks there in a moment of lost control, makes something uncomfortable shift beneath the glacial armor I’ve built around whatever passes for a heart in creatures like me.
“I came to talk.” The admission escapes before I can stop it, honest in ways I haven’t been with anyone except Scar in longer than I care to remember. “If you’ll allow it.”
