“It’s the first real thing I’ve heard from you in days.”
The laughter dies, and the silence it leaves behind is worse. Because Kieran’s looking at me the way he did in the Fury Loop, right before he flipped me over and pinned me on the stone, his green eyes intense and focused.
So, I move forward an inch, daring him to come closer, to slash that boundary down with as much ferocity as when he attacks anything with his sword.
“No,” he says instead.
“Why not?”
“Because I’m your teacher.”
“Youweremy teacher, at Blaze Academy,” I say, steadying myself. “Out here, we’re fugitives. You’re not the combat instructor who makes first-years bleed before breakfast anymore. Now you’re just Kieran, and you’ve been the only thing keeping me from falling apart since you found me on the Crown.”
His jaw goes tight, his expression hard as he starts locking down again.
No. I’m not going to sit here and let him ignore whatever thisthingis between us. We’ve been dancing around it for too long, my patience is worn thin, and I’ve had enough.
“Tell me you haven’t thought about the Fury Loop,” I continue in the boldest, most non-Evie Thorne way possible.
“Nothing happened in the Fury Loop.” He doesn’t even flinch, or make any sign he heard me at all. He’s just… blank.
“You pinned me to the ground.” The words tumble out, hot and reckless, which makes me want to challenge him even more. “And I felt exactly how much you enjoyed it. Every. Single. Inch of it.”
For an endless second, neither of us breathes. The space between us is so charged that if my magic was at full power, my scanning would white out from the heat.
Then his shoulders go rigid, his hands curl into fists at his sides, and the walls slam back up.
“You felt the Fury Loop’s magic,” he says, cold and controlled. “It amplifies everything. Anger, fear, desire… none of it was real.”
Liar.
The word pulses through me, hot and certain.
Because his pupils are blown wide, and his heat signature’s spiking to a level I’ve recorded exactly once before—in the Fury Loop, with his hips pinning mine to the stone and his body doing things his mouth has never acknowledged.
I have months of thermal data on Kieran Cross. His resting baseline, his combat spikes, the warmth when he watches a student improve, and his steady heat while he held me on his bed after he found me on the Crown. The only match in my entire dataset of what he’s doing right now is the day he pressed me into the burnt red rock and told me not to say a word.
He just told me that moment wasn’t real, and his body’s calling him a liar in degrees I can literally measure.
“Your heat signature says otherwise,” I say, because apparently, all bets are off now.
“What?” He pulls back like I shoved him, his eyes widening a fraction before he locks it down.
“Your heat signature,” I repeat. “It’s only been this high once before, and that was during that moment in the Fury Loop.”
His breath stops for two full seconds, and the heat signature I just called out spikes even higher, because apparently being confronted with proof that I can measure his desire is doing the opposite of calming him down.
The silence stretches until it hurts. Then he swallows hard, sets his jaw, and does what Kieran Cross always does when he’s cornered—retreats behind a blade.
“I can’t give you what you want,” he finally says, and his heat doesn’t spike.
He believes what he’s saying. And that hurts worse than if he’d lied, because a lie I could argue with.
“You don’t know what I want,” I say instead, although it comes out shaky and unsure.
“You want the fantasy.” His heat spikes again, his eyes hard with the desire he’s trying and failing to suppress. “You want the forbidden romance. And you want the thrill of breaking the rules.”
He steps closer, and then we’re chest to chest, so close that I have to look up to meet his eyes. His heat’s everywhere now, surrounding me, and my body leans into it before my brain gives permission.
