4
EVIE
The boat slams sideways,and I’m airborne in the tiny cabin below deck for half a second before Kieran catches me, his arms locking around my waist as my back hits the wall.
Then he’s pressed against me, one hand braced beside my head, the other crushing me to his chest. And even though the world outside is tearing itself apart, all I can focus on is the weight of his body pinning mine to the wood, the heat of his skin bleeding through soaked clothes, and his breath coming fast and ragged against my temple as he refuses to let the ocean have me.
This is the Fury Loop all over again, except this time his heat signature isn’t spiking from desire—it’s spiking from fear. Every intense emotion in Kieran Cross runs through the same furnace, and whether it’s longing, terror, or the desperate need to keep someone alive, his body responds the same way: by burning.
Wood groans above us. Glass crashes and shatters with a sound like the world is ending. The violence outside becomes rhythmic, and through all of it, Kieran’s arms never loosen.
Hours later, the pitching slows, the roaring fades, and new sounds filter through the silence—water lapping against wood, birds calling in the distance, and wind rustling through leaves.
Kieran’s chest rises and falls against mine, slowing and steadying, although his heat never cools.
I should pull back. I should be assessing, cataloguing, and figuring out where we are and whether everyone survived.
But my body won’t cooperate. Because for the first time since Oliver vanished, the ache behind my ribs has gone quiet. It’s not healed or gone, but it’s buried beneath the steady rhythm of Kieran’s heartbeat against my cheek and the heat of his arms holding the fractured pieces of me together.
Then he’s on the other side of the cabin, cold rushing in where his body used to be, looking at me like I’ve poisoned him.
This is the same performance he gave in the Fury Loop. One second his body was pressed against mine, burning with desire he couldn’t hide. The next, he was standing over me with ice in his eyes, delivering a speech about emotional weakness while the evidence of his own weakness was scorched on my hip.
Now, he’s doing it again. Even though he put four feet of distance between us and his expression is carved from stone, his heat signature’sstillelevated from holding me. His core hasn’t dropped a single degree, and his pulse hasn’t steadied.
Kieran Cross can ice his expression, but he can’t ice his blood. He never could.
“We need to investigate,” he says, clipped and controlled, even though his body’s telling me the opposite. “Check on the others.”
He doesn’t wait for me to reply. He just opens the door, leaves the cabin, and climbs the ladder to the deck.
I press my palms flat against my thighs and count to ten. My hands are shaking. So, I count to twenty instead, then give up because the counting isn’t helping, and climb up after him.
Other than me and Kieran, the deck’s empty. The sun’s sinking beneath the horizon, turning the sky shades of orange and gold that would be gorgeous if I trusted anything beautifulright now. The ship’s drifted into a sheltered cove, rocking gently in calm water like the island reached out and pulled us in.
As for the island… there’s green everywhere, lush and vivid. It’s the kind of green that doesn’t exist in nature without serious help. A spring glints past the tree line, clear and musical, and my cracked lips ache at the sound. Luminescent flowers line the shore with more layers of petals than should be possible, and branches hang heavy with golden fruit that smells sweet enough to make my empty stomach cramp.
Every logical instinct I have is screaming that this is a trap, but every primal instinct wants to eat the fruit and drink from the spring until I burst.
Callie opens the hatch and emerges from below deck, her hair a tangled disaster and her skin sickly pale.
Logan follows with Jade in his arms. She’s pale and limp, her head resting against his shoulder as if she doesn’t have the strength to hold it up on her own.
Kieran moves across the deck, checking the containers we set out for rainwater that survived the storm. His jaw tightens before he speaks.
“The storm knocked everything over.”
Callie kicks an overturned bucket. “Are you kidding? She nearly killed us making that storm, and we couldn’t even catch some water?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Logan’s studying the island, the spring, and the golden fruit hanging from the branches. “This island has fresh water and food.”
He’s right—obviously he’s right. But there are also no structures, and no footprints in the sand.
Kieran walks over to me, his eyes fixed on my face with an intensity that makes my skin flush.
“What are you looking for?” he asks, as if he didn’t just hold me through a hurricane and then rip himself out of my arms like I was giving him frostbite.
“Signs of habitation,” I say, launching into facts to compensate for my failing emotions. “According to the texts, the Lost Islands are all occupied. Circe and her animals, Aeolus and his winds, the sirens and their cliffs, and the cyclops and their sheep, the Land of…”
