Page 95 of Conquering the King of Storms

The man just didn’t quit.

I respected the hell out of him for it, even if I couldn’t admit it.

“You saw your city burn, the same way I did. Flame didn’t just roast it; he fucking destroyed it.”

“I’m not a city.”

Damn him.

He justcouldn’tlet me sulk.

“If I let myself, I would break you just as easily as he did your city,” I said, my voice low.

Quake didn’t have an answer ready for that one.

But I’d officially told him a hell of a lot more than I’d wanted to.

“Margo,” he began, his voice low and silky.

If one of us was going to call the otherVelvet, it should be me. His voice was ridiculously smooth and seductive, and it made me weak. I said things I shouldn’t around him—did things I shouldn’t, too.

And in that moment, I made the decision.

It was the only decision to make.

If I continued standing there next to him, I was going to hand him more answers to the questions he’d been asking since I woke him up.

So I walked into the fire.

And when it burned, it reignited the flames blazing in my chest.

I was going to make it.

I was going to be fine.

And if I tried hard enough, maybe I wouldn’t burn the world to the fucking ground on my way to becomingfine.

Quake’s eyes locked with mine through the fire, and the flames grew.

And grew.

And grew.

He couldn’t see me with his eyes, but I felt like he stared into my soul.

I wanted to stay in those fucking flames for the rest of my life.

But something told me that if I did, he would stomp right into the fucking flames and refuse to walk out of them without me… no matter what it cost him.