Evie
Reality reforms, and I’m standing in the middle of Kieran’s room, which looks just as I remembered.
Now, warm, humid air fills the space, carrying the scent of soap.
The bathroom door is open just a crack, and his heat signature hits my senses before I see him, running even hotter than usual.
Steam curls through the gap in the door, and my scanning maps him automatically, the way it always does with Kieran.
Core temperature elevated, pulse steady, blood running close to the surface of his skin from the hot water.
Oh my gods.
I should leave. I should fire travel to my room before he walks out and finds me standing in his bedroom like a stalker with a thermal imaging problem.
Too late.
Kieran steps out of the bathroom wearing only a towel, water droplets tracing paths down his chest, and every hard line of muscle catches the low light like he was carved for exactly this kind of ambush.
My analytical brain has never failed me before, but right now it’s failing spectacularly, because the data points keep dissolving into sensation.
My eyes are drifting lower, to the dual dagger tattoos on his hip bones.
The ink is dark and precise, the blades pointing down to dangerous territory covered by the towel slung low around his hips.
Rows of tally marks cover his left side from below his pecs to the edge of the towel, all of them grouped in five until the final three.
My gaze snaps up to his face, and he raises one dark eyebrow, crossing his arms over his bare chest as if finding a student in his bedroom is a minor inconvenience instead of a major intrusion that could get me expelled.
“I was wondering when you’d show up.”
My brain short-circuits. “You were?”
“After what happened this morning, I assumed you’d come to me.”
This morning.
Jade’s face through the shimmering heat as my magic poured out of me like an open furnace in the Fury Loop, fueled by grief and rage until I couldn’t tell where my emotions ended and the fire began.
I took it too far.
The thought’s been circling my brain all day. I’ve been trying to outrun it with research, but standing here with Kieran watching me like he can see every ugly thing I’m hiding, I can’t run anymore.
“I didn’t come to talk about that,” I say, steadier than I expected. “I need your help with something else.”
“We’ll get to that in a bit.” He moves slowly to his wardrobe, apparently completely unconcerned about his state of undress. “First, we’re talking about what happened in my Circle.”
“There’s nothing to talk about. I lost control. It won’t happen again.”
He pulls out a shirt but doesn’t put it on. “Lost isn’t what I saw.”
I frown. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that wasn’t a loss of control. It was precise, deadly power.” His eyes hold mine, sharp and intent. “You held your heat shield for over three minutes while channeling enough thermal energy to kill Jade Harrington.”
“Witches can’t kill other witches with fire,” I protest. “It’s one of the fundamental laws of magic.”
“Your fire wasn’t killing her.” He sits on the edge of his bed, watching me with an intensity that makes my skin prickle. “Your heat shield was cooking the air, stealing oxygen to form a vacuum around her. Fire immunity doesn’t stop suffocation.”
I think about Jade’s face through the shimmering heat. She was gasping for air, and then she stopped moving, her skin already blue when the lightning struck.
She was suffocating. I could have killed her. Not theoretically. Not hypothetically. I could have actually killed my best friend while lost in my own grief, and I wouldn’t have realized what I was doing until it was too late.
“I didn’t know I could do that.” My voice sounds distant and strange, and the room is getting warmer, the torches on the walls flaring brighter.
“You’re spiraling,” Kieran says. “Stop.”
“I can’t—”
Cold steel presses against my throat.
My brain stutters to a halt.
Because Kieran’s face is inches from mine, his expression carved from stone. One hand grips the back of my neck, holding me in place. The other wields a dagger, the flat of the blade resting against my pulse point.
“The steel against your skin is all you’re going to focus on,” he says, low and deadly calm. “Not your guilt. Not your fear.” He presses the blade slightly harder. It’s not enough to cut, but it’s enough to make my breath catch. “Just the steel. Understood?”
I can’t nod without risking slicing my throat open, so I whisper, “Yes.”
“Good.” His eyes hold mine, dark green and merciless. “Your magic responds to your emotions. Panic feeds the fire. So, you don’t get to panic. You get to focus. Find what’s real, what’s physical, and hold onto it until it’s all that’s left.”
The problem is that “real and physical” currently includes the heat of his palm against the back of my neck, his fingers pressing into my skin, and the fact that he smells like soap and steel.
“This is insane,” I manage.
“This is survival.” He doesn’t move the blade. “Magic doesn’t care if you’re ready to use it. Enemies don’t wait politely while you work through your feelings. Your flames respond to what you feel, and if you can’t control what you feel, you learn to redirect it.”
My heart’s still pounding, but it’s adrenaline instead of panic. Fear of the blade instead of fear of myself.
Underneath both is the acute awareness that Kieran Cross is holding me by the back of my neck with one hand and pressing a blade to my pulse with the other, and my heat sensing is reading his signature as elevated, fierce, and entirely focused on me.
He told me to find what’s real and physical and hold onto it.
I don’t think he meant him.
“Is the fire still building?” he asks.
I take stock. The surge has faded to an ember. The torches have returned to normal. The room’s no longer getting warmer.
“No.”
“Good.” He withdraws the dagger, spinning it once before setting it on his desk.
I raise a shaking hand to my throat.
There’s no blood. He was precise. And I wasn’t scared, because Kieran Cross is a furnace wearing a mask of ice, and my heat sensing has never once been fooled.
“You keep a blade within arm’s reach at all times,” I observe, sounding way too casual for someone who just had a blade to her throat.
“I keep several.” He makes his way to the bed and pulls his shirt over his head, the tally marks on his ribs disappearing beneath the fabric. “Better ten than none.”
The marks are gone now, hidden under black cotton, but I can still see them when I close my eyes.
“What are the tally marks on your ribs?” The question slips out before I can stop it.
He goes still. It’s not the coiled stillness of a predator about to strike, but like he’s locking a door from the inside.
“They’re a kill count.” His words land like stones. “All seventy-three of them. Mostly vampires. Some rogues. A few… others.”
Seventy-three tally marks, each one representing a person who stopped breathing because of Kieran Cross.
“That’s...” I search for the right word.
“A lot.” He finishes for me, one corner of his mouth curving into the ghost of a smile. “You asked.”
I did ask. Now I’m standing in his room, staring at a man who’s killed more people than I’ve had meaningful conversations with in my entire life.
“Why tattoo them?” I ask, since I’m apparently in interview Kieran Cross mode. “Why keep count at all?”
“Because forgetting would be worse.” He moves to the wardrobe, and I try not to watch his back muscles shifting beneath his shirt. “Every mark is a reminder of what I’m capable of, and of what this world requires.”
A map of violence permanently etched onto his skin.
Most people would be calculating the nearest exit and fire traveling back to their room by now. Instead, my heat signature is spiking in ways I desperately hope he can’t sense as I wonder what it would feel like to trace each mark with my fingertips.
It’s data I would have no business collecting. But since when has that ever stopped a Thorne from pursuing forbidden research?
“You don’t want that kind of weight,” he says, yanking me out of my extremely inappropriate thoughts that I should definitely not be having about my combat instructor. “Trust me.”
With that, his expression closes off like a blade resheathed.
I don’t push. Some doors aren’t meant to be opened.
“I didn’t come to talk about the Fury Loop,” I say, forcing my thoughts back on track. “I came because I need to access the Ember Archives. Tonight. Right now.”
Kieran pauses, one hand on the wardrobe door, his eyes locked on mine as he waits for me to explain.
So, I do.
“Every text I’ve found about the sea surrounding the island references sources that are locked in the Ember Archives.
Maritime records, navigation logs, and star charts, to name a few.
I tried to get in myself, but I couldn’t, which is why I need your help.
Because if Oliver’s out there, I need to know what he’s facing. ”
“You tried to break into the Ember Archives,” he repeats, as if that’s the most surprising part of what I told him.
“The wards nearly gave me frostbite.” I hold up my palm, where a red mark is still visible. “Even with the Crown’s amplification, I couldn’t breach them.”
He pulls a pair of black pants from his wardrobe, his fingers move to the towel at his waist, and every rational thought in my brain evacuates.
“Turn around,” he says, the command sharp.
I spin toward the wall so fast I nearly trip over my feet, my cheeks burning at the sound of the towel dropping, my brain supplying images I absolutely should not be imagining.
He’s your combat instructor. Stop it.
“You can look now.”
I turn back cautiously. Kieran’s fully dressed in dark tactical clothes, black from head to toe, a belt of weapons wrapped around his hips.
His black hair is damp, pushed back from his face in a way that sharpens the angles of his jaw and cheekbones, and somehow the transition from half-naked to fully armed hasn’t made him any less distracting.
If anything, it’s worse, because now the tattoos I was cataloging are half-hidden beneath fitted black fabric, and my brain keeps filling in what’s underneath like a map I’ve memorized.
He studies me for a moment, then nods once. “Give me your hand.”
I reach for him without hesitation, and his fingers close around mine, hot and steady.
“I’m guiding the travel, to make sure we end up in the same place,” he says, and then the world erupts into flames and dissolves into heat.
* * *
Reality reforms in darkness.
Kieran and I are standing in front of the iron door that leads to the Ember Archives.
Cordelia’s heat signature glows near the main entrance, but other than that, no one else is in the library.
“We’re clear,” I whisper.
Kieran releases my hand, presses his palm against the iron, and the door swings open.
It would have been nice if the door had done that for me, but hey, beggars can’t be choosers. Especially since I’d beg for Kieran Cross to... no. Absolutely not. That’s a hypothesis I’m not going to finish formulating.
Beyond the door, a spiral staircase descends into darkness. The air rising from below is cool and dry, carrying the smell of dust and old paper.
“After you.” Kieran gestures for me to enter first. “I’ll watch your back.”
The words are simple and tactical, but the intensity in his tone makes them sound like more than strategy.
No. Not going there, either.
The stairs are narrow, carved directly into volcanic rock, worn smooth by centuries of footsteps. Torches ignite as we descend, casting dancing shadows on the walls.
Down and down and down. Two hundred and seventeen steps with Kieran right behind me, his heat signature burning steady against my back like a hand pressed between my shoulder blades.
Finally, the Archives spread out before us, massive and silent. Rows upon rows of shelves stretch into darkness, packed with books, scrolls, and artifacts that fill every available space.
An ancient, forbidden library. We’re in my domain now.
“This is going to take a while,” I tell Kieran as I start cataloguing the layout, organizing the space into searchable sections.
“I need to cross-reference maritime texts, routing records, bestiary entries, star charts… anything that discusses the sea around the island and how to properly navigate it.”
“I assumed as much.”
“You’re going to help me search.” I pull my notes from my bag and thrust half of them at him. “These are the texts I know exist. Start with those.”
He takes the notes, scanning them with a speed that suggests he’s actually reading them. “You’re very organized.”
“I’m a Thorne. Organization is genetic.” I’m already moving to the stacks, my heat sensing guiding me through the darkness. “Now stop talking and start searching. We have work to do.”