Chapter 31
Chapter
Thirty-One
Imoved to lock his door, then turned the lock with a trembling hand.
The soft click echoed through the room like a death knell that hadn’t come, and gods, I’d almost heard it. Almost lost him.
Zander moved to the center of the room, his bare feet ghosting over stone, blood still streaking his ribs. His lavender eyes found mine like a tether snapping taut. Behind him, the bed loomed, freshly made. Clean. Precise. As if remaking it might undo what had nearly happened there.
“You should rest,” he said.
But the look in his eyes said the opposite. There was no peace in him. Only fire. And the kind of need that came from standing too close to the edge of death and realizing what you were about to lose.
He lifted his hand, palm up, silent, shaking slightly.
Come to me. His mind whispered in mine.
I crossed the space on legs that barely worked.
My magic pulsed unevenly beneath my skin, raw from the blood I’d given him, from the tether I’d nearly snapped to force his body to stay in this realm.
I could still taste that moment, when the bond between us had frayed so thin, I thought I’d feel it tear in half.
The ache of that terror still pulsed in my chest. I hadn’t just been scared. I’d been undone.
When I reached him, he didn’t speak. He just pulled me into his arms and kissed me like he needed to feel alive.
Gods.
It wasn’t gentle. Or sweet.
It was a claim. A confession. A desperate scream turned into a kiss.
His lips crashed into mine, and fire, his fire, spilled into my mouth like a plea. My storm magic lashed in response, unpredictable, violent, crackling up my spine and into my fingers as I clutched at him.
I didn’t care that my hands shook. That my body still ached from the power I had unleashed. That I was held together by stubbornness and lightning.
He was here. He was breathing.
That was enough.
His hands gripped my thighs and lifted me, effortless, reverently. I gasped as he laid me back onto the bed. My back hit the mattress, and for a heartbeat, the world spun, not from lust, but from sheer, brutal relief.
I blinked up at him, and the force of the night came crashing down.
“I thought I lost you,” I whispered, voice breaking. “Zander, I—” My throat closed around the rest.
His hand cupped my cheek. His thumb brushed the tear I hadn’t realized had fallen. “You didn’t,” he murmured, but his voice cracked too. “You brought me back.”
Another kiss. This one slower. Fierce in a different way. Like he was trying to memorize me. Like he didn’t believe we’d still have this come morning.
Our magic answered again. My storm rippling beneath his skin, his Dark Fire licking along my throat. The room filled with the scent of smoke and ozone. Something cracked, wood splitting in the bedpost. Rain hit the windows. The storm outside mirrored the one inside.
“You don’t get to leave me,” I said into his mouth, voice trembling. “Ever.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he breathed, resting his forehead against mine. “Not unless you tell me to.”
I pulled him down to me, curling around him like the lightning curling across the ceiling. Never, I wanted to scream. Never leave.
I didn’t care if the world burned. So long as he was with me in the flames.
Magic.
Dark Fire bled from his skin in sinuous spirals, each thread a living, breathing thing—twisting up the bedposts, licking at the velvet curtains with a predator’s hunger. The shadows came alive around us, not ominous, but reverent. Worshipful. As if they too knew this was sacred.
My storm answered with a violent flash of white-blue light. It didn’t shimmer—it cracked, bursting from my spine like lightning spearing the heart of a storm. Thunder answered in the skies above, booming so hard the glass in the windows trembled in their frames.
“You’re glowing,” Zander rasped, his lips brushing the shell of my ear. His voice… gods, it wasn’t steady. It was frayed, as if holding me was the only thing keeping him from falling apart.
“So are you,” I whispered, laying my palm against his chest.
His heart thundered beneath my hand, and his magic surged up to meet me, molten heat wrapped in shadow, pulsing like a war drum. A whimper broke from my throat. Not from fear, but from the overwhelming truth of him. I almost hadn’t gotten this moment. Almost hadn’t brought him back.
I tugged at the band of his pants, and they vanished into a whisper of black fire before he pulled off my tunic. The air around us dimmed, his magic curled into the walls, plunging the room into a soft, flickering glow, like dark starlight caught inside flame.
And then he just… looked at me.
As if seeing me for the first time. As if I were the only thing anchoring him to this plane.
“You saved me,” he said, voice wrecked and raw.
“You would’ve done the same.”
He didn’t argue. Didn’t speak again.
He just devoured my mouth in a kiss that ripped the breath from my lungs and replaced it with him.
His lips dragged fire down the column of my throat, over the swell of my chest, each press of his mouth imprinting something deeper than touch, something etched. When his magic found mine again, the bed beneath us shook. The air shimmered.
And the storm I’d tried so hard to contain broke free like a scream.
Rain lashed the windows. Wind howled like wolves at the edges of the eaves. I felt him in every nerve, every breath, every flash of lightning tearing across my skin. His fingers gripped my hips like he needed the grounding, like he’d lose himself in the moment if I didn’t keep him tethered.
And then he pushed into me.
Not just physically.
Magically.
Everything shattered.
Silver light burst from my chest. His Dark Fire climbed my ribs in ribbons of black flame, the collision of our power igniting the air in flares of silver and shadow.
The bedframe groaned and split.
A vase exploded across the mantel.
The floor beneath us hummed, wild, primal, like it could barely withstand the pressure of two storms colliding.
“Zander,” I cried, my back arching, magic sparking from my fingertips, casting jagged streaks of lightning across the ceiling.
He growled, deep and guttural, a sound that vibrated through me. “I thought…” he choked, thrusts hard and unrelenting, his fingers finding the apex of my need. “I can’t—” his voice broke, “I can’t lose you, Ashe.”
The way he said my name shattered me.
Tears slipped free as pleasure tore through me like a supernova. My climax came on a scream, storm magic ripping from my body in blinding arcs, blue and silver lightning crashing across the room. The walls trembled. The window panes groaned.
And when he came, it was a god’s reckoning.
Black flames climbed his spine in a rush of divine fury, his magic roaring out to meet mine in a searing burst that fused us, his Dark Fire swallowing my storm magic and binding it to him like a vow.
We collapsed together, tangled in each other and the wreckage of our power. The bedspread beneath us was soaked in sweat and energy, still crackling faintly.
His head dropped to my shoulder, and I threaded my fingers into his damp hair, holding him close. His breath was warm against my collarbone, steady now. Alive.
He’s alive.
I still have him.
But the terror of almost losing him still whispered through my ribs.
I closed my eyes and pressed a kiss to his temple.
He’s mine. And if fate ever tries to take him again… I’ll burn the gods-damned realms to ash.
I glanced around the room, ignoring the carnage we had created, before I noticed that there was a bottle of wine and several glasses on the table. Only one had been knocked over.
“How about a drink?” I asked.
“I think I can manage that,” he murmured, voice low and teasing as his magic coiled lazily around my waist like smoke. “Though maybe we should stick to water instead of wine. I’ve heard what happens when you drink too much. While I’m sure it would be highly entertaining.”
I turned in his arms, my magic flickering with playful heat as I met his gaze. “Are you implying I can’t hold my liquor, prince?”
“I would never,” he said with a grin that lit his features like wildfire. Dark Fire sparks flared in the air between us. “But if I read that report right, the last time, you challenged a fertility idol carved from runestone to a duel and lost.”
“That statue cheated,” I muttered, but the laughter slipped from my lips like sunlight. This was why I was falling for Zander. This side of him he rarely showed anyone.
I startled when someone rapped on his door hard. “Prince Rayne!”