Prologue 1 Delia #2
“Listen to me, Shula,” he says calmly, like the world is not burning down around us. “You are a woman of honor and bravery. You saw fire and ran toward it. I have been looking a long time for you.”
My pulse stutters again. “W—what?”
“And now,” he continues, voice steady and absolute, “you will come with me. To be my queen.”
I laugh.
I have to.
Because if I don’t, I might scream.
This is shock.
Smoke inhalation. Adrenaline.
My brain trying to protect itself.
“Okay—look,” I say, pulling back a step and lifting my hands between us like that might slow whatever this is. “That’s enough. You’re in distress.”
His eyes flicker—not with confusion, not with panic, but with something like impatience.
“I assure you,” he says evenly, “I am not.”
“But you can’t be serious.”
My voice comes out breathier than I intend.
Adrenaline is still buzzing through me, the house still burning behind us, sirens wailing like a bad soundtrack to a nightmare.
“Why can’t I be?”
“Y-you were standing in a fire. Smoke inhalation can cause delusions.
“Yet I remain untouched by flames.”
“How is this possible?” Fear, panic, and more so, curiosity fill me.
“I have come from very far to find you. You see, my world is under attack,” he says bluntly, like he’s stating the weather, “and I need you, Delia Esposito, to save it.”
He extends his hand.
Just like that.
No preamble. No softening. No bullshit.
“Come,” he growls.
My heart slams so hard it physically hurts.
Of all the lines anyone could possibly say to me—pickup lines, pleas, threats, lies—that one lands like a hook straight through my ribs.
“If someone is hurt,” I say automatically, nodding, training taking over even as my brain scrambles to keep up, “I can help. That’s what I do.”
His gaze sharpens, something fierce and approving flickering there.
“Many are hurt where I am from,” he says. “Entire cities. Entire bloodlines. I have no time to woo you, Delia. No desire to dress this in pretty words or half-truths.”
“That’s… not reassuring,” I mutter.
“I am not here to reassure you.”
I swallow. “I don’t understand. What are you saying?”
He steps closer, and the heat rolling off him is unreal—not like fire, not like pain, but like standing too close to something alive and powerful.
Dangerous in a way that makes my skin hum.
“I come from another world where many are right now suffering and in need,” he says. “Will you answer the call and aid me in the saving of my realm and my people?”
Another world.
Not a city.
Not a country.
A world.
My stomach drops.
“Oh God,” I whisper. “This can’t be happening.”
“It is happening, Shula,” he says quietly, and the word does something strange to me—settles low in my chest, warm and electric. “And it must happen now. Come with me.”
My pulse stutters.
“W-why me?” I ask the question absurd even as it tears out of me. “You don’t even know me.”
He studies my face, my stance, the way my weight is already angled toward him like I’ve decided something my mind hasn’t caught up with yet.
Then he steps forward.
Close enough that I can see the flecks of molten gold in his eyes. Close enough that I can smell smoke and stone and something undeniably male beneath it all.
“Because you will be good for Nightfall,” he murmurs and for one instance I swear I see a shadow or image flash over his too handsome face—like a skull.
“O-okay,” I whisper.
Then the world erupts.
Flames roar around us, swallowing sound and light.
Heat slams into me from every direction.
I can’t see.
Can’t hear. Can’t breathe.
Panic claws up my throat, sharp and feral—then strong arms wrap around me.
Huge. Solid. Unbreakable.
His body cages mine completely, shielding me from the inferno that also seems to be coming from him—like wings.
It’s as if the fire itself answers to him.
I feel him everywhere.
His heat.
His strength.
The steady, powerful beat at his core that feels too large, too sure, to belong to a normal man.
Attraction—something I’ve not felt for a man in a very long time—pulses through me. I’m shocked. Maybe embarrassed.
“Hold on to me,” he instructs, and my body obeys.
I cling to his shoulders like the women in one of those historical romance novels, the ones on the covers, my grandmother used to have on her nightstand.
Stupid, Delia. They didn’t come with belly rolls back then.
There’s a rush of sound around us—something beating the air in heavy, rhythmic strokes.
Wings. It has to be wings.
The ones I thought I saw looked like they were made of flame, maybe, or just a trick of my imagination.
But no, because he’s real.
I still can’t see. My face is pressed against his chest, buried in the silky black fabric of his shirt.
It’s soft. Absurdly so. And it smells good.
Like cedar. Like pine.
Like heat after rain.
I should be screaming.
I know I should be screaming. Or fighting.
I should be doing something to get away.
But I’m not.
Why?
The thought skitters across my mind, frantic and sharp.
Normal people scream when they’re surrounded by fire and dragged into the unknown by a stranger.
I should be calling for help. Demanding he put me down.
Instead, my fingers curl into his shirt and hold on.
Fear coils tight in my stomach, cold and sickening—and threaded through it, to my horror, is something else.
A rush.
A spark of excitement so sharp it makes my breath hitch.
As if some reckless part of me has been waiting for this moment my whole life.
What the hell is wrong with me?
The answer never comes, because in the next heartbeat—the world vanishes.
The sirens.
The burning house.
The smoke clawing at my lungs.
All gone.
When sensation returns, it isn’t smoke I breathe—it’s raw heat.
Wind rushing past my ears. Air that tastes like ash and stone and something wild, ancient, and alive.
I gasp, clutching at him harder, my boots scraping against unfamiliar ground as if gravity itself has shifted beneath my feet.
Terror and awe slam into me all at once, knocking the breath from my chest.
And with bone-deep certainty, I understand the truth—this stranger didn’t rescue me.
He didn’t pull me out of my mundane, predictable existence.
He stole me away. And the worst part?
Somewhere deep inside, a dangerous, inexcusable, broken part of me is already wondering what comes next.
And that’s the last thought I have before the darkness takes me.