Chapter 3
Thorne
Ashfell, Nightfall
The night sky above the Broken Plains is black, bruised purple clouds drifting slow across a star-dappled expanse that never quite feels gentle.
I inhale deeply.
The air smells of smoke and iron and old fire—home.
It settles my pulse, steadies the restless heat beneath my skin.
The Plains have always spoken to me in flame and ash, reminding me who I am when the world presses too close.
I should never have kissed her.
Delia is still inside my chambers.
After our… encounter, I left her in the hands of Masha—the woman who raised me when this castle was too large and too dark, when my power came faster than my control.
She knows how to tend fire without fear.
How to calm a storm without smothering it.
Masha will take good care of my intended.
“Get her bathed and dressed for the ceremony,” I ordered.
Masha had stared at me like I’d finally lost what little sense I possessed.
“What ceremony? You cannot mean you truly intend this—this binding you spoke of?” Delia asked.
“Oh, I mean it, Shula,” I replied, and I have to admit I was intrigued at how she demanded answers.
“But what about my home? My life?”
“This is your life now. I will see you at midnight.”
And then I left—because if I hadn’t, I would have taken her back into my arms and ruined everything.
Now there are twenty minutes until the hour I named.
My nerves race through me like sparks flung from a flame with no direction—no order—only chaos and energy and need.
How am I to do this?
How am I to convince the Fates that brave, furious, beautiful woman is my viyella?
As if I have any claim to her.
I should return her to Earth and accept the cost—but I won’t. I can’t.
Fuck and damn.
That is the truth of it.
I am already damned—I know this—but damnation is a small price if it means saving my people.
I have scoured the ancient scrolls, burned half of them in frustration.
The truth is immutable.
The only way to fully protect The Ember Vein is to embrace my truest form—and I cannot do that without a zareth bond.
Letting her go is not an option.
I silence the darker part of me that revels in the choice. Want is no defense—but fire has never asked permission.
I growl and slam my hands down on the desk.
Fire leaps from my palms, sparks snapping through the air.
Missives scatter—some blackening, some igniting outright—paper curls into ash before it hits the floor.
Gods be damned.
My power is not like Alaric’s illusions or Kael’s tides.
Fire does not bend or yield.
It does not flow around obstacles.
It consumes them.
I understand that.
Just as I understand what a binding ceremony truly means.
It is not dominance.
It is not ownership.
It is surrender.
A piece of myself—my flame, my essence—placed into the keeping of another.
I do not want that.
I have never wanted that.
Delia is comely—no, more than that.
She is striking.
Alive in a way that draws the eye and refuses to release it.
Claiming her would be no hardship.
But can I afford to give her a piece of me?
Will the boon be worth what I lose?
The cruelest truth is I do not even know if it will work.
I am not what you would call lovable.
Two-face.
Monster.
The one Nightfall calls when something must be destroyed utterly.
I am the harbinger of ash and sorrow, not tenderness.
I do not know how to be gentle without breaking something.
Including myself.
“Master,” Xavier, my most trusted servant, says quietly from the doorway. “It is time.”
And then I feel it—low and insistent—growing inside me like a campfire fed too much air.
Desire.
Anticipation.
Hope, sharp and dangerous.
My bone mask slides into place, white and black and terrible, the mark of my lineage and my station.
Thorne, Demon Lord of Fire, is a thing to be feared.
But the truth—the one that terrifies me most?
I do not want Delia to fear me.
I want her to choose me.
To want me.
To need me.
Maybe—gods help me—to love me.
I do not know if such a thing is possible.
But the fire has already chosen.
Then, now, so must I. And midnight waits for no one.