Chapter 24
Delia
Ashfell, Nightfall
Fire isn’t supposed to feel like coming home.
But with him, it does.
Thorne’s hand closes gently but firmly around the back of my neck as we leave the Healer’s Pavilion, his thumb brushing lazily along my hairline like he can’t not touch me.
“Walk with me,” he says.
“Is that a suggestion or a command from the Lord of Fire?” I tease, but my voice comes out softer than I intend.
I’m still a little high from planning out a whole emergency response unit with Evonne.
“A selfish request,” he answers. “We must return to Ashfell.”
I blink. “Now? I thought you still had more to do here. Wards, tunnels, SoulTaker scouting, all that light-hearted fun.”
His gaze drops to my mouth, then back to my eyes, and the air between us tightens.
“I have done what I can for the Vein—for now,” he says, voice low and rough around the edges. “Dagan, Alaric, and Kael have left us all the stronger. My soldiers are in position. The wards hold.”
His hand tightens slightly at my neck, like he’s resisting the urge to drag me closer.
“But I am dangerously low on a different kind of strength.”
My heart stutters.
“What kind?”
He leans down, his lips brushing the shell of my ear.
“Yours.”
Heat crawls over my skin, delicious and shivery. I squeeze my legs together as desire slams into me.
So needy. Weak with wanting.
“You’re really going to say that to me now? In public?”
“I am not shouting it,” he says mildly. “Though I could. It would be true either way.”
I elbow him lightly in the ribs.
“You don’t play fair, Thorne.”
His answering smile is wicked and entirely unrepentant.
“I’m not playing, Delia.”
“You, sir, are a menace,” I say, and try to lighten the mood.
“You have no idea,” he growls back. “And I don’t dare show you, for we must leave now.”
I open my mouth to ask if we’re taking the coach back, already picturing the long ride across the rust-red plains, when he steps in front of me, blocking my view of the camp.
“No Mustangs this time,” he says.
I frown.
“Then how—?”
He lifts his other hand, palm up, and a flame sparks to life in the center.
Not big. Not wild.
Just a concentrated, molten bead of heat that pulses like a heartbeat.
Something in my chest answers.
“Thorne,” I whisper.
“This way is rarely used,” he says, eyes never leaving mine. “It is intense for mortals. Disorienting. So I do not choose it lightly.”
“So why choose it now?” I ask, my voice barely more than breath.
He steps closer, so close the world narrows to him, his heat, his scent—smoke and iron and something that is just Thorne.
“Because you can take it, Shula. And I must have you in our bed, now,” he murmurs, and there’s no teasing in him now.
Only raw honesty.
I swallow. He continues.
“I cannot bear to wait another minute.”
My stomach drops and soars at the same time.
It’s unsettling, being wanted like this.
Even more unsettling wanting him back, this much, this fast, this deep.
My brain whispers that nothing this intense can be safe.
My heart whispers that it’s already too late.
He threads our fingers together, his flame-hand cool enough not to burn.
“Stay with me,” he says. “Focus on my voice.”
“Yes. Okay,” I murmur, and I do. I focus.
His eyes flare—a brief, bright flash of molten gold and amber—and then he crushes the flame in his fist.
The world explodes.
Not in heat exactly, not at first—more like colorless light.
Every sense is yanked inside out. The ground disappears.
Up and down stop existing.
For a few terrifying seconds, I feel unmade.
Like my body is just a suggestion the universe is considering taking back.
I would panic if I could form a thought.
But all I can feel is him.
Thorne’s arms band tight around me, one at my back, one under my thighs like he scooped me up mid-fall. His power wraps around my mind like a shield.
Just like the enormous flame wings that seem to sprout from his back. They circle me like a cage.
Like a promise.
“Breathe, Shula,” his voice rumbles through the nothing-space, everywhere and nowhere at once. “Breathe for me.”
“I—am,” I manage, though I’m not sure how.
“Good.”
The next breath tastes like smoke and molten stone and—we slam back into existence.
Air rushes in.
The world snaps into focus.
We’re in his bedchamber. Back in Ashfell.
We’re just suddenly there.
Like reality remembered where to put us.
A gasp rips out of me, half shock, half awe.
My fingers are fisted against his shirt—except, when I glance down, it’s not his shirt at all.
It’s bare skin.
His clothes? Gone.
And so are mine.
“My clothes,” I whisper, looking down at myself, flushed and breathless and absolutely naked in his arms. “Did you—?”
“Magic,” he says simply, voice dark with hunger. “I would apologize, but I am not sorry.”
My heart is pounding so hard I feel it in my throat. Every nerve ending is buzzing, alive, alert, singing with aftershocks of flame-travel and the fact that he stripped us both without laying a hand on a single clasp.
“Thorne,” I breathe, half scandalized, half turned on out of my mind.
He walks forward like I weigh nothing, carrying me toward the massive bed draped in black silk and deep ember-red throws.
His eyes never leave my face—like he’s searching for doubt, fear, regret.
He won’t find any.
“You’re shaking,” he murmurs.
“Yeah,” I say on a shaky exhale. “You just teleported me by fire. And got me naked. That’s kind of a lot for a girl to wrap her mind around.”
His mouth brushes my temple, his breath hot on my skin. “Too much?”
I swallow hard. “Not even close.”
“Good, and while your mind is busy wrapping around the past, why don’t you wrap your body around the present. Me. Here. Now,” he growls.
And it is such a good idea.
Something breaks in his expression then—some fierce, relieved, hungry thing—and his lips are on mine before I can say another word.
He kisses me like he means to erase every trace of fear, every doubt, every second we were apart.
His mouth is hot and demanding, but there’s a tremor in it too. A question.
I answer with my hands, framing his face, sliding into his dark hair, pulling him closer.
Closer. Always closer.
The kiss deepens, goes molten, and my body melts against his like wax drawn to flame.
Every inch of me is aware of him—the hard plane of his chest pressed to my breasts, the iron band of his arm at my back, the thick length of him pinned between us.
Somewhere between one heartbeat and the next, the room responds.
Candles flare higher on their own, casting liquid gold across the stone walls.
The ever-burning hearth roars like it’s cheering us on.
The air thickens with heat and something sweet, like fire-kissed flowers and caramel.
He groans into my mouth, breaking the kiss just long enough to speak, his forehead resting against mine.
“I brought you here for selfish reasons,” he admits, voice ragged. “I should be thinking of strategy. Of SoulTakers. Of the Vein. But all I can think of is you in my bed, wearing nothing but my flame.”
My breath stutters. “You make that sound like a crime.”
“It is a crime,” he says, eyes burning. “Against my better judgment. Against my vows to myself. But I admit, Shula, I do not regret it.”
His honesty hits me harder than the fire-travel did.
I loop my arms around his neck, my legs tightening around his waist, pulling him closer still.
“Then stop talking,” I whisper. “And show me how much you don’t regret it.”
A low, rumbling laugh rolls through his chest. “As my queen commands.”
He lowers himself onto me with frightening care, like I’m something precious he’s afraid to break.
His gaze drags over me slowly, reverently, making me feel seen in a way that’s almost too much.
“Delia,” he says, like a prayer and a promise and a curse all at once.
My pulse trips over itself. “Yeah?”
“Every time I leave you,” he says quietly, “it feels like I walk into battle without armor. I will not apologize for needing to feel you alive beneath my hands before I sleep in this bed again.”
The words punch the air out of me.
“Okay,” I whisper, my throat tight. “Then don’t leave me.”
My heart is pounding.
I should be overwhelmed.
I am overwhelmed.
By magic. By war. By this impossible realm. By him.
But lying there beneath the heat of his gaze, with my skin humming and my body aching and my chest too full of everything I feel for this impossible, infuriating, beautiful Demon Lord—it hits me.
I don’t want less of this.
I want more.
More heat.
More risk.
More of him.
His hands, when they touch me, are almost gentle at first. Almost.
“Shula, you feel so fucking soft. How is it possible you are this soft, this fragile, but still you can withstand my flame?”
“Because I was made for you, Thorne. And you were made for me,” I reply, running my hands down his shoulders and back until I reach his backside.
He’s right there.
Poised at my entrance.
I feel him—hot, heavy, impossibly hard—nudging against the place that’s already aching for him.
My whole body goes tight, muscles trembling with anticipation. Every breath feels like it has to fight its way past the want knotting low in my belly.
I want him to move.
I need him to move.
To fill me.
To go deep. So deep I stop thinking about anything except the feel of him and this fire between us.
“This time,” I murmur, fingers curling into the corded heat of his shoulders as I tug him down to me, “don’t hold back, Thorne.”
His eyes flare—bright, molten, like someone just struck flint to steel inside his skull.
For a heartbeat, he just looks at me, like he’s memorizing the invitation, tucking it somewhere sacred.
“Careful, Shula,” he warns, his voice rough velvet and danger as his mouth descends toward mine. “I am not sure I know how to do anything else.”
The words flip something in me.
No safety net. No halfway.
Just us and the edge.
Then he pushes forward with his hips—and thought ceases to exist.