JADE
Sam’s hand slips out of mine.
I’m reaching for him, and I’m screaming, but the hellhound’s teeth are already in his shoulder, and his eyes go wide, and I can’t get to him, no matter how far I run.
The Hydra’s head is coming down. Soul-fire’s burning through me, consuming me until I don’t know who I am anymore.
Thad’s dagger is plunging into Oliver’s chest, over and over and over again, and then the blade’s in my stomach and blood’s soaking my hands, and black flames are surrounding me, pulling me into a never-ending vortex.
The plane’s falling out of the sky, and Elizabeth’s crumpling, smoke from my lightning rising from her body until my eyes burn and I can’t see anything at all.
Suddenly, something sweet’s touching my lips.
I flinch away, but there’s a hand at the back of my head, a voice cutting through.
“Open your mouth.”
Logan. That’s Logan.
“You need to eat.”
Ripe flesh presses against my lip, juice drips onto my tongue, and the taste is the colors of peace and sunset.
My eyes flutter open.
Logan’s above me, storm-gray eyes dark with worry. He’s holding golden fruit to my mouth, shimmering juice glistening on its flesh, and it smells like honey and cotton candy and every sweet food that’s ever existed.
“That’s it.” Relief floods his face. “You’re okay. Just eat.”
I’m too tired to do anything except open my mouth and let him feed me. The juice slides down my throat, warm and golden, and the tightness in my chest loosens until I don’t remember why it was ever tight at all.
“More,” I manage, and Logan presses another piece to my lips, and I bite down.
The nightmares are still there, hovering at the edges. Sam’s face. Elizabeth falling. Oliver bleeding and burning. But they’re getting fuzzy, like trying to remember a dream after you’ve been awake for too long.
Another bite, and the glass sphere’s dissolving. Not shattering, just... melting.
I’ve never felt like this. Even before Blaze Academy, there was always the fear of disappointing my parents, and the constant, gnawing anxiety that I wasn’t good enough, would never be good enough, and was fundamentally broken in a way I couldn’t fix.
Now there’s just nothing.
Warm, golden nothing.
“How do you feel?” Logan cuts through the haze, and he looks like a guardian angel, those gray eyes watching me with so much concern it makes my chest ache.
“Good.” I reach up and touch his face, because I can, because I want to. “All the bad things are gone.”
Worry flickers behind his eyes, and he doesn’t lean into my touch like he normally does. But then I smile at him, and his expression softens.
“You passed out,” he says. “The storm drained your energy.”
The storm. Right. I made a storm.
Tempest’s champion.
The words float up from deep in my memory, and I turn them over in my mind. Storm goddess. Cosmic destiny. Chosen one. All those heavy, impossible expectations that have been crushing me since T touched my forehead and filled me with electricity.
Why does it have to be me?
I never asked for this or wanted it. The other champions Circe told me about—Ruby, Amber, and Sapphire—they’ve been doing this for years. They don’t kill their classmates with stray lightning bolts or create storms they can’t control.
Tempest needs to find someone else. Because I don’t want to save the world. I want to stay here, in this beautiful place where nothing hurts, with the only person who makes me feel like I’m not fundamentally broken.
“Logan.” I push myself up, and he steadies me, his hands warm on my waist. “Come with me.”
“Where?”
I look past him, into the trees. The forest is all golden light and soft shadows, the branches heavy with glistening fruit, the grass like velvet beneath us.
I don’t know where we are, and I don’t care.
All I care about is that I’m here with Logan, and that here in this paradise he brought me to, we can be happy together forever.
“Deeper.” I meet his eyes. “Where we can be alone.”
“You need to rest.” His thumbs stroke circles against my waist, and even that small touch sends warmth flooding through me.
“I don’t want to rest.” My hands find his chest, pressing flat against the sturdiness of him. “I just want you.”
The words come out true and simple. There’s no anxiety spiraling underneath them, no fear that he’ll push me away, and no wondering if he’ll eventually decide I’m more trouble than I’m worth.
“You’re not yourself right now,” he says, strained and rough, like he’s fighting what he wants. “You exhausted yourself with how much magic you used.”
I kiss him, and he stiffens against me, and I worry he’s going to push me away. But then his hands are in my hair, and he’s kissing me back, and it’s like every good thing I’ve ever felt condensed into a single moment.
“I want to stay here.” I breathe the words against his lips, not pulling back, not giving him space to think. “With you. Forever.”
“We can’t—”
“I’m so tired.” Tears prick my eyes, but they’re not sad tears.
They’re relief tears. Surrender tears. “I’m tired of being anxious and scared.
I just want to feel good.” I kiss him again, softer this time.
“And I keep thinking about what you told me after the sirens, about jumping back without me when we’re together…
and I want you to feel good, too. For as long as you want, for as long as you need, whether you have enough strength to take me with you or not. ”
For a long moment, he doesn’t move. He just looks at me, desire and pain crashing into each other behind his stormy eyes, like I’m a drug and it’s taking all his willpower to resist.
Then his jaw tightens, he takes my hand, and we make our way deeper into the forest.
The pinks and oranges of sunset filter through the canopy, soft and dreamlike.
The grass is thick beneath our feet, cushioned like a bed, and the sweet, intoxicating smell of the golden fruit hangs heavy in the air, filling my head with light and warmth and the certainty that nothing matters beyond this moment.
I find a clearing where the trees form a natural shelter, their branches drooping low, and Logan turns to me with that look in his eyes that turns my bones to liquid. The one that says he wants me, all of me, always.
Then he pulls me close, and his mouth is moving against mine, and my hands are fisting in his shirt, pulling him closer, and closer, but never close enough.
We sink to the grass.
His weight presses down on me, and I wrap my arms around his neck and arch up against him, desperate for more of him everywhere, drowning out everything else.
His lips trail down my jaw and throat, his teeth scraping against my pulse point hard enough to make me gasp. His hands find the hem of my shirt, and I lift my arms so he can pull it over my head.
He pauses when he reaches my bra, looking up at me like he needs permission he already has.
“Still okay?”
“Yes.” The word floats out of me, dreamy and distant. “Don’t stop.”
He unclasps my bra slowly. The fabric falls away, his breath catches, and even through the haze, the sound lands low in my stomach.
“You’re so beautiful,” he murmurs the words against my skin between kisses.
I thread my fingers through his hair and hold on. Not guiding him, and not demanding more, just... anchoring myself to him while the world goes soft around the edges.
His mouth moves down my stomach, pressing kisses against my ribs, my hip bones, and the soft skin below my navel. His hands work at the button of my pants, and I lift my hips to help him, but that’s all I can manage. It’s all I want to manage.
Let him take care of you. The thought caresses me like a warm blanket. You don’t have to try anymore.
Finally, I’m bare beneath him, the warm air like silk against my skin.
His mouth presses against my inner thigh, then higher, and higher.
The first stroke of his tongue pulls a sigh from deep in my chest. It’s slow and warm, like he’s savoring me and has all the time in the world.
We do have all the time in the world. We have forever.
The stars are coming out above us, blurring and shimmering while Logan works me with his mouth. Golden warmth rolls through me like a wave, soft and endless, until I’m boneless and trembling in the grass.
Then he sits back on his heels and looks at me.
“What?” I ask, gazing up at him like he’s a god made flesh.
“Nothing.” He shakes his head slowly. “I just... I almost lost you today.”
“I’m here now,” I tell him, and then I laugh softly, because obviously I’m here. “And I’m not going anywhere.”
He strips off his own shirt, and the sight of his bare chest makes heat pool low in my belly. All that golden skin, those lean muscles, and the chain with the intertwined rings hanging from his neck that somehow feels like him even though it’s only a piece of jewelry.
His pants come off next. Then the rest of it, and then he’s lowering himself over me, skin against skin, and I relax from the weight of him pressing me down into the soft grass.
“You’ve been through so much today.” He brushes my hair back from my face, gazing down at me as if I’m a vision from a dream. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You won’t hurt me. You’ll never hurt me.” I bring my arms up and wrap them around his neck, but the movement feels slow and fluid, like it’s happening underwater.
He positions himself at my entrance and pauses there, his forehead dropping to mine.
“I love you,” he says, and from the wide-eyed gaze he’s giving me and the slowness of his breathing, it’s like he’s begging me to believe him. “You know that, right? I love you, and nothing will ever change that.”
“I know.” I lift my hips, trying to take him in, but the movement is sluggish and dreamlike. “I love you too.”
Finally, he slides into me in one long, slow stroke.
My head falls back against the grass, and my mouth opens, but no sound comes out. The feeling of him filling me and stretching me is overwhelming, perfect, and distant all at once.
He holds still for a moment, his arms trembling where they brace on either side of my head, his breath coming in ragged gasps against my throat.
Then, he starts to move.
He’s going slow. So slow. Pleasure ripples through me, and I float on the sensation, my hips rising to meet his in a rhythm that feels automatic, like we’ve done this a thousand times before.
“Stay with me forever.” My words come from somewhere far away.
“I’m here.” He presses a kiss to my forehead, my eyelids, and my mouth. “I’m not going anywhere.”
The pleasure crests like a gentle wave. There’s no sharp peak or desperate climb—it’s just a gradual brightening, soft pulses of warmth spreading through my body while I make sounds that don’t quite reach my ears.
Then, he starts to pull out.
No.
I reach for his hips and bring them back down, burying him so deep inside me that I feel every inch of him.
“Keep going,” I breathe. “I want you to finish, too. Then I can sleep with part of you inside me.”
Logan groans against my neck, and his pace quickens, becoming harder and more urgent.
My own pleasure fades into background noise, but I don’t mind.
I just lie there as his hips snap against mine, getting faster and more desperate.
The sound of skin against skin fills the clearing, and in the back of my mind I know this should feel good, because it usually feels good when he’s rough and needy.
But the golden haze is wrapped around me so thick, and I’m happy to let him do whatever he needs so he can feel good, too.
Eventually, his rhythm falters, his body goes rigid above me, and he buries his face in my neck with a soft groan. He pulses inside me, warmth spreading, and I hold him through it, my fingers tracing lazy patterns on his sweat-slicked back.
When he stills, he doesn’t pull out immediately. He just shifts his weight to the side and gathers me against his chest, our heartbeats syncing, slow and steady.
My eyes are heavy as sleep pulls at me like a tide, warm and irresistible.
“I want it to be like this forever,” I tell him again. “No destiny. No monsters. Just me and you, always.”
His hand strokes through my hair, slow and rhythmic.
“Get some sleep,” he says, and his voice is soft and strange, as if he’s here but not actually here. “We’ll talk about it in the morning.”
Morning. Yes. That sounds nice. We’ll figure everything out in the morning.
My eyes drift closed, and then I’m drifting into a place filled with golden light where nothing hurts, nothing matters, and I don’t have to be anyone at all.