“Yes.” Something that might have been amusement crossed Derren’s distorted face. “That’s the problem.”
He raised one too-long arm.
Dark fire erupted from his palm.
THIRTY-SIX
NARLA
The pain was indescribable.
Not heat—wrongness. Corruption spreading through her veins, eating at her magic, consuming everything it touched. Her candle-flame power flickered and dimmed, overwhelmed by something ancient and hungry. The fire didn’t burn her skin. It burned deeper—down to the core of her, where her magic lived. She felt it spreading through her chest, wrapping around her heart, trying to snuff out the light she’d carried since childhood.
Narla collapsed. Her knees hit the pavement, then her hands, then her cheek pressed against cold asphalt. The world went gray at the edges.
Sound distorted—Derren’s voice coming from far away, Ember’s shriek cutting through the static.
Her familiar was attacking. She could hear wings beating, talons scraping, the high keen of an owl in battle fury. But Derren barely noticed. Just batted the bird away with one too-long arm, sent Ember tumbling across the parking lot.
Wyatt.
His name rose through the pain like a lifeline. She saw his face—not the controlled mask he wore in public, but the raw,unguarded expression he wore only for her. The way he’d looked at her last night. The way his voice had cracked on the word “love.”
All those mornings in his kitchen, trading casual touches, learning the rhythm of him. All those nights in his bed, wrapped in warmth, finally feeling alive again.
She thought about her life before him. The careful walls she’d built and called a life. The slow, quiet death dressed up as safety.
And then she had walked into his office, and everything had changed. He’d seen through her mask from the beginning. Had spent years watching, waiting, refusing to look away even when she’d done everything to remain invisible.
He’d made her feel visible again. Wanted. Worth fighting for.
I don’t want to go back.
The thought crystallized with perfect clarity, even as the dark fire spread through her chest.
She didn’t want to go back to who she was before him. Even if it was safer. Even if it was easier. She’d rather have this—this terrifying, exhilarating, too-much feeling—than another year of waiting for her life to begin.
Derren loomed over her, his true form blocking out the rising sun. The wrongness was absolute—a hole in reality, a wound in the fabric of existence.
“Your mate can try to save you.” His voice carried that awful harmonic. “He will fail.” A sound that might have been a laugh erupted from him. “And I’ll consume him too. Slowly. So you can watch.”
No.
The word wasn’t spoken. Couldn’t be spoken—her voice had failed, her body shutting down, the dark fire stealing everything. But she felt it. A defiance that burned brighter than the corruption spreading through her veins.
You don’t get to have him. You don’t get to take this from me. Not after I finally found something worth living for.
“Sleep now, little candle witch.” Derren’s voice faded into static. “When you wake—if you wake—everything you love will be ash.”
Wyatt. I’m sorry. I’m not done.
Darkness claimed her.
Light.
Warmth.
A voice she knew, ragged with fear.
