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His heart slows beneath my palms. His thermal output drops degree by degree, and the knives ease out of their frantic orbit. And when his hands come up and cover mine on his chest, his grip is so tight that I might as well be the lifeline keeping him standing.
Heat pools everywhere our skin touches, my pulse climbing to fill the silence his left behind. Neither of us moves. Neither of us blinks. The air between us is thin and charged, one wrong breath away from igniting, and I keep my nails anchored in his chest, steadying him like he did for me that morning in the dining hall.
Finally, the tension in his body eases. Just slightly, but it’s enough.
“If they lose a single blade,” he says, each word sounding like it costs him, “I will take out this temple—and everything in it—stone by stone.”
A shiver rolls down my spine, and I can’t tell if it’s fear or thrill. Knowing Kieran, it doesn’t matter. With him, destruction and devotion have always been the same blade.
But I seem to have gotten through to him, so I release my grip, my palms cold the moment they leave his chest. Adrenaline courses in my veins, and every nerve in my body is buzzing, bracing for him to lose control again at a second’s notice.
Instead, he exhales, long and slow, and the last of his knives sink back into their sheaths with a series of soft clicks that loosen the knot of tension in my chest. His eyes find mine, and he gives me a single nod—small enough that no one else would catch it, weighty enough that I feel it in my bones.
Then I glance at the center woman, my heart pounding, praying she won’t try to smite us on the spot because of Kieran’s threat.
Instead, she studies Kieran and inclines her head. “An excellent choice, son of Ares. Your weapons will be guarded as if they were our own.”
Kieran meets her gaze, holding it as he reaches behind his back to unbuckle the sword harness. He works it slowly, until eventually, the twin blades hit the marble. Then he steps back… and the steel follows. The blades vibrate against the stone, humming at a pitch that climbs higher and higher, scraping across the marble after his retreating boots as if they’re being dragged by invisible strings.
His hand extends toward the swords, palm out, his thermal output spiking as he pushes his telekinesis against his weapons.
“Easy,” he says to the swords, and the tenderness in his voice makes my chest ache. Because I’ve never heard him speak to a person the way he’s speaking to his steel—well, other than the way he spoke to me during our time together in the spring at Lotus Island. “Stay.”
The vibrating eases and the humming drops in pitch, until the swords go still on the marble and the ringing dies into silence.
He stares down at the swords for a long moment. Then his eyes lift to mine, and whatever he finds in my face settles his thermal output by a full five degrees before he pulls the daggers from his hips and drops them onto the pile.
The moment the steel leaves his fingers, both blades crawl back across the gap toward him until he pins them with his magic. Again, he looks to me, and I give him a small nod to continue. He takes a deep breath, then keeps going with the boot knife, and the belt blade. Each one resists, pulling toward his body like a compass needle pulling toward north, and each one takes a focused burst of telekinetic force for him to calm.
Finally, the last knife hits the marble, and Kieran Cross is standing in the temple of Artemis with empty hands and a thermal output that’s burning so hot he’s turning this sacred temple into a divine sauna.
Stepping closer to him, I take one of his hands and lace my fingers through his. The grip he gives me is hard enough to grind my knuckles together.
The center woman gives him an approving nod, and her gaze drops to the crossguard dagger at my hip.
“Your weapons, too,” she says to me.
Not allowing myself to hesitate, I unsheathe the dagger and set it on the marble beside Kieran’s pile. All three thermal zones fade to room temperature the instant it leaves my hand. The absence of its weight on my hip is a specific, measurable loss that I file alongside Kieran’s hand crushing mine.
The center woman gestures behind her, where the marble wall transforms into an archway framed in carved ivy.
“Beyond the altar, you will find the sacred forest of Artemis,” she tells us. “Follow the path through the trees until you reach Themiscyra. The queen will receive you there.”
“How far?” I ask.
“As far as the forest decides.” Her eyes hold mine. “The path shifts with the intention of those who walk it. Stay on it, and it will lead you true. Step off it, and the forest will swallow you, and you’ll be lost in its depths forever.”
“Comforting,” I say with a wryness that reminds me of Jade, who I push out of my thoughts as quickly as she arrived.
The woman’s mouth curves in a way that implies she’s heard that reaction before. “The forest belongs to Artemis. You are guests in her realm, and she will test whether you deserve to remain in it.”
I swallow, because I have an awful feeling that a decision to exile us from her realm won’t be a polite request.
The three women part, and the archway behind them opens into green. Beyond it, trees rise in dense, layered walls, their canopies knitted so tight that the light filtering through comes out silver instead of gold. My heat sensing reaches through the archway and hits a wall of readings that make no sense—the forest is warmer than the temple, humid and alive, and every tree is radiating a low, steady pulse.
“Any idea what kind of tests a goddess of the hunt uses on trespassers in her forest?” I ask Kieran as we approach the archway.
“Probably the hunting kind.” His grip tightens on my hand. “Which, for the record, I would prefer to face with steel.”
