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“I know.” I squeeze back. “But you survived twenty-eight years before I met you, so I’m assuming you have at least a few skills that don’t involve a blade.”

“A few.” He turns to face me fully, and his green eyes move across my face the way he scans terrain—thorough and unhurried. Whatever he finds there steadies him, because his thermal output levels into the calm, banked burn I’ve only ever read on him right before he steps into the Scorched Circles.

He gives me a small nod, and together, we step through.

One moment I’m on warm marble, then magic’s tingling across my skin, and my boots are sinking into soft earth. The air here is thick with humidity, and it makes my heat sensing work harder to distinguish ambient temperature from the signatures of the living things around me. The canopy is dense enough to block the sky entirely, and the silver light pools between the trunks with no visible source, like moonbeams sneaking through.

Kieran’s hand tightens around mine, and when I glance behind us, the archway is gone. The marble temple, the altar, the pile of Kieran’s weapons on the floor… all of it is replaced by more trees, more moss, and more silver light that has no visible source.

When I look ahead again, the path shifts.

“Assume everything in this forest is a threat until proven otherwise.” Kieran’s training voice is back—the calm, measured authority he uses at the Scorched Circles. “Keep your heat scanning at full range. If anything moves toward us, you tell me the size, distance, and speed before it closes in.” He pauses, then adds, “And remember that this forest belongs to a hunting goddess. Which means she’s going to try to make us run, and running is the worst thing prey can do.”

30

EVIE

Kieran and I have been walking for what feels like an hour, and the forest has settled into an uneasy truce with us. The path has stopped shifting. The silver light through the canopy is steady, and my heat sensing is pulling clean readings from the trees around us.

He’s walking half a step ahead of me, scanning the tree line. His hands are at his sides, and every few seconds his fingers curl—his thumb tracing a phantom hilt, his index finger hooking around an absent guard. Then they flatten, and the cycle starts over. He’s been doing it since we left the temple, and he keeps watching me watch him. But I don’t mention it, because he’s giving pot-about-to-boil-over vibes, and the last time he over-boiled on me, it didn’t go well.

I stop myself from brushing a finger against my stomach, because the last thing I want to do is remind him about that night. So, I say nothing, instead reaching out with my heat scanning to search for potential threats.

Eventually, Kieran breaks the silence.

“I’ve carried steel every day since I was ten.” His pace stays even, his eyes on the path. “Including celebrations where my friends told me I was being paranoid.”

I smile slightly, relief passing through me at the fact that he’s talking again.

“To be fair, I’ve seen the number of blades you carry to breakfast,” I point out, trying to sound lighthearted, even though I feel anything but.

He glances over at me and gives me a tiny approving smile, although it disappears from his face in a heartbeat.

“For my twenty-second birthday, I went to a nightclub with seven of my friends.” His eyes go far off, as if he’s reliving the night. “It was a human place downtown, with loud music and too many people. I didn’t want to go, but—” His fingers curl and flatten. “I was talked into it.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Someone talked Kieran Cross into going to a nightclub?”

“She told me it was important to celebrate the fact that I exist. Those were her exact words.”

She.

Kieran’s never brought up anyone from his past. I didn’t know he had friends, let alone a she that he’d talk about like that.

Thinking about it now, I don’t know much about his past at all. He never talks about it, and I don’t push.

“I compelled the bouncers to let me in with my blades,” he continues, speaking about his blades like he always does—like they’re priceless treasures. “Everyone laughed at me for it. Eight witches at a birthday party in a human nightclub, and I walked in armed to the teeth.”

“That sounds exactly right,” I say warmly, praying he doesn’t stop. Having him open up to me feels… nice. It’s like Kieran Cross is finally trusting me, as if removing his blades removed his emotional armor as well.

“She’d booked a VIP table,” he continues. “Bottle service, the whole thing. She walked in ahead of us like she owned the place, and honestly, she might as well have.”

“Who was she?” I ask, my voice coming out more carefully than I intend.

His fingers curl and flatten at his side. “Her name was Liora.”

The thermal spike following him saying her name is concentrated in his chest, sharp and fast. I almost flinch from it. And I have no idea how to reply, because I want to ask him who she was to him, if he loved her, and so much more, but I don’t want him to stop opening up to me.

So, I keep walking, saying nothing.