From the snippets of explanation she’d pieced together from Stolas and Nasira, every Seraphian Empress was gifted the mystical powers of the island. Somehow Morgryth had discovered a way to steal that power from the last empress and take it for herself.
But, once the Noctis were thrown into the Netherworld after the end of the war and the island regained its power, it realized it had been tricked.
Now no Golemite could get within a mile of Shadoria’s shores without suffering the island’s wrath.
Otherwise, their fledging nation wouldn’t have lasted this long. They could barely withstand Archeron’s forces alone, and if Morgryth found a way to get past the island’s defenses, they were doomed.
Her heart was in her throat as the twins left and Stolas met her gaze. He seemed torn between continuing their conversation from before and dealing with this new information.
He held out his hand. “There’s been a . . . development with the emissaries. Everyone is meeting in the Hall of Light.”
Everyone? Coils of tension formed between her shoulder blades. If that were true then it must be more than bad. “How many emissaries returned?”
“All of them.”
His cryptic answer unsettled her. He was trying to protect her from less than positive news. If only for a moment. Time enough for her to prepare herself for the dread she felt rising in her gut like the mist of Shadoria at sunset. Growing heavier, denser, consuming everything until it was all she could see.
Forcing the fear from her mind, Haven followed Stolas out the door just as the last dregs of light slithered over the jagged mountains. This high above the city, ice crusted the peaks and storms were as frequent as Stolas’s wicked grins.
Snow crunched beneath her boots, and she pulled her cloak tighter around her body, fingers already growing numb.
She never thought she’d be so thankful for an active volcano. The mercurial formation, aptly named Death Spewer, was part of a massive network of magma rivers running beneath the city. The heat from those molten arteries of fire meant the streets were always warm, the houses each equipped with archaic runes that drew that heat into them. Even the beaches were gifted heat—
Stealthy as always, she felt rather than heard Stolas position himself behind her. Before she could prepare herself for his touch, his arms glided around her waist, and a sharp tug of yearning sliced through her.
One hand banded low and firm over her hip, the other high above her navel.
It was all she could do not to sigh.
There was a sudden snap as his massive wings unfurled to catch the powerful gusts of wind slamming down from the dark gray mountains.
“You have to stop provoking me.” She leaned against his chest, the solid curve of his muscles trembling at the contact, and tilted her chin back so that her words reached him. “If I hurt you . . .”
A hoarse chuckle brushed against her ear. “Hurt me? What you did back there was a mere puff of wind. You are going to have to try a lot harder than that to injure me.”
The smugness in his voice did make her want to try—right this instant. “Is that a challenge?”
“If you would like it to be.”
The abrupt shift in his tone from taunting and playful to sultry and vulnerable made her dizzy. His body reacted instinctively to her shiver, wrapping tighter around her, his long fingers curving over her hips and ribcage as if holding her in place.
Even through the fabric of her clothes, fire barreled from his fingertips into her flesh.
She fought the sudden, overwhelming urge to melt into him. To give herself to the safety she felt in his primordial embrace. The memory of that evening in Solethenia after the ball curled into her mind like a flame, and she fought to douse it before the fire spread.
Did Stolas think about that night at all? He hadn’t mentioned what had happened between them.
Not once.
They were busy, after all. Trying to resurrect a long-dead kingdom and its defenses and basically stay alive. An impossible feat when half the realm wanted them dead and the other half had just realized she would make an invaluable weapon. Especially with the Godkiller under her command.
As the days and nights blurred into a numb stream of fighting and rebuilding, the details of that evening became lost, distorted by time and trauma and reliving it over and over. Until, like a beloved blanket, the edges frayed and fabric