The solar plasma crackling across Seraphina’s knuckles sputtered, resisting the freezing draft blowing off the balcony, but her resolve didn't waver.
"Rule?" A bitter laugh tore from her lips. "I am a mortal paramedic from the South Side of Chicago. I patch up gunshot wounds and run on four hours of sleep. I don't rule realms, Vance. And I don't bow to warlords who steal women from their homes."
Kaelen didn't take the bait. He closed the remaining distance with impossible, predatory silence, moving with the fluid grace of a creature born to hunt in the pitch dark. When he stopped, he was so close she could feel the heat radiating from his chest—a surprising, molten warmth beneath the crisp mountain air. His massive wings flared slightly behind him, their dark-matter feathers casting long, wavering silhouettes across the polished obsidian floor.
"You are no mortal, Seraphina," he said, his voice dropping into that deep, velvet register that set every nerve ending along her collarbone on fire. "A mortal’s heart would have burst the second my dark matter brushed their skin. A mortal's soul would have withered beneath the Twin-Star resonance."
His hand rose. Slowly, giving her every opportunity to strike, his long, calloused fingers reached toward her face.
Her plasma daggers flared in warning, the heat searing the air inches from his skin, but Kaelen didn't hesitate. He ignored the scorching temperature, his thumb gently grazing the high curve of her cheekbone.
A sharp, breathless gasp caught in Seraphina’s throat.
Where his skin met hers, the fire didn't burn him; it fused with the shadow-gravity sleeping beneath his flesh. A jolt of pure, intoxicating electricity rippled through her veins, racing straight down to her core. Her knees trembled, a traitorous warmth blooming low in her stomach that had nothing to do with magic and everything to do with the raw, possessive hunger burning in his silver eyes.
"You feel it, don't you?" Kaelen murmured, his gaze dropping to her parted lips before rising back to pin her amber eyes. His thumb traced down the line of her jaw to rest over the frantic pulse fluttering at the base of her throat. "The way your blood calls to mine. The way your fire begs for my night."
"It's a trick," she whispered, though her voice lacked its earlier bite, breathless and tight as his scent—cedar, crushed cloves, and ozone—enveloped her senses. "Some kind of fae compulsion."
A dark, wicked smile curved his handsome mouth. He leaned down, his lips brushing the sensitive, heated skin just below her pointed ear. His fangs grazed her neck, not breaking the skin, but making her shiver violently against him.
"I don't need compulsion to make you want me, little sun," he growled against her skin, his free hand settling heavily against the small of her back, pressing her body flush against the hard planes of his chest and thighs. "I could hold you here all night, and by dawn, you would be begging me to take you into the dark."
Anger—and the mortifying truth in his words—sparked her fury anew.
With a savage snarl, Seraphina brought her knee up, aiming straight for his groin.
Kaelen anticipated the strike, catching her inner thigh with his forearm, but the movement gave her the opening she needed. She channeled every ounce of Sunblood she possessed into a blinding flash of pure, thermonuclear light that exploded between their chests.
The concussive shockwave blew them apart. Kaelen skidded backward six paces, his dark wings snapping open to brace against the obsidian pillars, laughing softly into the gloom as the light faded.
Seraphina stood ten feet away, chest heaving beneath her silk shift, her golden wings fully unfurled in a brilliant, twenty-foot fan of crystallized fire.
"Touch me like that again," she hissed, her eyes blazing with untamed fury, "and I'll burn those pretty wings right off your back."
Kaelen straightened, running a hand through his dark hair, his silver eyes flashing with pure, undisguised admiration.
"Keep that fire, my Queen," he purred, turning toward the arched doors. "You're going to need it tomorrow. The High Lords of the Night Court have arrived... and they want your head on a spike."