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Story: Ashes to Ashes

As Orion melts back into the shadows like the dangerous predator he truly is, I’m left standing in the corridor with Amarantha’s ultimatum burning in my hands like a live coal. Three days to choose between family legacy and personal honor. Three days to decide if love is worth risking everything I’ve ever known.

The black folder weighs heavier than stone, containing the power to destroy me—or to destroy the woman who’s started to mean more than my own survival.

But somewhere in the darkness, another possibility begins to form. Dangerous. Unprecedented. Potentially catastrophic for everyone involved.

What if we refuse to play by their rules entirely?

Three days.

I only hope it’s enough time to find a third option that doesn’t end with everyone I care about bleeding out on ancient stones.

16

ASH

Ice crawls up my spine,dragging me from sleep like claws through silk. My hand finds the knife before my brain catches up—muscle memory from twenty-seven missions where hesitation meant death.

My fingers close around the familiar grip as moonlight blazes across my face—except it’s not moonlight.

It’s him.

Kieran sprawls in my chair like a king claiming territory, formal jacket hanging open, hair mussed, frost bleeding from his grip in fractals that mirror my hidden thorns. Cracks spider-web through his perfect composure—whatever’s eating him alive finally showing.

“You sleep like prey, troublesome thing,” his voice cuts through darkness with aristocratic precision wrapped in winter wind, each word carefully chosen despite the roughness. “Most imprudent. Such habits tend to be... terminal.”

Lightning forks down my spine, but I force my breathing steady. Military training versus whatever the hell this is—midnight visits from Unseelie princes who make the air crystallize just by existing.

“Breaking and entering. Pretty sure that’s still illegal, even for shadow princes with superiority complexes.” I sit up slowly, sheet pooling around my waist. At least I’m wearing a nightshirt and didn’t sleep naked. “Though I’m guessing laws are more like suggestions when you’re royalty.”

His mouth curves in something that isn’t quite a smile, cold and sharp as winter starlight. “The room granted me entrance. Or rather, the shadows did what shadows do best—they obeyed.”

The shadows. Right. Because that’s totally normal.

“Cut the mysterious bullshit, Kieran. What do you want?” His name tastes like winter storms and secrets I shouldn’t know.

“To conduct an experiment,” he says, rising. “Regarding what precisely you are beneath all that meticulously maintained human conditioning.”

My skin prickles with awareness as he moves closer. The pendant—I reach for my throat and find it bare. I left it on the nightstand after my conversation with Finnian, needing to think without its ice crawling through my veins.

“And you couldn’t make an appointment like a civilized person? Office hours exist for a reason.”

“I am not remotely civilized,” he replies with silken precision that makes my pulse spike. “Neither are you. Even by Fae standards, you represent something... unprecedented.”

He stops at the foot of my bed, shadows pooling around his boots like living things—restless, agitated, betraying whatever turmoil he’s hiding. This close, his scent hits me—winter forests and metal and something darker that makes the thorns beneath my sleeve writhe with want.

“Dress yourself,” his voice drops to gravel wrapped in velvet. “I intend to dismantle your defenses until truth bleeds through the cracks in your carefully constructed façade.”

“It’s the middle of the night.”

“The most revealing lessons occur when one’s guard lies in ruins,” he observes, gaze dropping to where the sheet barely covers my chest. Molten honey pools low in my belly despite the arctic air. But there’s something almost... pained in his expression before he locks it away. “Unless you prefer to conduct this examination in your current state of undress. I confess myself... amenable to such arrangements.”

Heat crawls up my throat despite the arctic air. “Turn around.”

“Absolutely not.” The refusal hits like physical impact, challenge and possession distilled into pure authority. “I wish to observe you armoring yourself against what I represent.”

His knuckles go white where they grip his jacket, betraying the effort this control costs him.

I hold his stare as I slip from bed, movements deliberate as a striptease in reverse. His eyes track every inch of exposed skin before fabric claims it. The thorns beneath my skin pulse brighter with each heartbeat, responding to his attention in ways that should terrify me.

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