Page 17

The man towering before her looked more savage than he ever had, with a new fracture on his nose, his beard longer, his plain armour in tatters. Icicles clung to his thick lashes and dark hair. A tremor ran down the strong column of his throat as he returned her stare, his knuckles paling as he gripped the hilt of his sword. Even in the icy wind, the scent of rosewood and leather enveloped her.

Everything else faded around them.

It was just her and him, and Thea felt herself teetering on the precipice… of what, she didn’t know.

He took a step towards her, and another, closing the distance between them.

The memory of him struck her without warning, so visceral she could taste him on her lips, could feel the push of him inside her. The longing that surged through her was intense, uncomfortable. All the while she warred with herself.

Wilder Hawthorne reached for the lone piece of hair that had escaped her braid and tucked it behind her ear. ‘Thea…’ he murmured, his voice broken and hoarse.

The breath lodged in her lungs loosened and she stepped forward, eliminating that final space between them and looking up at him, at those silver eyes she’d known so well, her heart pounding.

‘We need to talk,’ he said softly. ‘I can explain everything.’

Thea couldn’t help it. She leant in close, her body alight with fire despite the cold. ‘There’ll be plenty of time to talk,’ she heard herself say, her clothes growing damp against the press of his wet armour.

A subtle quiver traced his strong jaw. ‘Gods, I’ve missed you.’

‘Have you?’ she whispered against his lips.

‘Every day…’ He rested his brow against hers, his chest rising and falling as he inhaled her scent. ‘Every fucking day.’

She lingered for a second longer, meeting his gaze. ‘You may come to regret that,’ she said.

Before she snapped the manacles into place around his wrists.

CHAPTER SIX

WILDER

Wilder was fixated on her mouth, wondering if she was about to kiss him, when the click of the chains sounded. The noise hauled him back to reality, the one in which Thea wasn’t his, and he was only hers in the sense that he was her enemy. Startled, Wilder stared down at the iron cuffs around his wrists, everything about them feelingwrong, feelingunnatural. Still dazed, he tested the chain linking his hands and found that it wouldn’t yield to his Furies-given strength. Normal irons he could break, but these…

He nearly laughed.Of courseThea would have asked Wren to create some sort of power-suppressing substance to capture him. Perhaps it was even the same that had suppressed Thea’s magic for all those years before.Clever. He wondered if removing the manacles was a matter of simply locating the key, or if there was more complex alchemy at play. He’d put nothing past the Zoltaire sisters.

Wilder couldn’t help but peer into Thea’s beautiful face, drinking in her features like someone parched and desperate. What he hadn’t anticipated was how much it would hurt to lookat her, to have her look at him. She stared at him like she didn’t know him, like he wore the face of someone else, someone she no longer recognised. Those eyes that had once gazed upon him with love, with admiration, were cold and hard. It was his own doing, he knew, but that didn’t make it hurt any less.

In the year they had been apart, he’d tried to convince himself that she’d understand, that she would learn that the important parts had always been true.

But he’d been lying to himself.

‘It’s been a long time, Apprentice,’ he said at last, managing to keep the crack from his voice.

Her eyes narrowed, her hand gripping the chained link between his manacles hard, as though she could somehow stop him if he chose to run, or fight.

‘I’m not your apprentice,’ she replied, devoid of any emotion. ‘I’m not your anything,’

Wilder sucked in a breath. He had yearned to hear her voice for so long, but these words… They were primed to cut. Where was she? The lightning-wielding warrior he’d fought alongside? The woman he’d held in his arms?

Thea’s rage was palpable, raw and unbroken, more so than he’d ever experienced before. And yet… he felt not a flicker of magic from her. That, more than anything, made him worry. It made things all the more precarious.

Stupidly, he hadn’t decided what role he would play, what mask he would wear when he saw her again. But the way she gripped his manacles snapped something inside him, and curiosity got the better of him. He needed to test her, to push her, to see what still simmered beneath the surface.

He rattled his irons and raised a brow. ‘If you wanted me in chains, Princess…’ His voice was low and sultry. ‘All you had to do was ask.’

Fury flashed in her eyes, but she veered back as though burned. ‘Don’t presume to know what I want, traitor.’

The anger was there, but there was no sign of her storm powers, no spark of lightning calling out to him to dance with her.Where are you, Princess?