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Magic seared up my leg, splintering like lightning through my body. Expecting it did nothing to dull the blaze along my nerves.

“What’s wrong?” Kalcedon said, his eyes searching the way my face slackened for a moment before I got hold of myself again.

“Just magic.” I quickly tucked my foot back beneath the blanket.

“What does it feel like?” He abandoned my desk, the bottom drawer still open, and turned on the bed to face me.

“What’s it feel like to you?” I retorted, not about to admit that just being near him woke up my whole body.

“Nothing. You’re as powerless as a shrimp,” Kalcedon teased. I scowled at him, and he grinned back. “You’re like a gnat trying to win a fight against a bird. You’re like a grain of sand on the coast expecting somebody to notice it.”

“I’ll go down the wrong pipe and choke the bird. I’ll get in your eye.”

“Sure you will,” Kalcedon said. He leaned against the wall with a smug smirk. “Stop avoiding the question. Tell me how it feels.”

I couldn’t imagine being so powerful that nobody else registered. Surely he could feel Eudoria. But maybe we were all bugs, to somebody like Kalcedon.

“Have you ever been cold of it?”

“A few times. Never close,” Kalcedon said.

Close to using it all, he meant. Close to dying, from casting too far, too powerfully, past one’s limits. The Ward killed fae-blooded creatures by stripping them of all magic if they touched its walls, but that was a death you could inflict on yourself, too.

“It’s the exact opposite. It’s… pleasure, and life, and heat, and power, where there was none. It’s everything.”

“Sounds nice,” Kalcedon said. “I suppose I’ll never feel that, either.”

I snorted.

“Complain to somebody else, you gluttonous stork. You’ve got plenty.”

Kalcedon didn’t laugh. He lifted his hand slowly, fingers trembling slightly. If he just practiced, I thought, that wouldn’t happen. Except this wasn’t casting. This was his hand inching towards me like I was a snake about to bite.

He rested his fingers on my kneecap, then met my gaze inquisitively.

“How does this feel?”

“That’s a blanket,” I informed him hoarsely, even though he was still so near he was swallowing me.

I watched Kalcedon slowly wet his lips. Then he rose to his knees, and shifted closer to me. He leaned past my bent legs, resting his weight on one fist, and touched the other hand slowly—cautiously—to my cheek.

My eyes must have glazed over. I didn’t even notice his expression, though I heard the sharp inhale of his breath. This wasn’t the first time Kalcedon’s skin had brushed mine, in the three years I’d known him, but tonight felt different.

My bones blazed.

His hand withdrew, and I couldn’t help the small mewl of disappointment that escaped me, my thin fae blood screaming for the power it was meant to contain.

“Come back,” I begged, even though I knew it was foolish to invite him. You were never to invite the fae; never to bargain or beg.

“Meda,” he breathed. And then he was closer still, his body pressing into the space between my bent knees, his torso pushing against mine.

We’d never touched more than hands. He’d never given me more than an assessing look. Now his body was on mine; the weight of him, and of his heat. I fought hard to keep my head clear. You shouldn’t do this, I told myself. You need to tell him to stop.

He started to lean me back. My head spun so wildly I nearly let him, except I remembered, vaguely, the book, more precious than life itself—more important than the warning in my head. I stiffened my back, biting both my lips together.

“You don’t want—?” he started, and began to sit up, but I couldn’t let him go, either—couldn’t return myself to the lifeless cold of my brink-of-death existence just yet.

My heels hooked over his calves, pinning him in place. Now Kalcedon’s face was slack, loosened by a desire I’d never seen on him. He groaned low, and gritted his teeth, and bowed his head before me.