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We lay in the darkness of the hut, the moonlight and starlight bouncing off the surface of the water and giving us some illumination. Nothing was said as we relaxed there together, my fingers gently grazing over his chest, my body on fire from the intensity of his stare.

The flames of desire between us should have been extinguished long ago, but every night, a new log was tossed onto the fire and the blaze burned hotter than it did before. My heart beat for a man who didn’t have a heart at all. I longed for his stare and his touch, and I felt comforted knowing he was watching me evenwhen I couldn’t see him. I’d be a slave to a Barbarian right now if he hadn’t used his command of the dead to ensure I lived.

“What are your thoughts?” he said quietly.

My eyes lifted to his, realizing that was one thing he couldn’t take from me. He could watch me without being seen, but he couldn’t hear the thoughts inside my mind. “What are yours?”

His hand moved over mine, and he placed it where his heart should be. There was nothing there, no beat or thud, a silent graveyard where life had once been. “My heart beats when I’m with you. And it beats true.”

This road we’d traveled had been filled with the beauty of wild jasmine and the excitement of lit braziers. A moment ago, it had felt endless, but now it felt completed. Barren sand stretched out as far as the eye could see. There was nothing but death.

My hand suddenly weakened in his, and I pulled it away.

His eyes had been calm and enigmatic, but they sharpened at my sudden movements.

I sat up in bed when the anxiety took hold, when I was suddenly scared out of my mind. I hugged the bedding to my chest and noticed him sit upright from the corner of my eye. A moment ago, I’d been so comfortable I could have drifted off to sleep, but now, I wanted to run. “This is over.”

Instead of challenging my statement with his refusal or confusion, he only stared at me.

I waited for the litany of questions, the scorching interrogation, but it never came.

After a minute of pained silence became several, I turned to look at him.

With the same intensity he wore whenever he looked at me, he stared at me now, making me feel smothered by him even when we were a foot apart. “I didn’t foresee this either. Hundreds of years spent in darkness had numbed me to the world. My past had numbed me to myself. When you came to my shores, I felt a magnetism that was stronger than the forces of Xian and the Realm of Caelum. I should have fought the hold, but I let it pull me to you. I followed this river to a cliff, a cliff that will kill any who topple over, but I let it pull me to the edge anyway.”

I wanted to look away, but he was just as magnetic to me as I was to him.

“I loved a woman before, a long time ago. I didn’t expect it to happen again.”

I sucked in a rushed breath and dropped my stare.

“You already know this,Xivin.”

I swallowed, feeling my flesh carved down to the bone.

“This is presumptuous, but I think that feeling is reciprocated.”

My heart was racing harder than a speeding horse. Faster than the flapping wings of a heavy dragon trying to take flight.

“An open secret between us…”

I tightened the blankets around me when I felt a chill in the air, a frost on a tropical beach. “I—” I’d never been with a man so straightforward and transparent, someone who shared vulnerable thoughts that most men would deny or hide. Hewas unafraid of everything, even himself. “We need to end this before…it’s too late.”

“Xivin, it’s already too late.”

I turned to look at him once more.

With a calmness, he stared at me with eyes the color of earth filled with flecks of gold. His intensity had waned, but he still radiated strength in the straightness of his spine, in the power of the muscles packed on his limbs and core. When he was mortal, he must have been the most sought-after man who ever lived. Whoever he loved had been the luckiest woman alive. “All you have to do is ask me to leave and never return—and I will honor that wish.”

My sternum cracked from the pain.

“But I don’t want this to end, and neither do you.”

“We have no future, Wrath. I can’t be in a relationship that no one can see. I can’t tell my father that the man I’ve chosen is the God of the Underworld. I can’t explain to Khazmuda why I’ve chosen to spend my life with someone who once served the man who killed my father. There is no way this will ever work. Of course, the first time I find someone I want for more than a night happens to be the most unavailable man on the planet.”

“I’ve never been unavailable to you. I’ve been here with you most nights. I’ve stood in your presence during the day. I’ve come to know your world and everyone who matters to you by standing at your side—even if you couldn’t see me.”

“You know that’s not enough.” It was enough right now when I pretended this was only an arrangement and nothing more. But the warning in my heart now blared like a horn at the beginningof war. My heart was vulnerable to swords and arrows and death.