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He went quiet, staring at me with thoughts hidden behind his gaze.

I hadn’t noticed it right away, but it had become clearer that he was from another time. His mannerisms were different, and his words were always particular and few and far between. He was the strong and silent type, but he also had an unfathomable depth that couldn’t be reached with a pickax. He didn’t play games like most men I knew. Being hundreds of years old had made him more mature than anyone I knew, besides Khazmuda and the elder dragons.

“We can be together—in the underworld.”

My heart gave a squeeze at the suggestion.

“You would keep your soul.”

“But I would be dead.” My hand absent-mindedly went to my heart and felt it beat like a stampede of hooves.

“To the world above. But you wouldn’t feel it below.”

“But I would have to leave behind everyone I’ve ever known and loved.”

His eyes suddenly softened in sadness.

“I—I can’t do that.” I couldn’t believe I even entertained the idea enough to reject it. “I can’t do that to my father, not after what he’s been through. I can’t abandon my kingdom when my father has chosen me to rule. I can’t hurt my mother like that, or Hawk or Zehemoth.”

“You’re right.” His eyes shifted out the double doors to the water. “It was wrong of me to ask.”

“Is there any way you could…be mortal again?”

His eyes stayed outside on the water, a heavy silence accompanying his palpable despair. “No.”

“Have you tried?—”

“Many times.” His neck suddenly looked strained, and the cords became taut like a pulled rope. “I’ve tried to escape my fate many times, but I’ve never been as lucky as your father. I haven’t had a dragon bind itself to my soul. I didn’t have a woman who would never question my loyalty to her and would run to the ends of the earth to get me back. I’m trapped in this forced servitude for all eternity, my soul slowly corroded by the foul deeds I’m forced to complete against my will.”

A layer of tears formed on my bottom eyelids. Warm like the water at the shore, they spilled over the edge and silently flowed down my cheeks. I dropped the sheets and crawled to him on the bed before I hooked my arms around his neck.

He wouldn’t look at me. “Don’t pity me.”

I pressed my face into his cheek, my tears catching his skin and streaking down to his chin.

“Don’t.” He spoke quietly. “I understood the terms when I made my choice.”

My fingers moved into his hair as I rested my lips against his warm flesh, silently crying as I held him, when what I really wanted was for him to hold me, to comfort me when my soul was free and his wasn’t.

I cupped his cheek and brought his lips to mine, but at first, he resisted. He didn’t want my comfort or affection. He didn’t want my sympathy. As always, he wanted to carry this burden alone. The way he’d done these last three hundred and seventy-seven years.

I brought him to me again, and this time, he stayed. He let me kiss him, and after the feel of my desperate lips coated in salt, he kissed me back. Kissed me slowly and hard, his hand digging into my hair.

I moved into his lap as my arms circled his neck, kissing him with more passion than I’d ever felt before. The fire between us erupted into an inferno, but it wasn’t fueled by lust for the flesh. It was fed by the bond between our hearts, the magnetism that pulled us together and didn’t let go.

PROLOGUE VI

WRATH

I was in the grand hall when I felt it.

The paramount shift in my being, the silent bells that tolled only in my mind. If I had a beating heart, it would thud against my ribs with adrenaline. Not only did someone approach my dead island, but they approached with the blood of an unpaid debt.

They approached with Rothschild blood.

Within the blink of an eye, I was on the surface, standing in the dead garden of stone trees, feeling a massive presence touch my sands. It had the strength of a king, a powerhouse so brutal and profound that I knew it could be none other than Talon Rothschild—to finish what he’d started.

I reappeared closer to shore, seeing the galleon crashed on the rocks from the storm that rose from the east. One of the masts had collapsed, and there was noticeable damage to the hull of the ship.