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‘Killed?’ She laughed darkly.

Wilder’s throat grew tight and he struggled to swallow. ‘Thea,’ he pleaded. ‘Talk to me.Don’t hold back, not with me…’

He felt unhinged, untethered from the fearless warrior he’d carved himself into, so far from the Hand of Death he hardly knew himself. Wilder Hawthorne had never begged for anything in his life, but for her… For her he would beg. He needed her not to disappear into herself. He needed…her.

With her back to the wall, Thea was tense before him, so tense her body quaked. But something in her challenging stare softened as he held her gaze.

Slowly, Wilder reached for her, gently tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear.

He heard her breathing hitch, her chest rising sharply at his touch, her pupils dilating.

‘You and I…’ he breathed, his gaze dipping to the soft curve of her lips as his hand traced the sharp line of her jaw. ‘You and I are a team now. What hurts you, hurts me. And we’ll take it on together. Do you understand?’

‘Wilder…’ Her voice broke as her hand came up to cup his.

‘Tell me you understand, Thea,’ he urged her, gripping her chin gently and tilting her face to his. Apprentice, friend, lover… The titles didn’t matter. Only the tether between them did, drawing them back to one another, over and over again.

‘I…’ She drew a trembling breath. ‘I understand,’ she whispered, clutching a fistful of the front of his shirt, pulling him to her.

Wilder’s whole body caved as he brushed his lips against hers, a surge of need crashing through his entire being. Gods, this woman… She was intoxicating. Even as he breathed her in, it wasn’t enough. Whatever darkness loomed ahead mattered not in this moment, and when it came for them, he knew Thea would light up the sky with her storms.

He was so fixated on her, on the taste of her, on the relief he felt at the warmth of her body and every part of them touching, that he didn’t hear the scrape of boots on stone; didn’t notice the dart whistling through the air until it pierced the soft skin of his neck.

He jolted back, just as another dart hit him.

With a hand already on his sword, he heard Thea slump to the ground, her own weapon clattering across the cobbles.

His Naarvian steel sang as he unsheathed it, but a wave of nausea rolled through him and his vision blurred.

Wilder staggered one step, then two.

He crashed against the wall and slid down it, his extremities numb.

Thea’s unconscious body was the last thing he saw before all went black.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

THEA

Thea’s mouth tasted like sawdust and an incessant ache throbbed in her temples. When she managed to peel her eyes open, still groggy and disoriented, she started.

For she found herself bound tightly to a metal chair, the cords of rope digging into her flesh and pulling at the stitches in her left arm.

What the fuck had happened? One moment she had been wrapped up in the taste of Wilder, the next she’d been falling… They’d been attacked near the palace’s fucking guardhouse, of all places. How was that possible?

Trying to swallow with a dry throat was difficult, so instead, Thea spat out the bitter taste on her tongue. She recalled the sharp sting of the dart as it had pierced her arm, coated in some sort of drug, no doubt. She assessed herself, the sawdust taste, the tingling sensation in her limbs, the headache, wracking her brain for the list of poisons she’d come to know as an alchemist. But without seeing the plant or the extract, without so much as an aroma to go by, it could very well have been anything. Were she describing it to Wren, she knew her sister would have asked her if it was just a hangover.

Thea shook the thoughts of Wren from her mind. She needed to bring herself out of the haze of whatever was in her system. She needed to focus. Looking around, she gathered she was in some sort of storehouse. Huge wooden crates were stacked all around the space, which was about as big as the Great Hall back at Thezmarr. The windows were all boarded up, with only thin streams of light filtering through the cracks, enough to see the dust motes floating through the air and the loose chains hanging from the rafters.

A groan sounded beside her.

Thea craned her neck to see Wilder restrained by thick chains from ankle to chest, two darts still protruding from his neck. He wasn’t fully conscious yet, and from what she could see of his face, it was bloodied. She wondered how long he’d managed to stay upright, swinging his fists, after they’d got to him with the darts, or if they’d beaten him while he was unconscious. The thought made her blood boil, power waking from its slumber in her veins. But she couldn’t use it, not here. If someone saw her magic and reported it to anyone… Things would get a lot worse for her. She’d have to get out of this predicament the old-fashioned way.

As she started to wriggle, testing her binds for any slack, a laugh sounded.

‘You’re not going anywhere, girl,’ a gravelly voice said. A middle-aged man dressed in a nondescript cloak and tunic came forward, folding his arms over his chest.

‘What do you want?’ Thea hissed, still pushing against the ropes. They’d taken her sword, her damn dagger too… Of course they had.