Page 136 of A Court of Wings and Shadows

“I thought I lost you,” I whispered, voice breaking. “Zander, I—” My throat closed around the rest.

His hand cupped my cheek. His thumb brushed the tear I hadn’t realized had fallen. “You didn’t,” he murmured, but his voice cracked too. “You brought me back.”

Another kiss. This one slower. Fierce in a different way. Like he was trying to memorize me. Like he didn’t believe we’d still have this come morning.

Our magic answered again. My storm rippling beneath his skin, his Dark Fire licking along my throat. The room filledwith the scent of smoke and ozone. Something cracked, wood splitting in the bedpost. Rain hit the windows. The storm outside mirrored the one inside.

“You don’t get to leave me,” I said into his mouth, voice trembling. “Ever.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” he breathed, resting his forehead against mine. “Not unless you tell me to.”

I pulled him down to me, curling around him like the lightning curling across the ceiling.Never,I wanted to scream.Never leave.

I didn’t care if the world burned. So long as he was with me in the flames.

Magic.

Dark Fire bled from his skin in sinuous spirals, each thread a living, breathing thing—twisting up the bedposts, licking at the velvet curtains with a predator’s hunger. The shadows came alive around us, not ominous, but reverent. Worshipful. As if they too knew this was sacred.

My storm answered with a violent flash of white-blue light. It didn’t shimmer—itcracked, bursting from my spine like lightning spearing the heart of a storm. Thunder answered in the skies above, booming so hard the glass in the windows trembled in their frames.

“You’re glowing,” Zander rasped, his lips brushing the shell of my ear. His voice… gods, it wasn’t steady. It was frayed, as if holding me was the only thing keeping him from falling apart.

“So are you,” I whispered, laying my palm against his chest.

His heart thundered beneath my hand, and his magic surged up to meet me, molten heat wrapped in shadow, pulsing like a war drum. A whimper broke from my throat. Not from fear, but from the overwhelmingtruthof him. I almost hadn’t gotten this moment. Almost hadn’t brought him back.

I tugged at the band of his pants, and they vanished into a whisper of black fire before he pulled off my tunic. The air around us dimmed, his magic curled into the walls, plunging the room into a soft, flickering glow, like dark starlight caught inside flame.

And then he just… looked at me.

As if seeing me for the first time. As if I were the only thing anchoring him to this plane.

“You saved me,” he said, voice wrecked and raw.

“You would’ve done the same.”

He didn’t argue. Didn’t speak again.

He just devoured my mouth in a kiss that ripped the breath from my lungs and replaced it with him.

His lips dragged fire down the column of my throat, over the swell of my chest, each press of his mouth imprinting something deeper than touch, something etched. When his magic found mine again, the bed beneath us shook. The air shimmered.

And the storm I’d tried so hard to contain broke free like a scream.

Rain lashed the windows. Wind howled like wolves at the edges of the eaves. I felt him in every nerve, every breath, every flash of lightning tearing across my skin. His fingers gripped my hips like he needed the grounding, like he’d lose himself in the moment if I didn’t keep him tethered.

And then he pushed into me.

Not just physically.

Magically.

Everything shattered.

Silver light burst from my chest. His Dark Fire climbed my ribs in ribbons of black flame, the collision of our power igniting the air in flares of silver and shadow.

The bedframe groaned and split.