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W hen Iron thought of all the different ways of breaking the truth to Anna, not one of them had him on his knees. An error in judgment on his part, clearly, and one he feared would cost him far more than his honor if she got it in her mind to put some power into that right thigh of hers. Given how close her foot was to what he’d left unprotected between the goalposts of his bent legs, he wouldn’t blame her.

He would, however, take the blame for the shimmering fear in her eyes, and that somehow brought him far lower than any bended knee ever could.

“Anna . . .”

“Nope. We’re not doing that. I’m not in the mood to hear my name spoken in placating tones. And I’m not crazy. I know what I’ve seen.”

Iron sighed, getting to his feet. “You’re not?—”

“Stay the hell away from me.” She shot out her arm, palm up, and started circling toward the front door. Fear, blazing and brilliant, had struck an urgency into her movements, regardless of sense.

“You can’t go outside, and I’m not here to hurt you.”

“What are you here for, then? To brainwash me? Drug me? What the hell was in those apples, anyway?”

“Nothing! Anna, please. You’re not?—”

Her hand reached the doorknob behind her back. “You were in my head,” she accused, trembling. “In my dreams. How the hell did you do that? How?—”

“Anna, you’re not crazy!” Iron threw the full force of his power into his words, and thank the mages, it worked. All at once, the alarm behind her eyes took a station break, signaling to the rest of her body to do the same. Only when some of the tension fled her fingers and her hand fell away from the knob did he finally breathe out the tension from his lungs. “Yes, I have been in your dreams, as you have been in mine.”

Uncertainty cast her features in a pale light, and she must have seen the reciprocating emotion reflected in his, because her socked feet shuffled a step and a half away from the door.

Away from the exit but not nearer to him.

Instead, she skirted around the arm of the loveseat opposite the couch he was standing in front of and collapsed into the cushions. “What do you mean?” she pleaded in that way mortals often did when asking questions to beings they could not see but hoped were listening anyway. “How is any of this possible?”

Iron scratched the back of his head, then brought his fingers around to knead his eyes. He was doing this. He was actually going to do this. “I’m not mortal.”

“What?” she whispered, shocked uncertainty plunging her eyes into a simmering haze.

“May I sit?” He took her stiff nod as a sign that he had the floor but only until her curiosity reached nuclear reactor meltdown levels, which was surely any goddamn moment. After that, all perceived stability and safety on her part would go out the window.

He had to work fast.

“I’m a sentinel angel, a fallen warrior who once served in the Empyrean, Heaven’s highest realm, but has been trapped in the mortal plane for eons. In our quest to return home, my brothers and I—yes, they are like me, as well—obtained a relic of the Empyrean’s gates from our enemy, Cyro, the demon ruler. That was several months ago. Once I began to examine the relic to try and unlock a dormant magic strong enough to destroy the demon charmers and reopen the gates we’d been sealed out of, I unlocked something . . . more. A different sort of discovery. One that led me to start dreaming.” He held her frightened gaze. “Of you.”

Anna’s brows shot up, then she shook her head vehemently. “That’s not a real explanation. Those aren’t even real words actual people say. They’re just things from, like, comic books or those fantasy shows you always have to pay extra to watch. They’re not real.”

But Iron knew that the moment her worried words left her lips, she didn’t fully believe them. It was her poor mind trying to paint facts out of fiction, and the battle was a brutal one, judging by the toll it was taking on her furniture. Anna’s trembling fingers had dug into the nearest throw pillow, some frilly number with enough fringe to at least keep her hands distracted so her mind could hopefully focus on what he was saying.

It was better than nothing and something he could work with. Perhaps starting with that much truth had been the wrong move. He needed to go simpler, to the root of the matter, and connect with something easier for her mortal mind to understand, at least conceptually.

“In the Empyrean, there exists an Eternal Flame, and every being’s soul, mortal or otherwise, contains a spark of this flame. And when these twin sparks find each other, a soul bonding occurs. It is a link between two individuals that can never be severed.”

Iron had no idea how to sugarcoat the facts or lessen the blow that came with the heaviness of his words, so he stuck to the basics. There would be time for questions, and if he didn’t cause Anna to scramble up the wall to get away from him, he’d welcome each question openly. But for now, he could only distill the choicest cuts of information into the words she needed to hear first.

Mages willing, her trust would come later.

“My brothers and I, when we were cast out of the Empyrean, the fall altered our powers, robbing us of some and gifting us with others. My celestial angel fire, the strongest magic and connection held to the Empyrean, was essentially put on notice once I landed here. I can call upon it and wield it as needed, but it drains from me each day. What was once as much an innate part of me as breathing now must be recharged each night while I sleep belowground, absorbing my metal’s essence from the mountains and minerals around me.”

A flash of recognition brightened her eyes, and he could clearly see relief softening her features at having connected some dots in the kaleidoscope of their conversation. Anna’s mortal mind wasn’t just adrift but near to drowning, yet despite all that, she still managed to grab the straw he’d offered.

Smart woman.

“Yes, my name was chosen due to the metal I command.”

She still didn’t say anything but slowly nodded. It was as close to an acknowledgment as he would get, and he took it. Because, boy, would he need it.

Iron exhaled slowly and shifted against the couch. “Eventually, it was discovered that, in finding and activating that soul bond connection, our full angel fire returned. There was no more need to recharge our powers belowground each night.”

“But you didn’t sleep underground last night,” Anna added softly, yet another indication that she was at least following his story, if not believing some of it.

He smiled, hoping it hid the pang of worry over any conclusions she may be drawing. “No, I didn’t.”

Then she leaned forward, still clutching the pillow to her middle. “I don’t believe any of what you’re saying, okay? But if I did, what does all this have to do with me?”

Easy, Iron. Baby steps.

“The first night I started examining the relic, I kept it close. Like, against-my-heart close.” He patted his flannel pocket where the vial sat comfortably. Then he plucked it out and set it on the coffee table in front of him. Anna’s eyes bloomed in shock. “It’s rarely left my side since, and every night after that, I dreamed of you. It was only a few days ago that this thing started firing up, showing its magic to me in a way I couldn’t get it to do before. That was when my dreams stopped, and I found you.”

Anna stood and walked over to the coffee table, pillow braced against her like a shield. Once she got within three feet of the shard, it began glowing and pointing at her, tapping out its eager message loud and clear against the wood.

“Every time I thought to go in the opposite direction of what my dreams were showing me, this thing got angry and chose to redirect my course.”

Anna shook her head. “I’m not sure I follow.”

“What I’m trying to tell you, and what this piece of the Empyrean is backing me up on, is that our soul’s twin sparks have found each other. Our shared dreams were spawned from the celestial magic awakening to finally connect our two souls. And that magic is what brought us together and what will help me and my brothers destroy Cyro once and for all and return to the Empyrean.”

Outside, the wind beat its desire to join the conversation, to pull attention and focus back on the destruction it sought to wreak outside, but its turmoil could never hope to match the unsteady storm brewing behind Anna’s eyes.

They were impossibly wide, pulled round as they took in the glowing bone-like shard pointing its tip in her direction. For anyone else, he would have claimed it was a parlor trick. Some up-the-sleeve nonsense that mortal minds were more than happy to believe because recognizing the unknown had always been a fear far too terrifying to unlock fully.

But Iron couldn’t bear to see that with Anna, couldn’t bear to see what her refusal and dismissal would mean when it came to securing the only ticket home he could ever hope to offer his brothers.

Please keep an open mind, Anna. Remember our time in the dreamscape.

When she still didn’t respond and kept flicking her gaze to the front door, he took a step around the coffee table and held the hand containing her glasses out to her. “Here.”

Anna extended a shaky finger toward the relic’s glowing shard. “It’s pointing at me. It moved .”

“And it’ll move toward you again if I’m going in the wrong direction. But here, please.”

Thankfully, she heard the sincerity in his voice and gave her attention to what he was offering her.

“Put your glasses back on.”

“I-I forgot about them.”

“I know. You’ve had a lot to take in.”

She shook her head, still stunned. “I didn’t even realize I wasn’t wearing them.”

But when she reached forward, he pulled them back slightly. “There’s something else I want to show you. It . . . it might be a lot.”

“That thing is still following me. Why is it following me?” she said, eyeing the shard as it turned in her direction.

“I can answer that question, as well as every other question blowing through your mind right now. I’ll tackle every last one and many you didn’t know to ask, I promise. But first, I need to do one thing.”

“What’s that?”

Iron dropped her glasses into her hand and gestured for her to put them on. “I need to convince you that you’re not crazy.”

With that, he worked quickly, pushing every piece of furniture, rug, and living room adornment as far against the walls as they would go. Once he was satisfied that the center of the room was as bare as it was going to get, he offered his hand to Anna again, this time palm up.

“Take my hand.”

“Why? What will happen if I do?”

“You mentioned I hadn’t slept underground last night. That was very observant of you, very smart. So, no, my angel fire isn’t strong right now and not up for doing the tricks I need it to do to convince you of all this on its own.”

“This is real. This is all really happening. You’re not kidding me, are you?”

“No. I’m not. And if you place your hand in mine, the contact will start the soul bond connection between us, pulling forth my full angel fire. But it’ll be brief and burn out almost as fast as it’ll take to flare to life. You won’t be burned or harmed in any way. If we are truly soul bound, as I believe we are, only you could initiate my full fire after it’s been dormant for so long. My flames couldn’t harm you even if they wanted to.”

“And if I’m not part of this . . . soul-bonded thing?” she hedged.

Iron lifted the corner of his lips. “Then nothing will happen except I’ll finally get that handshake of thanks I’ve been clamoring after.”

She blinked. It was a small crack spidering out from within her veneer of doubt. Then a slight chuckle bobbed her shoulders, and a tentative smile forced her open mouth into a grin. “More integrity jokes?”

“It’s never a joke,” he vowed. “Not when it comes to you.”

They stood there for a moment, her huddled behind her meager pillow protection and him offering her a hand that was growing colder the longer she denied him the warmth of her trust.

But he knew it had to be her choice just as much as he knew he had to be the one to be tested in such a way.

Anna lifted her hand and held it above his, her fingers curling downward in a mimicked position of his uplifted ones. Then she speared him with a gaze sharper and more vulnerable than any razor-thin edge he’d ever honed on a blade. “I’m telling you right now, if you burn my house down with me inside it, I will haunt the living shit out of you for the rest of your life.”

A mellow heat warmed the chilly thread of anticipation that had worked its way behind his breastbone, and he smiled, rewarding her for the fight she threw at him despite her fear. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Oh, yes you fucking will.” She smiled, too, a nervous grin that she’d plastered reluctantly so it might escort her over the threshold of whatever she’d told herself she could no longer ignore.

Then she placed her hand solidly in his.

Iron screamed, and the room erupted into blue flames.