Page 156 of Ballad of Nightmares

“She gave me a way to make my own immortal demons, an army of shifters and dangerous creatures capable of things the witches had only been rumored to have the power to do in the past, and then she wrote Death and the Corvids poem after the Myers and Moors split apart, in the midst of the war. The rest of her coven went ballistic when they found out,” Sam continued. “After she was killed, the others began creating those texts against me. The same ones that they taught you in Icemyer. They started trying to find small ways to bind me.”

Sam exhaled heavily as he turned toward her. “I once thought they were my enemies. I thought, after all these years, they still wanted to keep me contained in this realm, but I realize I could be wrong. I have been so wary of them these last centuries.” He seemed to shake his head at his own prejudice, pain stretching across his eyes.

She felt for him. She felt how hard it must have been to need to trust a people who had done so much against him once. But these were different times.

“To win this, you’ll need them,” Ana said softly.

Sam faced her fully, and she turned her head to look at the sincere expression on his face. “I know,” he said. “I need you, too. I need you to take Millie to Icemyer and speak with the covens that raised you.”

The news settled in her. She hadn’t expected this. To become his was one thing, but this… She realized that he trusted her. He was giving her power to help them take their revenge. To help his people and every person she’d done the things she did for.

His wings turned back shadows as she stepped closer to him, the darkness wreathing her body instead, and she sank into it.

“Do you ever miss it?” she chose to ask.

“Miss what?” he breathed.

“The pure shadow you once were,” she replied.

Sam took her hand in his and brought it up, their elbows bending together as their splayed fingers met. “I did. For a long time,” he answered. “I thought becoming only that again would settle the desire in my heart. That it would set me free from the thing I thought had broken me.”

“And now?” She shifted slightly and met his eyes as their fingers entwined together.

His tongue darted out over his lips, head dipping closer. “Now, I can’t imagine not being able to do this,” he whispered, his lips brushing hers. “To kiss you and hold your beating heart against mine. To feel your skin—“ his fingers trailed her bare arm to her collar, to her neck, and chills ran over her flesh. “—to be inside you and feel you surrender.” He paused to tilt her head back, locking eyes.

“Would you love me if that’s all I was?” he asked. “If I was nothing more than the darkened space around us and your last breath? If all you could see and feel of me was that whisper?”

His shadows moved around them, trickling up her skin. She sank into the feeling of its calm press comforting her.

“I have, and I would forevermore,” she answered.

And she meant it.

She shifted on her feet, a smile growing on her lips as she moved her hands up his chest.

“Although… I am partial to this form…” she added suggestively, allowing her eyes to travel to his lips.

His hands tightened around her waist to the point of the most delicious pain, her flesh squeezing between his fingers. “Are you?” His lips lifted at the left corner, that beautiful smile she loved so much, licentious and poison all at once. “What do you like about this form?”

Her nail trailed over the bob of his throat, outlining his snake tattoo. It seemed to shiver at her touch, and Ana leaned in to lick the dip between his collarbones. “Everything.”

He grasped the top of her ass and squeezed, causing a soft moan to leave her. She could feel when he curled a finger in her hair and tugged it slightly, his neck stretching longer.

“I think you might enjoy the umbra as well,” he said, his voice a caress over her flesh. “Perhaps even the wings wrapped around you, tickling your skin.”

Her knees went soft at the mention. At the recollection of how he’d looked on that battlefield. Broken wings. Talons on his fingertips. The scarlet eyes and the shadows all around him.

She wanted all of that. Unleashed and ravenous upon her. As Death and Samarius all at once. She wanted to fall into that place and drown beneath the shadows that clung so tightly to him. Feel everything and nothing and the final edge.

His soft smile widened, apparently having felt her shift in his arms, perhaps seen the dilation in her eyes at the mention. “Tell me what you want…Deianira,” he whispered against her lips.

The softness of her name had her knees in a puddle, her core nearly throbbing.

“Death,” she hissed.

A bolt of lightning struck outside the moment his lips crashed into hers. She wasn’t expecting it. Wasn’t expecting the hunger, the rage, and all the desire in between. Ana pushed, writhing in his grasp to fight, yet she found herself flush against him, her thigh hiked high around his waist, the dig of his nails in her flesh. But Ana finally pulled back, causing Sam’s lips to latch to her throat, to her collar, down between her breasts. Her back arched as she let him in.

Grasping his hair at the base of his neck, she tugged him off, back up to her face, where his predatory eyes tore into her. Heavy breaths staggered between them. He leaned in, then tried to pull her back into him.