Instead, he would now die with the knowledge that his failure to protect the one who should have been his mate meant an eternity of debasement for her.

The magic pinning him tightened. A crack in his ribcage sent blinding pain through his bones, but it was nothing—nothing—in comparison to the rending of his heart as the final vestiges of strength bled from his broken body.

In the end, he didn’t get to tell her how bitterly he regretted his cowardice.

His vision blurred, and as she faded into the darkness, all he managed was to mouth the last, inadequate words that mattered.

I’m sorry.

The magic constricted. Kesh’s spine arched with the force of it, nerves blazing in white-hot agony. He heard Aragalan’s snarl—something guttural and victorious—and then the pressure grew sharp, focused. The unmistakable crack of vertebrae beginning to split.

This was it.

His body failed, muscles twitching against the stone, breath a thin whistle in his throat.

Somewhere beyond the noise in his skull, he heard it. Her voice. Desperate. Shattered.

“No!”

And then came the light.

Blinding, pure. It exploded through the darkness behind his lids like a sun bursting open, searing into what little consciousness he had left.

And then…

Nothing.

50

Georgia

Georgia came to on her knees.

The air was hot. The ground beneath her was hotter; fractured marble that steamed where it still held the imprint of her body. Her legs shook. Her hands trembled. One of them was closed in a fist without her remembering how, the smooth curve of the stone Suzanne had given her back in Maine pressed tight to her palm, still pulsing like a second heart.

She couldn’t hear anything, and her vision blurred at the edges with the bright light thrumming all around her. Her skin screamed in places—her neck, her wrists. Her thigh. She looked down.

The shackles were gone. Melted. Only the burns remained—rings of scorched flesh where gold had seared against her skin. Her wrists were red and blistered. A raw mark ringed her throat like a brand. And across the tender skin of her inner thigh, a single raised line burned furious and sharp, where the leash had swung and branded her.

There was… a power pulsing through her body. Bright and dull, like pressing on a bruise that ran the length of her veins. Woven through every cell of her body.

The stone in her palm thrummed in time with it, as if synced in perfect, volatile harmony. She blinked down at it, mind still slow. Where had it come from? Last she saw it had been… Kesh’s penthouse. Before…

Images flooded her: the heat, the agony, the need. Kesh, as wild as she. On top of her. Inside of her. The broken hollow in her chest at his rejection. The courting ceremony, Mallorn, Europe. Despair.

The leash. The fight. Kesh.

Terror lanced through her. Her head snapped up, eyes desperately scanning…

And there he lay.

In the center of the ruined arena, among rubble and dust and smoke.

His body. Half-buried in broken marble and streaked in soot and the charred remains of the demons who had taken him down, blood drying in the cracks of his armor, skin death-pale beneath the grime. His chest didn’t move. His eyes didn’t open.

The world dropped out from under her.

“Kesh.” Her voice broke in her throat. “Kesh!”

Her legs moved before her mind could catch up. The stone clutched in her hand burned hot, pulsing harder now. Light broke from her skin, shooting down her arms and legs as she stumbled toward him across the debris. The air around her thickened, power bleeding off her body in radiant waves. She fell to her knees beside him with a sob, light pooling from her chest, her hands, forming a shimmering cocoon around them both.

A shield. A ward. A desperate prayer. The magic bled from her veins, pulled from nothing but raw instinct to keep his broken body safe.

Her prince didn’t move. His mouth was parted, his body slack. There was so much blood…

“No,” she whispered, and the bubble tightened, sealing them inside. “No, no, no— Please. Don’t leave me. Please, please…”

She reached for him, tears already spilling down her cheeks. He couldn’t be gone; he couldn’t.

Please, please no.

Georgia gripped his face with shaking hands. One palm cradled his bloodied cheek, the other pressed hard over the wound at his side where the armor had split. Light, from the deepest parts of her she hadn’t even known existed before he stood in that arena, before he came to lay down his life for hers, curled between her fingers. It was right there. She felt it—the thrum of power far beyond her mortal comprehension, but she didn’t know how to use it.

“Please.” Her voice cracked apart. “Please don’t leave me. Not again, not like this. I can’t—” Her mouth trembled. “You don’t get to do this! You’re mine, you bastard—mine!”

The tears came harder. Her forehead dropped to his, lips brushing the bridge of his nose. His skin was cooler than it had ever been before, the fire in him nearly gone.

Her power didn’t build. It broke. Crushed open under the weight of her grief and poured into him without direction or shape.

Not a spell. Not skill. Need. Her love. Her terror. Her hope, ragged and bleeding and still somehow alive. It poured from her chest and her hands and her tears, spilling into his wounds like molten light, threading through torn muscle and shattered bone.

Something inside her cracked wide open. Not breaking—connecting. To him.

A tether pulled tight between them, so sudden and fierce it stole her breath. A current of knowing that split through the fog of panic. Like lightning. Like it had always been there. Dormant. Waiting.

Now, it surged.

Magic rose around them in a spiral of light. His body jerked, and she felt him in that primordial current flooding every part of her being.

He was still with her.

The bond pulsed once. Then again. And she clung to it, to him, with everything she had left.

“Come back to me. Come back,” she whispered, forehead pressed to his as her trembling hands smoothed over his body and arms, again and again, the light in her filling him until he radiated with it.

Slowly, his skin warmed. Then his breath hitched beneath her hands. A pull of heat beneath her palms, subtle but sure. She choked on a sob and gripped him tighter.

Then his eyes cracked open, just enough for her magic flooding him to shine through his black eyes, turning them molten charcoal.

“Stop,” he rasped, voice torn and ragged but his. “Georgia, stop. I’m here. Don’t… don’t give me any more. You’re pulling… from your life force.” His fingers, weak but steady, lifted to cup her cheek. “I’m here.”

She let out a broken, gasping sound, half-sob, half-laugh, and leaned into the warmth of his touch. Her whole body shook. Her light flickered wildly around them, dimming and surging without rhythm now, the bond still pulsing between them like a third heart. He was here.

“I thought I lost you,” she whispered.

“You brought me back,” he rasped. His thumb brushed her cheek, reverent. “My beautiful, strong female. I always knew… from the first time I saw you, I knew…”

His other hand reached up slowly, gingerly, pulling her down. Their lips met, the kiss a tremor, not passion. Fragile and slow and sacred.

Kesh pulled back, eyes clouded with regret as he searched hers. “Georgia, I⁠—”

“Kesh!” The voice cracked across the crumbled arena like lightning. Georgia whipped around just in time to see a swirl of smoke and shadow stop, materializing into a figure.

Kirigan stood where the auction platform had once been, eyes wide and face drawn. His mad gaze swept over both of them, hands trembling before he clenched them into fists. His face turned ashen as his eyes lingered on Kesh.