She didn’t answer me, too drunk on pleasure. Her radiance turned blinding as silver shimmered across her breasts and throat.

Wrapping my arms around her, I pinned her against the boulder and unleashed everything.

Great gusts of black smoke erupted from my back, smoke twisting into wings, outstretched and hiding us from everything.

My hips slammed into hers, combining a furnace and blizzard into one.

“Look at what you do to me.” My smoke consumed her light like a solar eclipse. “Look at what you make me become.”

“Oh God...oh God.” She tightened around me. Her light flickered. The snow snuffed out and with a short, sharp scream...she came.

My matching orgasm tore through me like lightning, sending a shockwave of fire across the flowing river and shooting up the waterfall.

I could die from this.

I could happily die from how good she felt. How good we felt together.

“Rook. Fuck.” My body jerked in ecstasy. A guttural groan tore from my throat as my release wrung me dry.

I sagged against her, breathless and shaking.

We stayed like that for a while, breathing hard and slowly coming back to life.

Her light extinguished and the fire that always stalked inside me was snuffed out as easily as if she’d reached inside my heart and pinched out the candle wick that lived there.

The valley went still.

The waterfall continued to crash.

I slowly lifted my head, and my mouth fell open at the impossibility.

The valley was no longer frozen or burnt.

It didn’t drip with melted snow or choke on clouds of ash.

Everywhere I looked, new life sprouted in the moonlight. Tiny buds on the bushes and branches, unfurling with bright green.

Rook squeaked in my arms. “I...have no explanation for any of this.”

Even the rotting leaves on the riverbank were eased aside by new shoots, swiftly turning the barren river edge into a thick meadow.

The air came alive with the scent of newly bloomed wildflowers. Burnt bark peeled away from tree trunks in curling ribbons, revealing living wood beneath.

Something brushed my calf.

I looked down, peering through the dark water to find a school of zippy fish.

Pushing me off her, Rook waded to the edge and climbed out. A cluster of white flowers bloomed at her feet.

I went to join her, unnerved and questioning everything.

Turning to face me, she dripped with river water. Her voice dropped to a whisper as if she was petrified of someone overhearing us. “You burned it and I froze it...”

“Yet together...” I trailed off.

She turned to look down the serpentine valley.

Further up the river, trees that’d been utterly consumed by flames were now fully whole with branches overladen with leaves. Flowers released a cloud of pollen so thick, it covered everything in yellow dust.

We’d both destroyed this valley, so how?

Somewhere in the distance, an owl called. Followed by the cicadas singing.

Rook hugged herself in awe as well as fear. “So...we destroy life when we’re apart but—”

“—together. We seem to give it.”

Our eyes locked.

A shiver ran down my spine.

Rook inhaled deeply and I sensed her falling into grief again. Grief that she’d never been told what they’d done to her. Grief that her own parents were probably the ones who did it.

Wrapping my arms protectively around her, I scanned the moonlit horizon.

Thank God this had happened here and not somewhere public.

Thank God we had no witnesses. No cameras. No drones.

Only we would ever know what we’d done.

And we’d take it to the grave before we told anyone.

Chapter Forty-Seven

“DRINK IT, YOU DUMB BEAST.”

“What have I told you about calling him dumb?” Rook asked, dropping to her haunches beside me where I shoved my bleeding wrist under Whisper’s burned nose.

She looked as if she’d been dragged through a forest backward—which was almost true. After the uncomfortable epiphany by the river, we’d begun the journey back to Ashfall Cliff.

The trail was ridiculously overgrown, and it’d taken us two hours to hike from the bottom of the river back to the estate at the top. It also didn’t help that I was used to walking barefoot but she wasn’t. And she refused to let me carry her, even though she winced and moaned most of the way.

At least everyone was asleep as we’d slipped through the back gate and sneaked through Ashfall Cliff. Whisper had appeared from the shadows as soon as we’d entered my courtyard. I’d raced toward my best friend, taken one look at his weeping burns, and ordered him into the pavilion where all of this nightmare had started.

“It’s a pet name.” I offered up my cut wrist again, rolling my eyes as the panther turned his nose up. “Isn’t it, Whisp?”

Whisper sneezed and hoisted himself to all fours with a wince. His burned pelt and exposed flanks tore at my heart. Watching him limp on scalded paws...I couldn’t do it.

Shooting upright, I blocked his path and shoved out my arm again. “If you don’t take a lick, I’ll force it down your throat.”

He hissed unconvincingly.

“Lick it.”

Plonking his rump down, he sat like a pissed-off gargoyle, his tail lashing in the lamplight.

“Don’t make me ask again,” I growled. “I can’t stomach seeing you in pain so behave and let me fix you.”

He rolled his golden eyes, sniffed my wrist, then licked my strangely gilded blood with his sandpaper tongue.

Rook sucked in a breath as we both watched him—waiting for the flush of healing and impossibility of a miracle.

But...he jerked back with an offended hiss, his singed fur bristled, and he gagged as if I’d fed him acid.

“You’re so dramatic.” I rolled my eyes.

Rook laughed under her breath as the panther went to her, pressing against her as if she’d save him from me. “There, there. He’s only trying to help.” Her hands landed gently on his pelt, careful to miss the burned patches.

Whisper whimpered instead of purred.

A thick droplet of my blood splashed onto the floorboards.

A loud sizzle and blast of smoke destroyed the wood and left a coin-sized hole behind.

Whisper glowered at the smouldering spot, all while Rook gave me a wary smile. “You’re nothing if not consistent.”

Passing her the onyx-hilted dagger from the desk, I shrugged. “Your turn.”

She gulped but didn’t refuse.

Shifting a little, thanks to Whisper trying to crawl into her lap, she fisted the dagger and held it over her wrist. Gritting her teeth, she dragged it in a mirroring cut.

Instantly, her blood beaded.

Slightly metallic, almost luminous with silver.

Whisper curled his upper lip, exposing the tips of his fangs. Sniffing her bleeding wrist, he gagged even harder than he had with mine.

“Lick it.” I crossed my arms, pressing my still bleeding wound against my bare chest. “Go on.”

Grumbling loudly, he got to all fours, licked Rook’s blood, and shot backward. Spitting and growling, he smashed into one of the lattice screens, wiping his mouth on his leg.

“Guess that answers that.” I hoped I hadn’t made him worse by using him as our guinea pig, but...it seemed as though the only person I could heal was Rook.

And the only person she could heal was me.

But together...

Without a word, Rook angled her wrist, shaking it a little so blood plopped to the floor.

The wood instantly froze—frost spiderwebbing outward. Pressing her finger to the centre of the web, the crystals cracked, taking the floorboards with it...leaving a matching hole to mine.

We looked at each other.

Whisper glared at us like we’d betrayed him.

And the urgency to fix him—now that I’d tested on him—made me stalk to the dining table where covered dishes waited for us to eat. Grabbing one of the china teacups next to the long-cold daisy-painted teapot, I angled my wrist over it. Striding back to Rook, I dropped to my haunches beside her. I didn’t move until a shallow red puddle had formed at the bottom before passing it to her.