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Idonea still believed that the relic was dangerous, and it couldn’t fall into anyone’s hand. But Nellith? Saving her? She wasn’t so sure on that anymore. Not if she was the architect of it all.

But Lysander didn’t move, didn’t speak. His eyes remained on her, fixed and unrelenting.

Her pulse tripped under the weight of his silence. She hated how her body remembered his arm. Hated that it learned the shape of his hands, that her muscles had yielded when he’d held her down. Steadying her. Anchoring her when the Current tore at her bones.

She should've pulled away sooner.

She told herself she loathed him for what he was. He stood on the wrong side of every line she'd drawn since childhood.

Her skin still burned where he’d touched her. Her body remembered him. That was the problem.

“Witchling.” His voice was softer now.

Her throat closed. She couldn’t meet his eyes. If she did, she feared it would undo her, that she'd let him see how thin her control had become.

When he stepped closer, she didn't move. The stillness was dangerous.

Because if she wanted him, if she needed him, then he'd have power over her. And Idonea had already given too much of herself to forces that claimed they knew what was best for her.

But her heart hammered all the same. She tilted her head back without meaning to, and suddenly his face was there above hers, framed in candlelight, shadow clinging to the hard line of his jaw.

“And if the relic won’t let you?”

She swallowed hard. “I will not be used.”

A flare went through his eyes at that. He lifted a hand, stopped just shy of her cheek. His fingers trembled before curling into a fist, knuckles ghosting near her skin, but not daring to touch.

“Everything about you is dangerous,” he murmured.

Her pulse hammered. “Then why are you still here?”

He bent his head just enough that his forehead met hers.

Nails biting into her palms, she pulled her chin back an inch. Do not yield, she told herself. Not to him.

“Because leaving you,” Lysander said, voice rough, “would be worse.”

Neither of them moved.

Then she stepped back, putting air between them because if she didn't, she might not stop at all. Torn between the instinct to bare her teeth and the dangerous, aching urge to lean into the warmth he offered without asking.

Her voice was steady when it returned. “Then believe me. We find this relic, we destroy it.”

His lips parted, but whatever he might have said, he swallowed it down. Instead, he gave a single curt nod.

But his eyes lingered on her mouth far too long before he turned away.

Harsh knocks at the door broke through Idonea’s thoughts.

“Brother Lysander, bring the prisoner out.”

The Grand Templar had come for her.

Chapter 32

The knocks at the door hadn’t even faded before another sound drowned them out.

A deep, mechanical thrum. The roof rattled, and dust sifted down from the beams.