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I drew a deep breath, not for air but to summon a reckless strength from the depths of my soul. Yet as I inhaled, the scent hit me. Not just the rosewater and ash I knew so well, but it was the smell of the mask she had worn, the scent of Valden’s game.

My light, usually a steady white hum beneath my skin, flared and then sickened. I felt it turn a stormy gray. It wasn’t fighting her darkness; it was yielding to it.

And gods help me, I didn’t care.

“Do you imagine this is a simple path for me, Cassia?” I growled, my voice shaking despite every piece of resolve I’d painstakingly built against her. “Do you think I don’t loathe myself for every sinful, treacherous beat of my heart when my eyes land on you, when the memories of you consume me?”

She recoiled then, a sharp click of her heel against the scarred stone floor.

Good. She should stand back. She should run.

“Do you remember when I first saw you after the fall?” I asked, my voice jagged with the pain of that memory. “You were shattered. Bloodied. Defiant. Your eyes were hollowed out with despair. Your wings, those magnificent extensions of your very soul, had been cruelly torn from your back, leaving wounds that bled starlight and sorrow. Yet even then, even in your ruin, you shone like a beacon.” My chest heaved, where righteous fury tangled with a consuming desire until they could no longer be separated. “They sent me to watch you, to ensure you didn’t become something monstrous and beyond their control. I convinced myself that it was only that. Duty. Until you looked at me, really looked into my soul, and I…I crumbled. My carefully constructed world, my unwavering faith, turned to dust at your feet.”

Her mouth tightened, her fists pulsating at her sides with a barely contained rage and her shadows coiling around her like protective serpents.

“Do you know, Cassia?” I whispered, my voice thick with an emotion too dangerous to name, as I closed the gap once more. “Do you have any comprehension of what it feels like to have something sacred, something pure, burst into an unholy flame within you and to yearn for that fire, that destruction, against all reason?” The words erupted from me like a storm of unanswered prayers. “For you, I’ve defied angels. I have misled the tribunal. I’ve lied to myself over and over again. But I have never once lied to or about you.”

Her jaw convulsed, a silent battle obviously raging within her. “Then choose me,” she ordered, her voice a low whisper, a demand etched with the weight of a curse.

My breath hitched.

“Choose me, Remiel. Now. Or walk away and never look back.”

And with those words, everything shattered.

“I can’t!” I roared, the word erupting from my throat. I couldn’t choose her over Heaven. Not again. But I also couldn’t condemn myself to an eternity without her.

Her hand struck my face then—so fast, so unexpectedly—that I didn’t see it coming. The sound cracked through the empty corridor like a bolt of divine judgment. My head whipped to the side from its force, the sting blooming.

I didn’t recoil. Didn’t apologize. I charged.

I closed the distance before she could blink. Her eyes widened, as if she was startled for a moment, but then my hands slammed against the heavy oak doors on either side of her head, forcing them open with a splintering crash. Before she could summon her defenses, I tangled my fingers within the silken mass of her hair, tilting her head back, and claimed her mouth with a kiss that was all tongue and centuries of suppressed burning passion.

She tasted of venom and something dangerously sweeter—like crushed violets rotting in the rain. It wasn’t just her hunger. It was something foreign, something that clawed at my light with hooks I didn’t recognize.

I guided her backward, step by urgent step, until her back met the unyielding stones of the wall beside the roaring fireplace, the flames within leaping and dancing. She gasped against my mouth, a broken sound of surrender or perhaps recognition, as I deepened the kiss, our bodies pressed together—every line, every curve.

It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t clean. It was a ruin—everything I wasn’t supposed to feel.

I pulled back just enough to breathe, her hair still fisted in my hand. The scent of rosewater, ash, and that poisonous undercurrent of Valden’s corruption overwhelmed my senses.

Her lips were red and swollen, and her eyes were blazing. “You don’t get to do that,” she panted, her voice breathless. “You don’t get to kiss me like that and still pretend you’re walking away from this, from me.”

“I’m not walking—”

She shoved me back hard. “No, you’re kneeling, Guardian.”

I froze at the silken command. My mind, my will, and everything that had once defined me as Heaven’s Blade dissolved at that imperious pronouncement.

Her hand pressed against my chest again but with a slow pressure this time. Down. Down. Until my knees hit the cold stone floor before her.

“You want to burn for me, Remiel?” she whispered, her voice a seductive purr that vibrated through my very soul. “Then start with your tongue.”

And I dropped. Without thinking. Without hesitation.

She pulled the slit of her crimson gown higher, revealing the smooth pale skin of her thigh kissed by the flickering firelight. She lifted one leg, the movement slow, and placed her golden-heeled foot on the edge of a plush ottoman near the hearth, her pose a study in regal, contemptuous invitation.

That knowing look in her eyes. That was all it took.