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“How?” he whispered, breaking the kiss. His hands found my waist and pulled me closer to his kneeling form. “Tell me how.”

The keeper pierces me with its hourglass gaze. “How did you address your unraveling to Remiel?”

But my mind drifts to the day I lost my wings.

I still do not know why Remiel did it, why he broke us apart. I always presumed the tribunal judged us. Still, I don’t remember anyone else being in the tribunal chambers but myself, Sera, my father, and Remiel.

The deeper my mind wanders, the stranger the keeper looks at me.

“Cassiel…” it says, “you unfortunately have little time. I insist you continue with your story.”

I look back at the creature, but it offers no more information.

“Make love to me,” I whispered, not elaborating.

Remiel remained wordless, offering no promises or calm reassurances. But his next kiss was a claiming—slower and imbued with a sacred, almost sorrowful deliberation.

His calloused hands slowly ascended to my top, his fingers quivering, and they released the garment from my shoulders. The fabric cascaded to the dusty stone floor like a sinner’s flag of surrender. Even as his mouth kept its desperate claim on mine, my trembling hands fumbled with the buttons of his torn shirt, each undone with painstaking slowness, until my patience fractured, and I ripped it open, baring the skin I found so inexplicably enchanting.

His breaths shivered. With a strength softened by tenderness, he gathered me into his arms and carried me to the ruined altar. The cold stone pressed against my spine, final and unyielding, yet the fire in his eyes transformed that chill into a profound sense of sanctity.

He undressed me with reverence, peppering me with kisses along my exposed skin. It bordered a sacred ritual, each movement deliberate and laden with a terrible contrition. I lay bare before him, my breathing ragged, and watched his body change.

His golden skin darkened to burnished bronze. Runes ignited across his torso, glowing like brands of a language older than Heaven, older than time. His hair fell longer, wild strands brushing my collarbone as he bent closer and landed more kisses along my jaw. Wings erupted from his magnificent back in a flare of phoenix fire, and embers rained onto the desecrated altar.

Remiel loomed above me, naked and glorious. His chest was heaving, his molten gaze staring me down.

I should have spoken. I should have asked what he had become. But I chose silence.

His large hand came down to my thighs, pushing them to open. I gave in to his will, letting the ruined stone bite into my back, as he shifted closer. His body was a wall of heat and muscles, pinning me in place. I traced the burning runes across his chest with trembling fingers, their fire leaping into my skin. He lowered his face to mine, strands of his hair falling around my face. I caught a fistful of it and yanked him down harder.

His mouth claimed mine, his tongue dancing around my own, and kissed desperately, while his hips pressed forward as he settled between my thighs, the hard line of him nudging against my slick entrance. He caught my hip in a bruising grip, holding me steady, and entered me with a slow, relentless force. My breaths fractured into broken sobs as his length filled me with a pressure both unbearable and exquisite. My nails dug into his skull harder as another hand tried to latch onto his back. The burning runes across his skin sparked, leaping into my palm, while his mouth moved along my throat with bruising kisses.

When he seated himself fully inside me, the weight of him pressed me deeper into the altar. He pulled back with agonizing slowness, the length of him dragging against my trembling walls until I thought I would split apart. He then drove forward again, harder. I sobbed and moaned. His hips ground into me deeper and more deliberately, branding me with every stroke.

“Cassia…” His voice broke against my throat, rough and reverent.

“I feel you,” I gasped, clutching his back. The burning runes kissed my palms. “I feel all of you.”

“Then take it.” He drove into me again and again, his pace merciless.

“Yes,” I whispered, my legs locking around him and dragging him deeper.

His pace grew rougher, the force of each thrust rocking me deeper into the altar until the ancient stones groaned beneath us. The sound of the wet slaps of our bodies filled the chapel, mingling with my ragged cries and his guttural growls. His mouth trailed fire across my jaw, my throat, and my breasts—each kiss desperate and searing. My fingers clawed through his hair, yanking him harder against me, while my other hand dragged down his back, following the burning paths of his runes. His name tore from my lips until the sound of it no longer felt like mine.

My shadows stirred beneath my skin and unfurled in black silk ribbons. They slid out from my spine to curl around his flaming wings, coiling tighter with every thrust as if my darkness could anchor him.

The clash of wet flesh, burning runes, and writhing shadows turned the chapel into a place of blasphemous worship—every thrust of his hips a prayer, every moan from my lips an offering.

My shadows cut me above a breast the instant he drove deeper. His mouth closed over the wound, pulled hard, and drank my essence while his cock thrust into me with brutal force. Each push inside me dragged another moan from my lips; each pull of his mouth left me shaking. I arched beneath him, pinned to the altar and overwhelmed by the sting of feeding and the fullness of him at once.

Then the shadows split a cut on his shoulder. Light spilled hot from the cut, and I bent to it, sealing my mouth to the wound. He hissed as essence poured over my tongue, burning and sweet. It flooded me as his body pounded into mine. The feeding and the fucking fused together, impossible to separate and both savage and consuming. The tether flared alive, fire and shadows ripping through us, the altar trembling beneath our bodies.

The chapel could not contain us. Flames leaped wildly in their sconces, shadows writhing against the cracked stones. He pulled me upright, still buried deep inside me, and sat back against the altar’s edge, dragging me onto his lap. My legs straddled him as he now thrust upward, bouncing me with merciless strength. My breasts rose and fell, glistening with sweat and shimmering essence. His mouth closed on the wound once again, drinking greedily as the remanence of my darkness spilled down my stomach. I clung to his shoulders, gasping and licking the molten cut across his flesh, his light bleeding down his arm.

His grip on my hips tightened, pulling me down hard against him and impaling me to the root. A cry tore from my throat as fire and shadows surged between us, cracking the altar beneath our bodies.

His mouth found my ear, each word torn from him with the force of his thrusts. “I take you,” he gasped, his breath hot against my skin. “In darkness…in ruin…in fire…in ash. As my flame. As my truth.”