KINGFISHER’S copious amounts of leather was gone, and I could understand why. The hearth was blazing, a white-hot fire licking up the brickwork when I entered the forge. For the first time in nearly a week, a blissful warmth sank into my bones, and it was a beautiful, beautiful thing.

Layne’s dark-haired brother smirked like a demon when he realized that I had entered the blistering hot workshop, though he didn’t turn away from his task. Sweat ran down the side of his face as he thrust a glowing set of tongs into the inferno; he stooped, squinting as he concentrated for a moment, and then he drew the long tongs back out again, this time with a small iron pot clasped in the tongs’ grips.

I barely noticed the pot—the crucible—that Kingfisher set down on the anvil by the workbench. My gaze was locked onto the bead of sweat that was hanging from Fisher’s chin; for the life of me, I could see nothing else. It glistened there for a second and then fell, sizzling when it hit the iron crucible and turned to smoke.

Fisher’s normally loose black shirt was plastered to his chest. He drew in a deep breath, his shoulders rising, and—

I jerked when he snapped his fingers in front of my face.

“You could at least say hello before you start eye-fucking me.”

“I wasn’t eye-fucking you. I was trying to see through all of this…steam.” I wafted my hand for effect, but the air was clear, there was no steam, and Kingfisher did not look impressed.

“It’s always confounded me. Humans aren’t restricted by the same laws as the Oath Bound Fae. You creatures can lie whenever you want. You do it

all of the time. And yet you’re all so fucking bad at it.” His cheeks were flushed from the heat, slick with perspiration. Not a hair on his head was dry. From root to tip, his waves were dripping wet, some of them plastered to the side of his face. As if suddenly conscious of this, he shook his head like a dog, showering sweat everywhere.

I held my hand up in front of my face, blocking the spray. “Disgusting.”

Fisher laughed silently as he peered into the crucible, peeling his shirt free of his chest as he inspected what was inside. “There you go again, lying your little heart out. You like my sweat, don’t you, human?”

Since the moment we’d met, the prick had lived to push my buttons. I’d never reacted to him calling me ‘human’ or ‘Osha,’ so I had no clue how he knew it irked me so much, but it did. I was officially sick of it. “I have a name. Use it.” I barged past him, making my way to the workbench. I dumped the bag I’d brought with me onto the table and then snatched up one of the thick leather aprons hanging on the wall by the window.

I turned around, ready to lecture him about manners and how it was polite to call a person by their given name and not some shitty name they’d come up for them, but—

“Holy gods and martyrs!” My heart leaped up into my throat.

Less than an inch away, Kingfisher smiled down at me. How the hell had he gotten this close? His eyes danced with mirth. It was criminal that such astonishing eyes belonged to such a bastard. They were like nothing I’d ever seen before. So bright, the most unique and startling shade of green. And while the quicksilver trapped in his right iris freaked me the hell out, there was no denying that it made him look remarkable.

“You are temporary,” he said, looming over me, his huge frame just…everywhere.

“And you are rude,” I shot back.

He shrugged, turning away. As soon as his back was to me, I sucked in a ragged breath, trying to regain my composure while he wasn’t looking. “It isn’t practical, learning the names of humans,” he said. “You come and go so quickly. I only bother to learn the names of creatures who live longer than a heartbeat.”

My hands shook as I looped the apron ties around my waist and then knotted them over my stomach. “It’s Saeris. My name. Call me that or nothing at all.”

He cast an amused look over his shoulder, his lips parted a fraction, exposing the briefest glimpse of teeth. “Nothing at all? I like the sound of that. Come here and look at this, Nothing At All.”

I suppose I walked right into that one. Sighing, I went to see what he was pointing at inside the crucible. “There are these other words, too. Please and thank you? I haven’t heard you use either yet, but I’m sure they’re a part of your vocabulary—”

“They’re not,” he said brightly.

A tiny amount of dark grey powder, fine as ash, sat in the bottom of the crucible. “What am I looking at?”

“Bone,” Fisher said. “Human?”

He shook his head. “I didn’t have any. Though, if you were willing to contribute—”

“Stop.”

Fisher stood up straight, half-closing one eye as he studied me. “Are your kind supposed to nap in the afternoons? You’re really grumpy. I’m the one with the hangover, y’know.”

“What did you even do last night?” “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“Actually, forget it. I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to know.”

“Ren and I went to The Blind Pig. We gambled away half his savings and drank the bar dry. I’ll invite you next time.”

I pulled a face. “Please don’t.”

Kingfisher grabbed me, his hand closing around my wrist. I’d been about to poke the powder inside the crucible with my fingertip, but…

“Where you come from, does a smith poke a finger into a crucible right after it comes out of a blazing furnace, Osha?” Fisher demanded.

I worked my jaw, feeling absolutely, completely, devastatingly stupid. If I’d done that back in Elroy’s workshop, he’d have screamed at me until he was hoarse and then banished me from the shop for a whole week. I wouldn’t have even been allowed to approach the crucible without wearing a pair of heat-resistant gloves. Here, I wasn’t thinking straight. I was distracted. And the reason for my distraction had just saved me from potentially losing my whole hand. My cheeks burned hotter than the fire in the hearth. “No. They do not.”

Kingfisher released me. He said nothing further on the matter, but the hard, annoyed look he sent my way said plenty. Be more careful, Osha. “The bone was Fae,” he said after a moment. “For centuries, our kind has tried to understand how the relics that allow us to travel through the quicksilver were made. There have been many theories over the years, but that’s all they’ve ever been. Theories. With the quicksilver sleeping, we haven’t been able to experiment or put any of those theories to the test. But now that you’re here…”

“You want me to wake the quicksilver so you can try and bind things to it and see if you can make a relic out of it.”

“Exactly.” He grinned. It was the first real, full smile I’d seen from him and it was terrifying. Not because of how evil it made him look. Far from it. He looked so much younger than he did when he was scowling. He looked happy, and that was what really fucked with me. It was easy hating Kingfisher when he was being a bastard, but in this moment, he appeared very un-bastard-like, and that was…confusing.

I didn’t have the time or the inclination to pick apart that confusion right now. It didn’t matter. I had more important things to worry about. “You’re using bone to see if fusing the quicksilver with biological material will trick the pool into thinking the living creature passing through it is a part of it?” I asked.

Kingfisher rocked back on his heels, his eyebrows hiking up his forehead. “Yes, actually. That’s precisely what I want to do.”

“Well, all right, then. Let’s do it.”

“Really? After yesterday, I expected that you’d be reluctant to try activating the quicksilver again.”

“I’m not happy about it, no. But if it means that we ca—OH! Holy gods!”

We weren’t alone.

My hand closed around a pair of tongs. I clutched them like a dagger, leaping forward, adopting a defensive stance. My pulse hammered in my fingers and my toes and everywhere else it possibly could. In an instant, I was ready to fight, but Kingfisher moved quicker than me. He became a blur of black smoke. Cold wind ripped at my hair, and then he was gone. He rematerialized on the other side of the workshop, murder in his eyes, that lethal black sword gripped in both hands, dripping smoke.

“What is that?” I stabbed my finger at the hideous thing crouching next to the hearth. It hissed at me, baring its teeth, showing the whites of its eyes.

Kingfisher took one look at the creature and straightened out of his defensive stand, cursing in a language I didn’t understand. “What’s wrong with you? It’s a fox! Gods, I thought you were about to get your face torn off.”

“Fox? What’s a fox?”

Kingfisher muttered darkly under his breath as he went and stood over the strange animal. It had a thick, furry coat, white as the snow out of the window, and glassy black eyes the color of jet. It cowered, pressing its body against the stone floor, small, black-tipped ears pinned back against its tiny skull as it watched Kingfisher raise his sword over its head.

“Just so you know,” the warrior growled, “transporting like that when you have a headache is the worst.” He brought the blade swinging down.

“NO! STOP! What are you doing?”

He drew the weapon to one side just in the nick of time. “Graceless fucking gods, human! Stop fucking yelling!”

“I don’t want you to kill it! It just surprised me, that’s all!”

“It’s a fox! A pest! This is probably what was living in the hearth before we ripped that den out. They steal food from the kitchens.”

The creature wasn’t nearly as hideous as I’d first thought. I darted forward, stooping low, covering the little thing with my body, gripped by a sudden remorse. “You definitely can’t kill it then. Not if we destroyed its home.”

“It’s going to bite you,” Kingfisher said. “No, it won’t. It—”

It bit me.

Its teeth were sharp as needles. With its jaws clamped around my forearm, the little fox chittered and squealed, making all kinds of strange sounds. It seemed like it wanted to run away and hide, but it couldn’t quite figure out how to stop biting me.

Kingfisher set the tip of his sword against the stone at his feet and casually leaned his weight against it, watching the scene play out with no obvious feeling one way or another. “They carry all kinds of diseases. Lung rot,” he said. “A flakey skin thing, too? Some kind of fungal infection, I think.”

“Ow! It’s almost down to the bone, Fisher. Help me!”

Kingfisher pushed away from the sword, standing up straight. He looked up at the rafters overhead, squinting. “This…is a learning experience, I think. There are always consequences to our actions. Your new furry bracelet is a consequence of human weakness. Wear it with pride.”

The little fox sneezed, his black eyes locked on mine. If a fox could have an expression, his would have been one of panic. He wanted me to help him, I thought, but how was I supposed to do that when, if anything, he was biting down even harder?

“Let go, let go, leggo, leggo, leggo,” I pleaded. “Please let go. I don’t want to have to hurt you. I’m sorry we ruined your home. I promise we’ll build you an even better one.”

“Don’t make promises on my behalf,” Kingfisher interjected. “I think it would make a great hat.”

I growled at Kingfisher. The fox growled, too.

As if we’d found some common ground, the little fox slowly relaxed its grip on my forearm, its jaws shaking as if it were going against its better nature by releasing me. I stood, pressing my hand against the puncture marks in my skin, attempting to stem the flow of blood. The fox shot Kingfisher a wary look and darted under my skirts, hiding beneath the folds of the shifting fabric.

“Oh, look,” Kingfisher observed. “Finally. A use for all of that ridiculous material. Such a pretty little doll in her pretty little dress, aren’t you.”

“Hey! I don’t want to wear this,” I snapped, plucking at the dress. “What was I wearing when you found me?”

“A whole lot of blood.” Fisher pondered. Frowned. “Wait. I seem to recall that your intestines might have been a part of your ensemble.”

“Pants and a shirt,” I said dryly. “And a pair of boots with really good soles. Do you have any idea what those boots cost me?”

“Let me guess. Your virginity.”

“Fuck you, Fisher.”

“Sure.” He smirked. “But I’m afraid I don’t have any new boots to trade you for your time.”

I lunged for him, ready to kill him, and gasped when I felt the brush of fur against my calves and remembered the little fox that I was harboring. Its

claws scratched against my leg. I attempted not to react, but Fisher saw me flinch. “Gods above,” he groaned. “Let me kill it and be done with it.”

“No! Absolutely not!”

“All right. Fine. Have it your way.” He turned back to the crucible, waving his hand. At the same moment, there was a rush of cool air underneath my skirt accompanied by a frightened yap, and a large wicker cage appeared on the far end of the workbench. Inside the cage: a bowl filled with water, a small pile of what looked like chicken bones, and, of course, the fox.

“You’ll need to release the damned thing outside of the palace. It won’t last five seconds here. Not even as your plaything. For now, it can sit there and be quiet,” he said, giving the cage a meaningful look. “And you…” He flicked his wrist again, and the tight crimson gown Layne dressed me in this morning disappeared into thin air. I drew in a full, deep breath for the first time in six hours and almost wept at the rush of air flooding my lungs.

I was wearing normal clothes. My clo—no, wait. They weren’t my clothes. They were similar, yes, but there were marked differences between the clothes Kingfisher had found me in and these garments. The pants were thicker. Black, and not dirty white. The material was tough but supple. Skintight. Well, I guess I couldn’t complain about that after being so bent out of shape about the frills Layne had put me in. The shirt was more of a tunic. Black. A little longer in the body than I was used to. More in keeping with Fae fashion. There were so many pockets. At my waist hung a leather belt with numerous loops for tools and…weapons? There was an actual knife strapped to my thigh. I stared down at the black onyx handle, trying to make sense of what I was seeing.

“Do you need walking through how that works?”

My head shot up. Kingfisher had his back to me. Oh, for the love of all the gods, he was pulling his shirt over his gods-cursed head! When he turned, his chest bare, a sea of swirling black ink marking slick muscle, his expression was trained into a blank mask. At the very center of his chest, snarling and fierce, another wolf’s head had been inked into his skin. Many smaller tattoos surrounded it or broke off from it, but I couldn’t tell what they were without inspecting him much more closely, and no way I was doing that. I half expected a backhanded jibe from Kingfisher as I fought not to stare, but he seemed genuine as he jerked his chin toward the knife that he’d magicked into being at my thigh. “In the right hands, a blade like

that can wreak a lot of damage. Renfis is a good teacher. He can show you how to use it if you need him to.”

In the cage on the end of the workbench, the fox began to lap thirstily at his water bowl.

“I know knives,” I said, looking down at the floor.

“You said you knew your way around a forge the other day. And then you tried to stick your finger inside a glowing hot crucible.”

“I do know my way around a forge. I just…I wasn’t thinking.”

He wiped his hands on his shirt and tossed it onto the workbench. “You could slice your own throat wide open with a knife like that if you forget to think, Osha.”

“Just give me the damn quicksilver already. Let’s see if we can bind this bone with it and turn it into something useful.”

We couldn’t.

It took me three hours to figure out how to awaken the quicksilver again. By the time I successfully transmuted the matte, solid silver into its agitated state, I was exhausted, my body echoing with pain, and marginally traumatized.

The particles of bone burst into flames as soon as Kingfisher dropped the powder into the vat containing the quicksilver, vaporizing before it ever touched the surface of the rippling liquid, and the quicksilver wasn’t even hot. It chanted and cursed at me in a cadence that felt mocking, and I did my best not to scream out of frustration.

I was sweating in the heat of the forge, tired, and growing angrier by the second. Kingfisher didn’t notice, or maybe he did but didn’t show any signs of caring. He leaned over the workbench, sweat running in a river down the groove in his back, banks of powerful muscles flexing on either side of his spine as he made notes in a book he’d conjured from somewhere.

So much skin. So much ink. His tattoos on his back were interwoven— bold, sweeping lines that seemed to form pathways and tell stories. I wasn’t about to lie to myself; I wanted to know about every single one of them—

what they meant and when he’d got them. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of asking, though. I had things I needed to take care of.

A spike of urgency rose up inside me, giving me the courage I needed to act. I took a deep breath and braced myself. “You know…maybe if I looked at the pendant? Held it in my hands? If there was another element bonded with it when it was fired, I might be able to feel what it was.”

This was a dangerous game. If it worked, I’d be able to go home. If it didn’t, I’d have a furious Kingfisher on my hands, and I’d probably be imprisoned in my rooms until I died of old age. Fisher looked back at me, his narrowed his eyes assessing me. Gods, he was a sight to behold. Every line of him was art. With his full mouth, and the faint shadow of stubble marking his jaw, his fascinating eyes, and all of his midnight-black hair, it was hard not to look at him and ache. I had grown up in a pit of misery, where people died more often than they lived. I hadn’t seen many beautiful things in my short life. But, of all the beautiful things I had seen, Fisher was the most beautiful of all.

It would have been wrong to think of the men I’d encountered back in Zilvaren in that way. Some of them had been attractive. Some of them had even been hot enough to make my toes curl. But Fisher was the epitome of everything that was strong, and male, and powerful. He was so much more than anything I’d experienced before. He was beautiful. Looking at him made me feel like I couldn’t catch my breath.

“If you want it, come here and touch it,” he rumbled. Holy. Fucking. Gods.

Blood rushed to my cheeks, staining them the color of crimson, and need, and shame. Kingfisher’s pupils narrowed to pinpricks. He didn’t have a single taunting word for me this time. His lips parted, his gaze boring into me as if he were watching, waiting to see what I’d do.

“Or you could just take it off?” I suggested, laughing nervously. “You let me wear it a whole ten days while I was recovering, didn’t you? What’s a couple of minutes?”

“Ren had me trapped in a room with three-foot-thick walls, locked behind an iron door that whole time,” he said simply.

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh. I’m not much fun to be around without it. Even for a couple of minutes.”

I hadn’t realized he’d suffered so much while I’d worn the pendant. I knew he’d needed it badly by the time he’d gotten it back, but I thought his second relic—the ring he wore—had served in the chain’s absence.

I nodded, taking a hesitant step forward. “All right then.” I tried to sound businesslike, but I certainly didn’t feel it. “I’ll touch it while you’re wearing it.”

Kingfisher’s expression gave nothing away. As I approached, he straightened. I thought for a moment that he was moving away from me, but he wasn’t. He grabbed a stool from beneath the workbench and sat down on it, positioning himself so that he was facing me.

So little space between us now.

He spread his legs, the hard, interested light in his eyes daring me to step between them so that I could close the gap. My heart skipped and tripped all over the place as I took that step, accepting his silent challenge. He was so godsdamned big. His body hummed with energy; the closer I got, the more I could feel it rolling off him. Like heat. Like smoke. Like power itself. Fisher rested his tattooed hands on top of his thighs, his bright green eyes following my every move as I reached up and touched the fine silver chain.

He sat, inhumanly still. He didn’t breathe. Didn’t even twitch. The heat of his skin scorched my fingertips, sending a bolt of electricity snapping through me as I hooked the long chain beneath my fingers and slid them down his chest, over that snarling wolf’s head tattoo, until I reached the solid weight of the pendant.

It was rectangular in shape, about an inch long, and lighter than I remembered. When he’d first looped it around my neck back in the Hall of Mirrors, it had felt like an anvil hanging around my neck. The crest on the front of it was almost worn smooth, but I could still make out the design: two crossed swords wrapped in thin vines. I spun it over in my hand, drawing my bottom lip into my mouth, trying not to think about the fact that the shining metal wasn’t wet with water but with Kingfisher’s sweat.

I could smell him.

The light musk of his sweat was inoffensive. In fact, it smelled sweet and heady, and lit a fire in the hollow of my stomach that I didn’t understand. I wanted to lean into him and inhale deep. The need to do so was so overpowering that I almost went ahead and fucking did it. Gods, I—

“Anything?” Kingfisher’s voice was rough as smoke.

I nearly jumped out of my godscursed skin. “Uh! Oh, um, no. Not—not yet. I, uh—lemme think.”

“What do you know about Fae anatomy, Osha?” he whispered.

I focused so hard on the pendant that my vision started to swim. I didn’t dare blink, though. I definitely wasn’t brave enough to look up at him and meet his eyes. I knew he was staring at me, of course. I could have felt that fierce gaze through a sandstone wall.

“Not much,” I said, burning a hole in the pendant. “Your kind looks a lot like humans. I’m assuming a lot of it works the same.”

I waited for the mocking barb. The sharp, sneering retort. Kingfisher’s reaction to being compared to a human wasn’t going to be good. Surprisingly, it wasn’t as disdainful as I would have expected. “On a surface level, yes,” he said softly. “We have similar internal organs, though we do possess a few that humans do not.”

Extra internal organs? That was intriguing.

“We’re bigger. Taller, of course,” he continued. I arched an eyebrow at that. “Of course.”

“Our hearts are bigger by ratio.”

I couldn’t help it. I looked up. “Really?” He nodded. “Mm-hmm.”

“Wow. Weird.”

“Our eyesight is far superior to yours. Our…sense of smell,” he said, his eyes lowering, traveling down my body.

Heat flared in the center of my chest. The way he was looking at me…there was nothing friendly about it. Kingfisher and I weren’t friends. At best, we were loose allies who irritated the hell out of each other. So why, then, was he looking at me right now like I was an ally he’d like to fuck?

His eyes snapped back up to mine. “Our sense of taste is superior to yours. Touch. Our sense of hearing is very sharp. We can hear the smallest sound at a great distance.” The silver in his right eye flared as he exhaled, his breath fanning across my cheek. “We can hear each other’s heartbeats.”

Out of nowhere, he grabbed me by the wrist.

I tensed, jolting, but he didn’t hurt me. He took the pendant, lifting it, placing the metal between his teeth, holding it out of the way as he moved my hand to the center of his chest. “Feel that?” he asked, his bottom lip pressing against the pendant as he spoke with it still clamped between his

teeth. The tips of his canines also pressed into the swell of his bottom lip. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from them.

“Dum.Dum.Dum.”

Kingfisher tapped the back of my hand in time with the rhythm of his heart. The pause between each beat was so long that I thought I was going to scream around the tension that built between each one. “Slow. Steady,” he murmured. “Our Fae hearts rarely betray us. We’re calm creatures. But you, Osha? You’re a ball of chaos. Your heart betrays you at every turn.” Quickly, he placed his hand on my chest, right between my breasts. I didn’t have time to react to the contact; he began tapping out the rhythm of my heart against my sternum. “Thrum, thrum, thrum, thrum, thrum. Fast. Erratic, like a hummingbird. I hear it bouncing around all over the place when you look at me. Did you know that?”

“No. I didn’t.” I swallowed, a wave of nausea making my mouth sweat as I pulled away from him. Tried to pull away from him. He still had hold of my wrist. He did not let go. He allowed the pendant to drop from between his teeth, the corner of his mouth kicking up as he tugged me closer to him. His other hand moved from my chest, sliding down, around my waist, settling in the small of my back. His thighs drew together, pinning me by the hips between them.

Panic.

Panic, panic, panic!

Externally, I was calm when I spoke, but inside I was screaming. “Let me go, Fisher.”

Immediately, he released me. His legs splayed wide, letting me go. He relinquished his hold on my wrist, too. His hand at the small of my back went nowhere, though. He wasn’t using it to hold me in place. It was just a point of contact, and the heat of that contact between us felt like it was scorching me through my shirt.

Sliding forward an inch on the stool, Fisher dipped his head so that his mouth was unreasonably close to mine. “I’ve fucked plenty of humans,” he whispered. “Does that surprise you?”

“Yes. Seeing as how you…seem to hate us…so much.” His mouth. Gods, his fucking mouth. I needed to look away. I had to.

“I don’t hate your kind. I’m just disappointed by how breakable you are. If I held you down and fucked you the way I’m imagining fucking you right now, I doubt that you’d survive it.”

I was burning alive. I was a living torch, blazing out of control. “I wouldn’t fuck you—if you were the last living—”

“Don’t bother.” The words held bite. “Lying is pointless with your heart betraying you so loudly.”

“It’s beating fast because I’m afraid,” I snapped.

“Of me?” Kingfisher huffed a blast of laughter down his nose. “No, you’re not. You should be, but you’re not. That’s one of the things I like most about you.”

“You’re holding me against my will.”

“Really?” He looked down at our bodies: his legs still on either side of me but held away from me. His other hand, resting on top of his thigh again. My hands clenched into fists at my sides. “You can pull away at any time. Looks to me like you’re choosing to stay. It also looks like you’re having to stop yourself from touching me. You want to touch me the way I’m touching you, don’t you? To feel the weight of me beneath your palms. The heat of me…” He angled his head a fraction, something wicked dancing in his eyes. “Just to see what would happen.”

“You’re wrong.”

He shook his head. “I’m not.” “Yes! You are!”

He gave me a reproachful look. “Are you going to make me say it?” “Say what?”

He leaned in even closer. My breath froze in my chest, my throat closing up, but I couldn’t move. He grazed the bridge of his nose along the line of my jaw, the contact so light, up toward the shell of my ear. “That your body is betraying you in other ways. That I can smell you, Little Osha, and I’m thinking about drinking the sweet nectar you’re making for me straight from the fucking cup.”

I moved before I registered what was even happening. Kingfisher had learned from the last time, though, and saw my fist coming; he grabbed my wrist and then the other when I tried to punch him with my left fist. Harsh, rough laughter boiled out of him, turning me to cinder and ash.

“Aren’t you curious? Don’t you want to know what I taste like?” “Let me fucking go!”

For a second time, he released me, freeing my hands. “If you try to punch me again, I’ll tie your hands behind your fucking back,” he promised.

He was still smirking, but he meant it. I could see it in his eyes. “You’re still standing here,” he said in a taunting tone.

Fuck. I was still standing between his legs. What the hell was wrong with me? I made to step back, but Kingfisher placed his hands on my hips. Lightly, the same way he’d placed his hands on the small of my back. “Go on. Pull back. I won’t stop you,” he said. “Or you could kiss me. You could kiss me. I’ll just sit here. I won’t move a muscle.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because you’re intrigued. Because you’re bored. Because you’re super fucking aroused right now, and you want to follow through on whatever little fantasies are playing out in your head.”

“Yeah. Right. I’m just…going to kiss you. And you’re just going to sit there. You aren’t going to move a muscle. You’re not even going to kiss me back?” Gods above, saying it out loud made it sound even more ridiculous.

Kingfisher just stared at me. “Find out.”

Was it temporary insanity? A complete loss of common sense? Whatever it was, it took me body and soul. I lunged for him, curving into him, crushing my chest against his, driving my fingers into his hair. One second, I was standing there, wanting very badly to put some space between us, and then the next, I was rising up onto my toes, still having to reach up for him even though he was sitting down, and I was pressing my mouth to his…

The forge disappeared. Everything fell away. Everything but him.

His mouth met mine, and a wall of sound erupted inside my head. It was my own voice, urging, begging, pleading with me to slow down, to think this through, but I didn’t want to listen.

His lips felt incredible. They parted for me, and I could feel his smile against my mouth as his tongue met mine. He kissed me back. His hands stayed right where they were, where he’d promised he’d keep them, but his grip grew tighter, his fingers digging into my hips as he plunged his tongue into my mouth, tasting and probing with every sweep.

The scent of him washed over my senses, overcoming me, undoing me. Mint. Smoke. The winter morning air that I was becoming accustomed to the more time I spent in this strange place.

His breath hit me in short, sharp blasts, fanning across my face as he grew more insistent, his stubble rough against my cheeks. He held me so tight now that he was definitely leaving bruises. I wanted them. I wanted to remember this. In the years to come, when I looked back at this moment, I would be glad that I’d taken the leap and jumped. This was the kiss to end all kisses. Demanding, urgent, and carnal.

I hated this male. Hated him with every fiber of my being. But curse me, I wanted him just as bad. Grabbing his hair, I wound it tight around my fingers, clenching my hand into a fist. Kingfisher’s head rocked back, a low, rumbling groan issuing from his throat. I nipped and tugged at his bottom lip, sighing into his mouth, and the huge male went utterly still beneath me.

“Careful,” he panted. “I swore I’d be still while you kissed me. At no point did I promise to exercise restraint if you climbed up into my lap and started grinding yourself against my cock.”

I hadn’t—I wasn’t—

Fuck. I had. I was. Without even realizing, I’d straddled him. My legs were wrapped low around his waist. His cock was rock hard, trapped between our bodies. I could feel it there, rubbing up against me, applying the most delicious pressure whenever I shifted my weight.

Not.

Fucking.

Happening.

In two seconds flat, I was on the other side of the forge, dragging my hands through my hair instead of his. What the hell was I thinking?

Fisher laughed quietly as he rose from the stool and collected his shirt from the bench. Shaking it out, he slid it onto his arms, but didn’t lift it over his head. Not yet. He stood there, eyes drilling into me, a reckless, beautiful grin strewn across his face. “I didn’t say I minded. But for next time, that’s where the line is. You want to cross it, I’ll happily join you on the other side. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

I fought to shove down the mortified heat that rose up the back of my neck. “There won’t be a next time.”

Fisher grinned so hard that a small dimple appeared, forming a deep groove in his cheek. A godscursed dimple. How had I not noticed that before? He threw the shirt over his head at last, covering his inked chest. “If you say so, Little Osha.”

“Oh gods, can you just go already? I don’t want to be around you if you’re going to be so unbearable.”

“I have to walk you back to your rooms.” “I don’t want you to,” I snapped.

“Tough. Layne will string me up by the balls if I let you go anywhere alone.”

“Then send Ren to walk with me.”

Kingfisher crossed the workshop and stood in front of me, his eyes alive with hunger. I hadn’t seen him like this before. It was both exciting and terrifying. “If I send Ren, you’ll wait for him here?”

“Yes.”

“All right, then. Have it your way. I’ll go.” “Thank you!”

My head spun as he leaned down and held his mouth close to my ear again. “Come on. Was it really that bad?”

“Yes!”

He laughed again, cold and cruel, as he placed his hand at the center of my chest again and began to tap. “Thrum, thrum, thrum, thrum, thrum, thrum, thrum. So fast. Like a hummingbird. Get the fox bite looked at, Little Osha. You don’t want that arm falling off.”

Right before my eyes, Fisher dematerialized into a blur of black sand and smoke.