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And now he knows I’m not what I appear to be either.

“Why are you here?” I ask. “Really.”

His eyes hold mine, searching for something. Trust, perhaps. Or weakness.

“Maybe I wanted to see you when you weren’t being bled for prophecies.”

“Why?”

“Does there need to be a reason?”

“In this place? For everything.”

His hand moves slowly, deliberately, until his fingers brush mine on the couch between us. Electricity arcs between our skin, my magic recognizing something in him despite the dampening field.

“What if I said I’ve been looking for you, Lila Rossewyn?”

My true name on his lips sends a shiver through me. Not Lila Ross, the identity I created when I went into hiding with Elena. Lila Rossewyn. The witch. The seer. The bloodline the dragons have hunted for centuries.

I should pull away. Should call for help. Should do anything but what I actually do, which is lean toward him like a flower seeking sunlight after being too long in darkness.

“Who are you?” The question comes out breathless, vulnerable.

His fingers trace up my arm, leaving trails of fire in their wake. “Someone who wants to see you free.”

“Freedom doesn’t exist for people like me.” The words taste like ash.

“It could.”

My body sways toward him without conscious decision. Years of isolation, of touch limited to clinical examinations and restraints. Years of hunger that I’d buried so deep I’d forgotten it existed.

Until now.

His hand cups my cheek, thumb brushing away blood I missed. The tenderness of it breaks something inside me. A dam crumbling after years of pressure.

“What’s out there for me?” I whisper, so close now I can feel his breath on my lips. The words are a test—to see what he knows, what he might reveal about Elena. My daughter’s safety hovers at the edge of my thoughts, a constant worry I can’t share, even as everything in me wants to trust this man.

His pupils dilate, but his expression doesn’t change. “A future. Freedom. Things worth fighting for.”

His other hand slides into my hair, cradling my head with impossible gentleness. “Trust me.”

Two words that crack my world open.

“How could I possibly—?”

He cuts me off with his mouth on mine.

The kiss starts gentle—a question, an offering. His lips brush against mine with surprising softness, the barest touchthat sends sparks cascading through my body. I freeze, shock paralyzing me as forgotten sensations flood my system.

Then something primal takes over.

My hands find his shoulders, fingers digging into hard muscle as the gentleness gives way to hunger. He tastes like smoke and secrets, like possibility in a world where I’ve had none. His tongue traces the seam of my lips, and I open to him with a small sound that would embarrass me if I could think clearly.

One of his hands tightens in my hair, angling my head as he deepens the kiss. The other slips around my waist, drawing me against the solid heat of his chest. I feel the controlled power in him—the dragon beneath the man—leashed but present in the way his body shudders against mine.

Time dissolves. There is only sensation—the slide of his tongue against mine, the slight scrape of teeth, the rumble deep in his chest when I press closer. Heat pools between my thighs, a feeling so long forgotten it’s almost like pain.

A flash of Elena’s face, surrounded by crimson fire, jolts through my mind like lightning.

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