I woke to something completely unfamiliar, so startling I nearly screamed. Pillows, a mattress, a blanket.

Late afternoon light slanted into the room through diamond-paned windows.

When I breathed in, scenting pine, I knew I was in Ruadan’s bed. I was still freezing, shaking hard, and my teeth chattered violently.

For the first time, I noticed another scent on him. Not pine, and not shadow magic. Apples. I loved that smell.

A powerful arm hooked around me, pulling me close to bare skin. A strand of white-blonde hair draped over my shoulder. I glanced behind me.

Ruadan was trying to warm me, and heat radiated from his body into mine. I was pretty sure he was also using a low dose of that incubus magic to counteract the shadows. I nestled into him.

I ran my hand over my shoulder where the incubus had attacked me with his talons. Already, the skin had smoothed over. Ruadan had healed me. Now, his magic skimmed over my skin, caressing me. He was using just enough incubus magic to keep the void from consuming me from the inside out. Warm honey swept through my core as his magic pulsed around me, and I had to restrain myself from rolling over and kissing him.

I closed my eyes, drifting off to sleep, and I dreamt I was back at the incubi’s nest, back in that booth with Ruadan. His hand was fisted into my hair, tilting my head back, and his body pressed against mine. The night air and lust magic whispered over my bare legs, raising goosebumps.

He reached for my knickers, pulling them down. He spun me around so I faced the wall—

I woke to the sound of Ruadan groaning. Apparently, in my sleep, I’d pulled off my clothes. Even worse, I’d hooked my leg over him, and I may have been slightly rubbing against him. His own body was completely rigid, jaw clenched, with that “good soldier” look on his face like he was enduring something appalling.

Still, his fingers were clamped on my waist, and he wasn’t pushing me away. In fact, his grip was growing tighter, almost pulling me closer. He was just … resisting.

I couldn’t quite bring myself to unlock my body from his.

“I need to get out of here,” I said. With a jolt, I realized I hadn’t made any progress on finding the key.

Unless....

I glanced at his bare chest, and my pulse started racing. There, on his sternum, a fae rune glowed with silver light. My heart began to race. The key was part of his body.

I sucked in a sharp breath, and dread coiled through me. If that was the key, I might as well give up now, because I would not be hauling Ruadan’s entire body to Baleros.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

I felt like I’d been punched in the gut. I pulled away from Ruadan, sitting up straight, the drafty air kissing my bare skin.

As soon as I moved away from Ruadan, I felt as if the void were ripping me apart from the inside out, and ice shuddered through me. My vision began darkening. I hadn’t been sent to the void, but I hadn’t escaped the effects of the dagger, either.

“I can’t stay here.” I mumbled. “I have to get out of here.” I had to get to Ciara. Maybe I could just kill Baleros. Frigid magic iced my blood, and my teeth chattered.

Ruadan reached for me, pulling me in close until his warmth enveloped me. My breathing slowed again, my heartbeat calming. And as I drifted off, I started dreaming of the booth again, of hard kisses and arching backs….

The cold woke me again, a bone-deep chill that had me scrambling to wrap myself in blankets. Through a darkening haze, I stared at Ruadan across the room. Thin slivers of moonlight streamed over the flagstones, and candles guttered in sconces, casting wavering light over Ruadan’s bare chest.

Shivering, I stared at the glowing mark on his chest. I pulled the blankets more tightly around me, watching as Ruadan touched his tattoo. It glowed with a pale, silvery light, like starlight. Darkness spilled out from his body.

Shadows writhed around the room, then gathered over a spot in the flagstone floor. The tendrils of darkness whirled in wild eddies, until at last, the stones opened up and gave way to dark, glistening water. A portal of midnight waters flecked with starlight.

Ice slid through me. It was the key on his chest, and it was a part of him. Cold panic coiled around my heart. There was no way out of this.

I stared as a dark pool of water opened in the floor, its rippled surface glinting. The void gaped deeper in my chest, and I pulled the blanket around myself to cover my bare breasts. I had no idea where my clothes were at this point—probably crammed deep in the blankets. It seemed as though I couldn’t bring myself to keep them on when I was around Ruadan and his particular brand of magic.

In any case, if Bael was about to come stark naked out of the water, he could hardly criticize my attire.

The cold was making my muscles seize up. Not just the cold, but that gnawing void, the painful emptiness….

I clenched my jaw, focusing on the World Key. I’d found it—what I’d been looking for all along. The only way to get it off Ruadan would be to kill him and cut it off him.

The void opened a bit larger in my chest, an emptiness so expansive it seemed like it was going swallow me whole.

I have to kill Ruadan.

Dark shadows whipped about him, slicing through the air around his body. He’d let down his guard, and he seemed to trust me now. He’d let me into his bed, taken his shirt off in front of me. He was no longer hiding the World Key from me, as if I could be trusted…. He clearly didn’t know me at all.

Baleros had turned me rotten through and through. Baleros had taught me to strike as soon as the enemy lowered his defenses. I could kill him in bed, take the skin from his chest—

Emptiness cut through me so sharply I thought I might die.

I stared as a beautiful man crawled out of the pool, his body dripping with water. His silver eyes had the cold sheen of moonlight, and dark curls framed his face.

The cold was making me convulse, and I fell back on the bed.

In another instant, Ruadan was by my side, scooping me into his lap. His magic stroked my skin, a velvety touch that warmed me. Had it been just a moment ago I’d been imagining how I’d kill him? Because right now, I was hugging him and leaning into his chest to breathe in the scent of pine. To say I felt conflicted was the understatement of the fucking year.

The silver-eyed one hovered over me, staring down with curiosity.

“Who are you?” I asked through chattering teeth.

“Caine.” He looked at Ruadan. “You’re telling me that someone stabbed her with a reaping dagger? One belonging to Nyxobas?”

How the fuck were they communicating? Ruadan wasn’t speaking.

“And she’s still alive?” Caine continued, incredulous. “What in the seven hells is she?”

If my nudity bothered him, he didn’t show it. When I glimpsed the faint ghost of phantom wings behind him, I had the sense that he might be part incubus, too.

“All right,” said Caine. “It seems as if part of the void is inside her. We can try to pull it out and absorb it. You’ll need to send it back into the shadow realm using the World Key.”

I was trying to tune into his words, although most of my thoughts were intensely focused on every place where Ruadan’s body touched mine. His bare chest was heating my naked body, and I stared at the glowing fae rune at his throat.

I was having a hard time concentrating on anything except Ruadan’s arms curling around me. It made it hard for me to think straight, and I wanted my mind back so I could start killing things again, like I was born to do.

But I could feel a wild, dark power trembling over my skin. The two gorgeous half-incubi closed their eyes. Now, the candles flickered in their sconces until they snuffed out, and the moonlight in the room began to dim. A thin frost spread over the stone floor, the bed—everything in the room but us. Glimmering shadows spilled from my body and whirled into Caine and Ruadan.

Even though cold seemed to be spreading within the room, my own body grew warmer. I closed my eyes, my mind whirling with cosmic visions—the birth of stars, the spinning of galaxies. A black hole, sucking in light. When I opened my eyes again, it looked to me as if the shadows in the room were breathing, like a bellows rhythmically expanding and contracting. My own breath moved in tune to the pulsing of the shadows.

In the darkness, in the hollow void of my chest, embers began to smolder, warming my ribs. I fell back into Ruadan’s arms, closing my eyes, and I breathed in the scent of pine.