Killian raised an eyebrow. “You want my suitcoat?” He took a step closer, getting in my range, so I latched on to his coat and pulled him in.

“Nope. I want you.” I plastered myself against his chest as if he were a wall of ice. Instantly the cooler temperature of his body permeated the cloth of his shirt and knifed through the heat of my face and arms. I heaved a deep sigh of contentment.

“Are you using me as your personal air conditioner?” Killian’s voice sounded a little incredulous, but I couldn’t be bothered to open my eyes and check his expression.

“Yes. Ahhh, this is heaven.” I turned my head, pressing my other cheek to his chest. “It’s not fair that you get to be so cool all the time,” I grumbled into his shirt.

Killian didn’t reply, but he stepped a little closer so I didn’t have to lean precariously over and risk falling off my seat.

I don’t know how much time passed—a few seconds or a few minutes—but when I no longer felt like an inferno, I yawned. “How much longer are we staying?”

“Getting tired?” I didn’t know if it was because he was relaxing, or he’d had enough of people as well, but his ever-so-faint British accent was a little stronger than usual.

“Yeah, a little.”

“I intend to stay until dawn—but that’s expected given my position.” Killian bumped me a little as he shifted, pulling his tuxedo jacket off.

I peeled my eyes open—because, yeah, I wanted to make sure he wasn’t going to take his heavenly coolness away and leave me alone to bake. To my delight, once he was free of the jacket, he slid his arms down my back, the coolness of his skin seeping through his sleeves.

“You, however,” he continued, “can return home. Unless you wished to speak to anyone else?”

“Not really,” I said. “I think I’ll need the Elite’s help to change the Wizard Council’s stance.”

“Many of the wizards tend to retire from the ball around this time. You wouldn’t have much longer to speak to them anyway,” Killian noted.

“Yeah. I haven’t seen Mason,” I said.

Killian patted my back. “Did you want to see him?”

“Not really, but Felix is here, so I thought Mason would be, too. Though that would be pretty insane—how would he get an invite when he’s not the Adept?”

“Don’t doubt the pettiness of our society.” I would have thought it was a joke, except Killian’s voice was cold and grim.

I pulled back so I could crank my neck to peer up at him. “Thank you for introducing me to the Elite.”

Killian shrugged. “It would have been expected, anyway, given how closely I work with him.” He paused. “What did he say to upset you?”

“Hm?”

“Before his wife arrived, you were clearly aggravated and talking louder.”

I pressed my head against his chest to hide my face again. How much should I tell him? Or how much did he need to know? The Elite said he regretted his words, and I was sure it wasn’t anything that Killian hadn’t heard before.

“I was surprised,” Killian continued. “I knew you planned to ask him for help. For you to yell at him, I thought something must have gone wrong.”

He wasn’t going to drop it, was he? Well, I may as well summarize it—Celestina would spill everything when I left for home anyway. “He was warning me off you. His wizardly duty or something.” I leaned back so I could watch his face—or specifically the slant of his eyebrows.

“Warned you off?” Killian asked.

“You know, gave me the fatherly talk—you’re just using me, blah, blah, blah,” I said. “Although at the end he changed his mind and said I might be your one. What did he mean by that?” I asked, hoping to distract him.

Killian’s expression didn’t shift as he stared out into the gardens. “It’s what a vampire calls the person they choose forever. A particularly playful vampire might marry multiple times as they outlive their spouse, but the one comes only once in a vampire’s very long lifetime, and they love the one forever.”

“I see.” I wanted to ask how on earth Elite Bellus could even imagine Killian would ever have a one, but that seemed kind of mean to say, so I kept my mouth shut.

“It’s practically a myth,” Killian continued. “Or a fairytale, really. Most vampires never experience it. A few Elders claim they have. However, given that they are the same Elders who are prone to skulking around their homes at night and reciting excessively long and melodramatic poetry, I can’t say I’m inclined to believe them.”

“You don’t think it’s real, then?”

Killian shrugged. “I think it is far rarer than most of my kind thinks. There is only one vampire I have met that I truly believe found his one.”

“Really?”

“Yes, Rupert.”

“Rupert?” My voice hitched up with disbelief. “Sour-puss Rupert the party-pooper?”

“Obviously, Elite Bellus was speaking foolish drabble.” Killian ignored my less-than-stellar nickname for his underling and pushed on. “But I suppose his warning is the sign of a righteous soul.”

I considered pressing the Rupert matter for a moment. But as nosy as I was, it wasn’t really my business, so I let him change the discussion topic. “You know, considering how much you like to scheme, I find it interesting you like labeling people righteous or virtuous,” I said.

“Why would that make you mad?”

“I’m not mad, I just think it says something about you.”

“I was referring to your reaction to the Elite’s warning.”

“Ooooh. Yeah.” I wondered if I could get out of answering again by mashing my face on his shirt. “Well…he was being kind of hypocritical.”

“He most likely wasn’t wrong.”

“Most likely,” I blithely agreed. “But it’s still an unfair thing to say when you’ve done as much for me as you have.”

Killian’s expression was unreadable. “Perhaps I am merely swindling you into a place of complacence before I ask you to do something as shadowy as the Elite fears.”

I snorted. “And you should know me well enough to know by now that if you did ask me to do something like that, I’d probably pull you in a pool again.”

His lips twitched in a smirk. “It would be a waste of time to ask you,” he admitted—which was about as close as he was ever going to come to outright saying he didn’t plan on asking me to participate in the seedy side of politics.

“Yep!” I stared at his shirt and wondered if I was still hot enough that it was acceptable to lean into him again. (Forget his model face, his lower body temperature was soooo dreamy!)

A few moments passed. “You would believe me over the Elite?” he asked.

“Killian, I’ve lived off you like a tapeworm for weeks, and I hang out with the Drake Family every day.” I finally lifted my gaze, meeting his red eyes. “I know you.”

“And it doesn’t scare you,” Killian mused. I could tell he was more speaking an observation than asking me a question.

But there was something about the moment that made me squirm.

“Well.” I paused for comedic effect. “It’s pretty scary when Celestina has made me face off with Josh and he comes running at me with those giant swords.”

Killian didn’t acknowledge my attempt at humor. He drew closer still so my legs brushed his. He leaned over and planted his hands on the stone wall. We were practically nose to nose. The red flints in his eyes seemed to gleam in the moonlight.

“If I attempted to lock you up in Drake Hall like the treasure you are, you would probably kick me,” he said.

“No.” I tried to smile, but my voice cracked a little. “I’d try to fry you with a lightning bolt first.”

Killian laughed—his whispery exhale one that wasn’t a true chuckle, but he used whenever something particularly struck him. And then, as naturally as he laughed, he leaned in and kissed me.

It was shocking—not that he did it, but I swear I could feel the same electric pulse I sometimes felt when magic swept through me. Something about that made it natural. By all rights, kissing a vampire was generally one of the last things a wizard should want to do, but I leaned into Killian, slowly raising my hands to link together behind the back of his neck.

When Killian moved his mouth in response, I was pretty sure I felt the faint prickle of his pronounced fang teeth on my bottom lip.

It could have been a few minutes or an hour before I pulled back for air, still feeling that electric tingle in my veins. “That was…wow.” I let my arms stay ringed around his neck as I sucked in a breath.

Killian leaned in, his lips grazing my neck in a smirk I could feel. “Note how I am taking special care to keep my hands off your butt.”

I couldn’t help but laugh, and I rested my forehead on his shoulder.

We stayed like that for a few moments, until Killian pulled back and nudged my head up again. Our lips were a hair’s width apart when I heard voices.

Killian sighed with enough force to move a tendril of my hair. He left his hands where they were, but twisted his neck to look back at the patio. I had to poke over his shoulder like a prairie dog, but was rewarded with the sight of two different vampires—likely Family Elders—standing in the patio doorways with dropped jaws.

Gavino was bodily shoving them back in the ballroom, but I don’t know if they were resisting, or if they were so shocked over the unexpected show they weren’t capable of movement.

Killian growled, then turned to face me. “Go back to Drake Hall. It’s only going to get more boring from here on. Celestina will go with you—you won’t have any training tomorrow.” He grabbed his tuxedo coat from where he’d tossed it.

I kicked my feet and self-consciously cleared my throat. “Okay.” I thought I sounded pretty normal—I mean, normal considering I’d just locked lips with Killian Drake.