“You are my priest,” he says. His lips brush my neck, and I’m not dreaming it. He pulls out the last pin. He threads his fingers through my hair, loose now, with great care. His touch on my waist is less patient—he pulls my body around until my legs are slung to the side, my chest pressed against his.

My hands fall to his hips, and I gasp and dig my fingers into them as he tilts my head back, as he skims his lips along the hollow of my throat. I want him. Skies above, I want him. More so because I can feel him holding himself back, feel his entire body thrumming with need.

“You are my prayer,” he says, and now his eyes meet mine, and I see the war in him. See him teetering between the Soul Catcher and Elias. Between duty and hope. Between the task thrust upon him and the freedom he so craves. I know what he is going to say next. I have heard him whisper his mantra many times, though never like this. But as he teeters between who he’s become and who he wants to be, I say nothing. You’re in there, I think. Come back to me.

“You are my release,” he whispers.

A breath then, a slice of time that will mark the before and the after of this moment. A heartbeat during which I do not know who will win the battle inside him or if our love is enough.

Then his eyes clear, and he is Elias Veturius, warm and beautiful and mine. I pull him to me, reveling in the feel of his lush mouth as I steal the words from his lips. I run my hands over the hard planes of his shoulders, his arms—it isn’t enough. I want more of him, all of him.

He yanks me closer, as hungry as I am, kissing me with the same dark heat, as if he knows that this night, our last night, our only night, will never come again.

LVI: The Soul Catcher

If Mauth objects to Laia and me being together, I don’t hear it. And if the duty-obsessed Soul Catcher whispers at me that I am a fool, I don’t hear him either. I lose myself in the feel of her lips against mine, her scent filling my senses. She pulls her fingers through my hair, trailing kisses from my jaw to the ridges of my shoulders.

Her nails dig into my back, and she bites me, gentle and forceful at the same time. I curse at the frisson of heat that grips me and push her away.

We have a battle to fight tomorrow. I have a duty to fulfill. This won’t end well.

“Laia—”

But she shakes her head, gold eyes fiery, and puts a finger against my lips. “You love me,” she says. “And I love you. And that is all that matters this night.”

She runs her hands down my chest, straddles me, and with one smooth pull, tears open the buttons of my shirt, defiance suffusing every move. Stop me, she dares. But I wouldn’t. Not for the world, and in seconds, I’m pulling off hers.

I marvel at the perfection of every curve, every muscle, every scar, every last inch of her, but I don’t have words for it, and she looks away, embarrassed, her arms rising to cover herself.

“Don’t you dare,” I say fervently. “You’re perfect.” She smiles then, the smile I dream about.

“That,” she says, “is the most gratifying look I have ever seen on your face.”

I pull her to me, grazing my teeth across her lips, and then down her neck, across the hard perfection of her collarbone and to the silk below.

Clothes—accursed clothes—we remove what is left, laughing as we do, and then, still atop me, she takes my hand, moving it to the sweetest part of her body, dropping her head back, her breath going shallow when I do as she wishes. I smile, inordinately pleased at watching her eyes flutter closed as she rocks above me, as she loses herself to her pleasure.

Her body shudders, and I nearly lose my control at the feel of Laia losing hers. When she is still again, she looks at me, ducking her head in sudden shyness, but I lift her chin. The light of the fire deepens her gold eyes, and they burn like embers.

I kiss her slow then, the way I’ve wanted to for so long. I take my time, savoring the fullness of her mouth, tracing circles on the smooth swell of her hips. When I move my lips down her body, I watch her face, the delicate shifts in her expression, the way her pulse flutters at her throat, rapid as my own.

But she moans impatiently, and the sound undoes me. I flip her onto her back, settling only a little of my weight on her. Her fingers lace through mine, and when I lift them over her head, she curves into me.

“Yes—”

“Laia.” I want her so badly that making myself slow down is torment. But I do not want to hurt her. I am Elias now, but tomorrow, and every day after, I must be the Soul Catcher again. “Are you sure?”

She answers by hooking her leg up around my hips and pulling me toward her until it is not her moving, nor me, but us. And though I want nothing more than to disappear into this moment, she breathes my name.

“Elias,” she says between her gasps, and I know she wants me to look at her. I hesitate, for if I do so, my heart will be bare. But love rolls off her in gentle waves, enveloping me, and finally I meet her gaze.

Laia’s steady stare captures me, and I am lost, hypnotized by the dark passion that blooms there as she loses herself to the movement of our bodies, to that ancient alchemy melding the agony of desire with the ecstasy of its fulfillment.

I do not look away as she cries my name, as her fingers tighten on my fists, as her body arches into me, as we move toward the same place, that ineffable crossroads of pain and pleasure, together as one at last.

* * *

«««

Hours later, as we lie on our backs, both drawing in draughts of air like water, she rises up on her elbows and looks at me sternly. “We have to win,” she says.

“Why?”

“Because this cannot be the only night we spend together.” Her fingers are light as she traces lines on my skin, but her voice is fierce. “I want a life with you. Adventures. Meals. Late nights in front of fires. A thousand rainy walks. You talking me out of my clothing in inappropriate places. I want ch—” She stops, sadness in her eyes, though she hides it quickly. But I know what she was going to say. Because I want children too, perhaps not now, but one day. “I want more,” she says.

I smile, but it fades quickly when I remember that she wishes to destroy the jinn. That I do not. And that if, by some miracle, the Nightbringer is defeated and the jinn are restored to their place as Soul Catchers, there is still no future for us. You are sworn to me until another human—not jinn—is seen fit to replace you.

“What is it?” She folds her arms across my chest and rests her chin there, so I can only see her eyes. “What is eating at you?”

We can never have a life, she and I. No adventures. No meals. No late nights. No rainy walks. No talking her out of her clothing in inappropriate places.

No children.