It was going to be like that for a while, they’d told her. Her sinuses had captured, and were going to hold on to, the acrid scent for a number of nights.

Like she cared, though.

Mae waved over her shoulder and closed the door. Then she leaned back against the cool panels and looked at the back of the hutch that Sahvage had moved out of place to protect them. Memories of him picking it up were as sharp as knives, and yet she couldn’t avoid them even as they sliced at her heart.

To try to get her attention elsewhere, she took another inventory on how her body was doing. Not too great: Her skin was hot, but more than that, her inner core was overheated, as if her body temperature had been permanently raised by the fire.

Like she was a roast beef in a restaurant, just out of the oven, throwing off her own BTUs.

Wonder how long that will last, she thought listlessly.

Staring out through the contours of all of Tallah’s too-big, too-fancy furniture, she listened to the silence and wanted to cry. But there were no more tears left.

God, every time she blinked, she suffered another image from the bathroom at her parents’ house, the demon in her face, her brother under that cold water, Sahvage’s neck breaking—

Mae moaned and resolved to never, ever blink again. Even if her eyeballs turned into marbles in her skull.

Straightening, she went down to the bathroom and stared at the shower. She could picture Sahvage standing there in front of it, his body so magnificent, his eyes boring into her, his scent deep in her nose.

With a sad capitulation to reality, she stepped in, shut the door behind herself, and started the water. As she took off the hospital scrubs she’d been given, she glanced down at her body. Lots of bruises. Patches of red, angry skin. Scrapes.

Looked like she had been through a war.

Getting under the warm spray, she hissed as stripes of pain registered all over the place—and the soap stung, as did the shampoo. But by the time she got to the conditioner part of things, she was doing better with it.

She couldn’t smell any of the familiar stuff she used. Just smoke. As if the fire was a pursuer who was not giving up the chase.

When she was clean—or as clean as she could get—she stepped out and shivered. Pulling a thick terry cloth bathrobe on, she wrapped her hair up in a towel and rubbed the condensation off the mirror.

A stranger stared back at her.

And all she could think of was what she would have done differently: Talk about a list that was going to get her nowhere.

Food. She should try and see if there was any food around.

Like in the refrigerator that was still pressed up against the back door.

As she thought of Sahvage once again, she still didn’t understand exactly what had happened back in that fire. How he had gone from a broken neck and dead in her arms . . . to coming back to life. Then again, heroic things happened to the dying, and when it really counted, he’d obviously been determined not to let her down.

Shaking her head, she opened the door and—

Screamed her bloody lungs out.

Okay, so as romantic reunions went . . . it was not exactly what a male hoped.

But as Sahvage put both of his hands up to his ears and winced, he wondered exactly how he could have made this easier on Mae.

“I’m sorry,” he said into the din. “I’m sorry!”

Mae stopped screaming and started to hyperventilate. “What-whatwhat . . . ?”

She was dressed in a robe, her hair in a towel, her too-pale face marked with all kinds of bruises and soot smudges that were going to take multiple showers to get rid of. And what do you know, she was the most beautiful female he had ever seen. Would ever see.

But she looked like she was going to pass out.

Sahvage jumped forward and caught her arm as she listed. “Here, come here, let’s sit down over here.” He drew her over to the kitchen table and sat her in a chair, because he wasn’t sure she was going to remember how to do it on her own. “Take some slow, deep breaths with me. That’s right. That’s—”

“How are you alive?” she said hoarsely. “Again?”

As she panted, he sat back and rubbed his thighs. “I need to tell you everything. And I should have before . . . but I just didn’t know how to.”

“P-p-please.” She reached out and touched his face. “Is this really you? How is this possible—”

“I can’t die.”

Mae frowned. Blinked a couple of times. Then put her palms up to the sides of her face. “Oh, my God, you’re a warlock—”

“I’m not a warlock.”

“But—”

“I’m not. My first cousin Rahvyn, she’s the magic one. And two hundred years ago, I died trying to protect her during that attack on her life. I was struck by arrows and laid out in a coffin. It took me decades to figure out what had happened, to put the pieces together, and I’m not sure I have it all correctly. But what I know for certain is that she brought me back using a spell from the Book, and then she . . . disappeared. That’s why I didn’t want you to bring back Rhoger. Mae, my existence is terrible. Everyone thinks they want to be immortal, but it’s . . . hell. You belong nowhere, with no one, because the only thing that exists for you is time. It’s a nightmare. Friends, family, lovers, they’re all gone, everyone I once knew . . . except for a handful of the Brotherhood who I saw last night . . . are gone. It’s an endless mourning.”

“Sahvage . . . how is this possible?” she asked with wonder.

“The Book.” He shook his head. “It was a spell in the Book. And Mae, I just didn’t want you to do the same thing to your brother. All he would know is the deaths of those he loved, including you. I’ve had to separate myself from everyone, because how could I possibly explain my situation? Who would believe me? And as for destroying the Book—it was my only option to help you. Or at least . . . that’s what I thought at the time. You were right, though, and I’m sorry. I didn’t have the right to take your choice away, even if I was worried about its implications.”

Mae rubbed one of her eyes and then winced like it hurt. “So back at the parking garage . . . that first night, you were going to live anyway. I didn’t save you, did I.”

“Oh, Mae,” he said in a voice that cracked, “you have saved me. In all the ways that matter, you absolutely have saved me. My heart was dead, and then you came along—”

Without warning, Sahvage’s female launched herself at him, throwing her arms around him, pressing her lips to his.

“I love you,” she said as she pulled back. “And I’m the one who needs to apologize. I was just so tunnel vision’d about Rhoger that I was destroying everything—”

“Wait, what did you say?”

“I was destroying everything with my single-minded—”

Sahvage shook his head. “Before that.”

There was a pause. And then she stroked his hair. “I love you. And I don’t care about what comes next. All I know is that you belong here. With me.”

On a shudder, he closed his eyes. And remembered standing out on the lawn of the little cottage, thinking he would love to be able to clean the place up.

Because it was where Mae lived.