Chapter 60. And Still, She Burns

The forest still smoldered.

Ash drifted down like black snow, catching in Aria’s hair and painting shadows across her bare arms. The trees around them—once proud sentinels—were now broken, scorched, and bent to the earth. The firestorm she had unleashed was gone, but the heat hadn’t left her.

And neither had Kade.

He stood a few feet away, chest rising and falling like he’d just run a mile—but he hadn’t moved. Not since he’d pulled her from the inferno, his own body singed by her flames, and whispered the words she never thought she’d hear.

“No more orders. No more Blood Court. Just you.”

Aria turned to face him slowly. Her heart beat like a war drum. The moonlight filtering through the canopy above caught on the angles of his face—his jaw, his lips, the faint burn mark across his collarbone where her magic had kissed him.

He didn’t look away.

“You should’ve let me burn,” she whispered, voice low and broken.

Kade stepped forward—slowly