“I love you,” she breathed, lashes fluttering as I brushed soft kisses along her cheeks. Her nose. Her eyelids. “I loved you then, I love you now, and I’ll love you after.” My lips trailed down her throat. Toward her scar. Her head fell back in response, baring it to me. Completely vulnerable. “Before my mother slit my throat on Modraniht”—the words sounded like a confession—“I thought I’d never see you again. A witch and a witch hunter can’t have each other in the afterlife.”

I lifted my head then. “I’ll find you again, Lou.” The words came readily, as if they’d been waiting on the tip of my tongue. A confession of my own. Perhaps I’d said them before. I couldn’t remember. It didn’t matter. Though I’d lost our past, I refused to lose our future too. Even death wouldn’t take it from me. “I promise.”

She met my eyes with languorous heat. “I know.”

Despite the urgency of our situation—the huntsmen patrolling outside, the sun setting over the city—Lou didn’t rush as she slipped her palms into my collar, as she slid them down my back. My own hands moved leisurely to the hem of her shirt. Peeling the fabric from her belly inch by inch, I lowered her to the floor. She stripped my own shirt overhead. Heat pooled between us as she traced the scar on my torso, as I eased down her body. As I tasted each curve. With every breath, every touch—sultry and slow, as if searching—the intensity built. The quiet desperation.

Her fingers curled in my hair.

My tongue stroked her hip.

“You called me your heathen,” she said on a sigh, arching and shifting my mouth lower. Lower still.

I would find her again, yes, but we still had this moment. This last breathless hour. “You still are.” Sliding her pants down her legs, I flipped her over. Trapping her. Her nails raked against the bars on the floor as I lifted her hips to kiss her. As I stroked her there instead. Her trembling built and built until at last she fractured—biting her hand to stifle the sound—and I hauled her flush against my chest. Pressed her against the bars. Waited with ragged breaths.

Her head fell back on my shoulder, and she snaked an arm around my head. Her lips slanted up to meet mine. “Don’t you dare stop.”