New God’s eye—he’s beautiful. He’s grown, somehow, from the boy I first met at the Spring Welcoming. It hasn’t been long, but experience has changed him. Magic has changed him. Or maybe it’s just my unheart beating for him that makes him look so devastatingly perfect. The edges of his sharp jaw, the curve of his proud nose, the deep dips of his thick brows as he looks back at me curiously, questioningly. The bright sunlight catches every raven part of him—his hair, his eyes somehow both darker and brighter than the volcanic rock of the room. The outline of him calls out to me from beneath his clothes. A tense knot vibrates in my chest, in the hollows of it, every hair standing on end as I reach up and, shaking but determined, pull my collar open.

It’s just a little skin. Barely anything, really. It’s a pallid move considering all the seduction techniques in the world. But I can smell myself—salt and cotton coming off my throat—and maybe he smells it too, or maybe it’s the sight of me doing it, because he’s stock-still one moment and then striding across the room in the next, pulling me in to him and kissing every exposed bit of flesh. Hard. Hard in a way I know will leave marks, and at the thought, the vibrating knot inside me suddenly feels like it unfurls, reaching its buzzing tendrils into my bloodstream at the idea of me welcoming his bruises on me.

A slow smile overtakes me. He’s been like this since he met me, hasn’t he? Wanting me.

wanting your body and nothing more.

I waver. Like he can hear it, feel it moving inside me, Lucien makes a snarl and a flood of magic pulses into me, so torrential and huge I can feel it move, spread rapidly, and it dulls the hunger to an insignificant buzz like a hand over a mouth.

“No more,” the prince pants. “No more hunger. You are not the hunger’s. You are yours. And you are mine.”

Of all the ways I’ve died, I’ve never been struck by lightning. But this is how it must feel—this hot, sweet relief lancing through my spine down to my softness, to the place between my thighs. We’ve kissed before, certainly, but the hunger I kiss him with now is all mine, all blazing, all promises and gratitude and love.

“Zera.” He pulls away suddenly, panting and putting his forehead to mine. “You— Please—”