Yvan nods again, a devastated ferocity in his luminous eyes.

“Where did the Vu Trin bring you?” I ask.

He swallows and shakes his head, as if attempting to clear his mind of overwhelming anguish so he can answer me. “At first...to a Vu Trin base far north of here. And then, after Vogel attacked...to one of their subland military bases. In the northeast, past the mountains.”

“I felt your fire coming from the northeast,” I say, feeling constrained around him even as my fire aura rears and manages to break loose, rushing straight to him.

A flare of his own power wrests free to arc against mine, sizzling through me. I gasp from the all-encompassing heat of it, my vision flashing gold, our bond’s draw an agony to resist. I want to fling myself at him. I want to embrace him and merge our fires completely.

But, in this, I have to let him go.

“Yvan,” I say, my voice and fire shot with contrition and impossible want, “I’m sorry...”

He gives me a blazingly impassioned look. And then, he’s closing the distance between us, his arms coming tight around me as I grasp hold of him and cry. We cling to each other, and he reaches up to stroke my hair.

He brings his forehead to mine, but doesn’t move to kiss me, even though his fire shows no such hesitation, the sear of his heat suffusing my lips and coursing over my skin in a heady rush. My palm is curved over the hot skin of his waist, my other hand wrapped over his shoulder, but I don’t pull him closer. Because I can feel it in our joint fire—we’re both clear that we need to let this go.

Yvan brings his hand to my cheek, and I feel the surprising, light brush of claws, his voice throaty when it comes. “I will always be your ally.”

I nod. “I know it. I know you are.” My love. My beautiful, winged love.

“Tell me,” he says, his expression gaining a determined edge that strikes me as heartbreakingly heroic, which only shatters my heart anew. “Tell me everything you know about Vogel and your power.”

We talk deeper into the night, Yvan’s Wyvern senses primed to detect any approaching threats, and I’m filled with the sense of falling back in with my closest friend as I tell him everything. Yvan’s arms and wings stay loosely around me as we talk, the both of us having given up on restraining our fire, which refuses to obey any moral lines as we embrace each other with our power more heatedly than we should. More heatedly than we ever will physically again.

“You took down three scorpios, four wraith bats, and a kraken?” he says with no small measure of surprise, his finger tracing a light arc on my arm, his touch trailing hot sparks.