"Another escape gone wrong," Blazar muttered under her breath, the words tasting bitter as ash on her tongue.
Kaelric heard her—of course he did, with those impossibly sharp senses—and for reasons even he couldn't explain, his lips curved into a smile that made her stomach flutter with something dangerously close to admiration.
Not the cold smile he wielded like a weapon when he wanted to freeze someone's blood in their veins, the one that preceded screams and the sound of ice crackling over dying flesh.
This was... different. Softer around the edges, almost fond, like sunlight breaking through storm clouds. It terrified her more than his cruelest expressions ever could.
"It's not easy for me to let you go," he said, his voice dropping to that low, intimate register that made her skin prickle with unwanted awareness. "You're mine, Blazar. And I don't like when my things are taken."
