Vidor Kalta was defending us.

Three Reapers darted back and forth mere inches from the nachtmagus’s extended hands, looking for a weakness, determined to find a way to get past him. Kalta’s already pale face blanched further under the invisible onslaught, beads of sweat forming at his temples and running down his face, his breath harsh and ragged. He couldn’t hold on for much longer.

What felt like a whip made of ice lashed itself around my wrist, jerking my hand from Dad’s grasp. He disappeared into a knot of Reapers.

“No!” I screamed.

A roar tore its way out of my throat as I shielded myself and charged into the Reapers. Tendrils that a moment before had looked thin and filmy lashed at me like the stings of hundreds of jellyfish. My legs went numb with cold; coils whipped my throat, face, arms. One wrapped like a weighted chain around my waist and dragged me down. Coils of soul-numbing, burning cold grabbed at me, stabbing, slashing, looking for a weakness.

Finding a way in.

I screamed in terror and pain. I struggled to think, to fight back. I was covered in Reapers, panicking, their coils weaving their way around me like a shroud. I’d denied Death before; I would win again. My scream turned into a snarl, channeling my rage into a white- hot fury. I had to fight them; I had to get up. They would take me, and then they would take Dad.

A flash of impossibly bright light pierced the cold. An avenging angel, blazing with rage and savage strength, beautiful and deadly.

Mychael.

The coils and tendrils loosened, retracted. I could feel my legs and arms burning as if lashed with fiery whips.

A pair of arms wrapped around me, warm and strong. I blinked slowly, trying to focus. My vision cleared and I looked up into eyes younger than my own, but haunted with nine centuries of life.

I dimly felt my lips twitch in a smile. “Found you,” I croaked. My throat was raw from screaming.

Dad’s hands were cool on either side of my face. “Raine!” His shout came to me as if from the top of a deep well.

I dimly heard Mychael shouting commands, then he was by my side. He spoke quickly to someone I couldn’t see; his voice was forced calm, but his words had an urgency that scared me.

I looked down at myself.

My hands and arms were covered with red lashes. My shirt was in tatters; the raw welts slashed my chest, back, and legs. I tried to move and pain blazed from every burn as I fell into darkness.

Chapter 4

I drifted.

And dreamed.

Impossibly soft, sun-kissed sand, heated and firm against my back. Gentle waves and ripples flowed over me, caressing my bare skin with tropical warmth as I lay in the shallows, my long hair flowing loose around me. Soothing, calming.

Healing.

The waves receded and the dream slowly shifted. Large, warm hands roamed over my body, caressing, lightly brushing, barely touching. Strong, skilled fingers soothed painful aches, aches that were determined to drag me awake.

I wanted to stay right where I was, warm, cradled, held.

Held?

My mind’s brief flutter of concern was outvoted by eyelids too heavy to open, too content to move. I sighed and shifted, rolling over on my side, snuggling back against the source of that warmth.

Warmth whose breath tickled my ear, followed by a low, masculine snore.

Huh?

I forced my sleep-sticky eyelids open. Disoriented and confused, my groggy mind tried to remember where I was. I didn’t recognize anything.

I was in a bed, a big bed with a canopy and curtains. A lightglobe glowed on a bedside table, and I could just make out a desk piled with papers. I dimly heard the crackle of a fireplace, but seeing it would mean moving or at least turning my head. Neither one was going to happen. My head felt like it weighed a ton; I couldn’t lift it off the pillow, and I didn’t want to.

My eyelids closed and I drifted some more, deliciously lethargic. I knew I should move; something about moving was important, really important. Not just moving—running. I needed to run from . . . from what? Why would I . . .

Reapers.

Shit! I gasped and my eyes flew open. No Reapers, just a strange bed. And a warm, hard . . . whoa . . . very male body pressed firmly against me. A muscular arm slid lazily around my waist, his hand stopping just below my breasts, pulling me even closer, lips nuzzling the back of my neck.

My mind screamed fight; my body muttered sleep.

“Raine?”

Mychael’s voice was deep and rusty with sleep.

I tried to speak, even one word would do, but my throat was dry; nothing would come out. I looked down where Mychael’s hand was and the word I was trying to say came out as a squeak.

My breasts were bare and so was the rest of me.

I was buck naked, wearing nothing but a sheet—and Mychael.

I swallowed and managed to get some words out. “Uh . . . uh, Mychael?”

“Mmmm?” He nuzzled closer.

“What are you doing?” Better yet, what had we done? The last I remembered, I was covered in Reapers. Now I was covered in Mychael. This went beyond not making sense.

Mychael sighed and shifted, and it was all too obvious that he wasn’t wearing much, if anything.

“Healing you,” he rumbled drowsily.

“Naked?”

“Bare skin works best.”

“For who?”

It took a few seconds, but Mychael propped himself up on one elbow and gazed down at me. His auburn hair was tousled with sleep and his face was darkened with his morning beard. His hand slid from the base of my breasts to the flat of my stomach. The sensation of heated tropical waters swirled and spiraled down from his hand into me, soothing burned skin, aching muscles.

Healing what the Reapers had done to me.

“Better for both of us,” he said.

Through his hand, the ebb and flow of magic spread from Mychael into me and back again, like the tide, like the waves in my dream. Soothing, healing.

Connecting us. Bonding.

I tried to sit up, but Mychael’s hand on my stomach held me still, gently, but firmly enough that I wasn’t going anywhere. Damn, I was still weak as a kitten. I did manage to pull the sheet up to restore some semblance of modesty, though he’d already seen—and probably touched—everything I had, so I didn’t know why I bothered. Maybe I was still delirious.

I took enough of a breath to get the words out. “Your bedroom?”

“It is. I brought you here because it’s better warded than almost any other room in the citadel.”

“You carried me here?”

“I did.”

“And undressed me.”

A corner of his lips quirked upward. “I certainly wasn’t going to let anyone else do it. Now, lie still.” His voice lowered. “I’m not finished healing you yet.”

Firelight gleamed on his smoothly sculpted chest and taut stomach—and on several dark, angry stripes running from his shoulder to his ribs. I instinctively reached out, but Mychael’s hand around my wrist stopped me.

“Try not to move,” he told me.

“Reapers did that to you?” My voice was barely a whisper.

Mychael nodded once.

I frowned at him. “Because of me.”

“No, because I wasn’t going to let them take you.”

“Still my fault.”

“You didn’t do it; they did.”

“You know what I mean.”

Mychael smiled, very slightly. “I do and I’m ignoring it. I’ll heal you, but if you want to argue, you’ll have to do that by yourself.”

My hand reached his chest before he could stop me. My fingers tentatively touching, gently tracing the burn across his chest. My hand tingled at the contact, and Mychael went utterly still.

“Who’s going to heal you?” I asked quietly.

“I can heal myself now that you’re out of danger.”

My fingers stopped. “How much danger?”

Something flickered in his eyes that I’d never seen in them before. Fear. “More than I ever want you to be in again.”