“Don’t touch me unless you intend to finish what you started.”
Sienna said it without looking up, kneeling in the rubble where moon-bloom vines had once climbed the Moon Temple’s pillars in careful spirals. The ruin still smelled faintly of wax and rain. Dew threaded the grass like fine wire. The broken altar lay like a toppled jawbone, teeth of marbled stone glinting where ivy had not yet claimed them. She had laid her hands on the lowest of those teeth and felt the vibration that told her the foundations still knew a name she had not spoken.
Ryder stopped three paces behind her. He had come hard, breath even but deep, shirt clinging where sweat had long ago dried and then returned. He did not come closer. He looked at her back the way men look at a fire: warmed and warned.
“I started
