I dreamed of fire again.
Only this time, it wasn’t distant.
It was on my skin.
When I woke, my throat was raw from screaming into the silence. My sheets were tangled, damp with sweat, and my pulse throbbed like a war drum behind my ribs. I was shaking so badly I could barely sit up.
His voice was still in my ears.
“You can’t run from me, Ava.”
“You never could.”
By the time I made it to the bathroom, I didn’t recognize the woman in the mirror. Pale, hollow-eyed, cracked around the edges. My reflection looked like prey. And I hated it. Hated that he had dragged me back to that place — the same place I swore I’d buried when I locked him away.
But Asher Beaumont wasn’t a man you could bury.
He burned through dirt, through stone, through bone.
And now, he was burning through me.
⸻
