Burn For Me

Hot-blooded

Vesna shook her head, panicked.

"No. This is not happening. You stay away from me!” She yelled, pointing an accusatory finger in his direction. “Whatever game, scheme, or plan your Crown has penned out for me is not going to happen! I will not be some pawn in someone else’s game. Thank you for the blood," she cautiously added, lest a Guardian find her ungrateful and deem she belonged 6ft under. "But next time, if I’m dying—let me die. Better I die with dignity than used and tossed for some crime I didn’t commit.”

She took several hurried steps to the front entrance, eyes never leaving his. “And you are going to stay. Where you are. Like a good Gua..." She couldn't finish her sentence. Again, something about a Guardian and being 6ft under.

When she was a safe distance away, she swiftly turned and—

Zacharel materialized in front of her, and her body smacked against his before tumbling down to the stone floor.

She gasped. Grunted. Heaved out a panicked breath.

Zacharel didn’t speak.

He didn’t have to.

The cathedral pulsed with his presence—with what he was, what he represented.

Zacharel crouched before her, knees folding with impossible grace, the fire of his wings dimming as he came closer to her level. Close enough for her to feel his breath—like wind through a chapel’s open windows, somehow gentle and suffocating all at once.

Then his voice, calm but edged like polished steel, echoed in her ears.

“There is nowhere to run.”

He reached a hand out—not to touch her—but to offer. Open palm. The same one she had once drank from like a starving animal. Like a woman desperate for life. Em-bar-ass-ing.

“Do not insult your own worth by demanding death every time the path grows difficult. That is not dignity. But if you choose to run blindly into your end… I will always be there. You may despise me for it. You may curse the Crown, curse me… It wouldn't change the fact that I was not sent to chain you. I was sent to choose you.”

His words frightened her. What they entailed frightened her. He frightened her.

Vesna jumped to her feet and ran down the aisle. Faster and faster, her booted feet stomping against stone as she escaped him. She didn’t know exactly where she ran, only knew that she had to.

Just when she reached the altar, Vesna felt a strong arm band around her waist and—

For the umpteenth time this night, she screamed as she was catapulted up, up, up all the way into the sky.

The air turned to ice.

Wind howled past her ears in a violent protest as the cathedral vanished below, nothing but a shrinking blur of stone and shadow.

The sky above was vast, dark, endless. Her lungs seized, her fingers numbed, and still she was rising.

Wrapped in an unbreakable grip.

Zacharel's arm was solid iron around her waist, wings stretching with colossal might as he lifted her into the clouds as if she weighed nothing.

His body radiated divine heat—but the fury of the heavens around her tried to snatch that warmth away.

With a sudden beat of his wings, he halted mid-flight. Silence.

Below her: a sea of night, glittering with city lights. Above: stars and stormclouds. His hold on her shifted—gentle now, guiding, no longer restraining. He hovered effortlessly, facing Vesna midair. His eyes burned with purpose, his jaw set.

“Enough running,” Zacharel said, voice low but unyielding. “You will remain.”

A gust of wind tried to rip at her hair, her coat, her voice. He didn’t flinch.

Then, he leaned in slightly, not menacing but slightly intimate. He really had to stop doing that. Did this Guardian not know what personal space was?

And she wasn't blushing. Definitely not beginning to stammer.

“What are you really afraid of?” he asked, like he wasn't the most feared Guardian to exist.

“You dropping me to my death,” Vesna retorted all too bluntly.

As the wind swept through her locks, some even slapping Zacharel in the face, she allowed her hands to slide up his strong, muscular arms.

The muscles bulged under her light touch, and she shivered. Finally, her hands rested on his broad shoulders, and her claws instinctively pierced skin in fright that he might actually drop her at his behest.

“What exactly does your Crown want with me?” Her eyes searched his silver ones. They were arresting, inhuman, and stark in the night sky. They didn’t just see her, they saw through her, and it made her heart skip a beat.

Zacharel didn’t flinch when her claws pierced him. Instead, he leaned into her grasp, as though anchoring her there.

His wings beat once, a great sweep of light and wind that held them both steady in the sky, as if the heavens themselves bowed to his control.

“If I wanted to drop you,” he said, voice barely above the wind, “you would not be in my arms, staring defiantly at me.”

His hand came to rest on her lower back, firm, grounding. Where he touched, she burned. And she ignored it all.

His silver gaze stayed locked with hers. Cold, yes—but not cruel. Not anymore. There was heat beneath the frost. A storm leashed behind ancient restraint.

"You did not answer my question," she whispered. Okay, that breathless voice definitely did not belong to her. With more steel, "You did not answer my question," she barked. Oh, God. Trying too hard to act tough, Nightingale. Get a grip.

He tilted his head, silver hair tousled by the wind, like moonlight gone wild.

"The Crown… sees what the others do not. What even you refuse to accept. But to what end the Crown commands your protection, I do not yet know.”

Her lashes fluttered. “You don’t know?” she enquired with incredulity. “You— You—what?—saved my life and fed me your sacred blood for something you’re not even sure of yourself?” Vesna shook her head then. Adamant. Insistent. “You asked me what I’m afraid of. This. The unknown. The uncertainty. I can’t place my faith, my safety, in the hands of someone who can’t be certain as to why he stays his sword from my neck. If your Crown chooses to change his mind and make away with me, then what? Hmm? A lamb raised for slaughter, that’s what! Put me down this instant!"

Zacharel’s expression did not change—but the air around him did.

The wind stilled. The clouds bowed away.

His voice was low, dangerous with restraint.

"You fear the unknown? Good. So do the wise.”

He hovered there in the sky, wings outstretched in sovereign silence, the stars flickering against their blaze. He brought his face closer, silver eyes narrowing as if he dared her to challenge the storm within him.

She swallowed.

"You think the Crown's mind is fickle?”

Vesna gave a small shake of her head.

His hand came to her jaw, firm, rough with calluses earned in war.

“There is much you don't know. For now."

Vesn felt her heart pound in her ears, against her chest, the chest that now meshed tightly against the Guardian’s. His pectorals were well-defined and his torso was rope after rope of unforgiving muscle. Her softness pressed against his hardness. Heat flushed her cheeks crimson.

“Am I to be a prisoner then? If you’re not going to kill me, punish me, or even let me go, what am I to do or be?”

The expression carved across his face was unreadable.

“You are to obey,” he said, voice devoid of warmth. “Until your purpose is made known.”

There was no apology in his tone. No effort to soothe or comfort. The way he looked at her now was not as a man looks at a woman—but as a soldier looks upon a living weapon, a variable to be controlled.

"You are bound by divine law. You drank of me. That alone warrants execution.”

He turned his gaze forward, unbothered by her closeness, while Vesna struggled for purchase. Not. Fair.

His wings shifted, adjusting his altitude effortlessly with a single pulse.

“But my orders were clear: you are not to die. Not yet. Try to flee again, and I will chain you in light.”

And with that, the wind howled anew—and Zacharel ascended higher into the dark. Cold. Unyielding. Unshaken.

Obey, huh? Obey Zacharel, a Guardian, of all things? Never! She was left to rot in the streets even before she could learn her own name. Hunted, tortured, beaten and made to survive the worst life could toss at a child. Every time, she rose above. Every time, she clawed and scratched her way free. To now obey a being with unknown intentions to unknown ends?

He must be out of his pure ass mind!

Momentarily forgetting her heating body against his, Vesna jerked her knee up—and aimed his groin.

Contact!

“Never! Over my dead body!”

Except, no reaction.

Zacharel did not grunt. Did not flinch. Did not so much as blink.

The knee landed true—on a mortal, it would’ve crippled. On him?

Nothing.

Silence, thick and endless, descended. The only sound was the wind screaming past them.

Then he looked at her.

Truly looked at her.

Not like a man. Not like a protector. But like the wrath of Heaven incarnate.

"I do not possess the same weak anatomy as your kind,” he said coolly, his voice edged in steel. “But if you attempt to strike me again, I will bind your limbs. Midair. And let you hang like a child’s broken toy until we reach our destination.”

He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. His words alone dropped like the weight of judgment.

"You do not understand the mercy you were given. You mistake it for weakness. Common among your kind.”

He then flew higher, faster, colder. The stars thinned, the clouds disappeared—and now, only the void above and the earth below.

“Strike me again, halfbreed, and you will learn what I am without orders.”

Uh-huh. “You are about to learn something as well, Guardian.”

Without warning, with full force, Vesna slammed her forehead against the bridge of his nose, meant to shatter cartilage.

The impact landed clean. Brutal. Bone against bone, with all the viciousness of a creature who had nothing left to lose.

Zacharel’s head snapped back the barest inch. A single, tiny movement.

A beat passed.

Two.

Three.

Then, slowly—mechanically—his head realigned with hers. His expression didn’t change.

His nose bled.

Not much. But enough.

The ichor that ran from it shimmered with divine gold, trickling like a single molten tear down his upper lip. And still, his gaze did not shift.

He stared at her. Unblinking. Unfeeling.

“Fascinating,” he said, calm as frost on a tombstone. “You mistake defiance for power. You mistake rebellion for control. I see now.”

In a blink, he rotated them midair.

Vesna yelped.

Now she was upside-down in his grip. Hair trailing toward the city lights, limbs flailing downward.

"Wait!"

He wasn't going to... he wasn't going to let go, was he?

“Perhaps gravity will teach you what obedience cannot.”

He let go.

Just like that.

He simply released her.

And down she fell—through clouds, through wind, through darkness.