A Shadow in the Reaping (The Shadow Realm, #1)

by Brynne Weaver

“Oh, one more thing,” Ashen says as he turns around. Within three strides he's there, right in front of me. His palms are warm on my face. His lips are pressed to mine. In five thousand years, there's never been a kiss like it. Searing hot. Salty and sweet. Dark and dangerous.

It feels like being filled with starlight hearing those words. Like all the dark and suffocating loneliness I felt has been lit with something rare and beautiful. One final, treasonous little tear escapes from my eye and for a moment I think he won’t know it, but he does, and he kisses the path it streaks until even its warmth is nothing but a memory.

I can see past every layer when I look in Ashen's eyes. Past decades of time burned to cinders in his wake. Past the souls stripped from bodies by his blade. I am witness to every moment of loneliness and rage and despair. I see the man within the empty fortress, the soul within the demon. Things that shouldn't be, but they are. “I'll share every part that you're willing to take, and I'll take any part that you're willing to give,”