A Light in the Flame (Flesh and Fire, #2)

by Jennifer L. Armentrout

I’d been Nyktos’s first. And he…he would be my last, no matter what happened from this point forward.

“Sotoria didn’t belong to him then, and Seraphena doesn’t belong to him now.” Seraphena. I could count on one hand how many people called me by my full name, and none of them spoke it like he did. As if it were a prayer and a reckoning.

“Maia,” he said, speaking of the Primal of Love, Beauty, and Fertility. “I had her remove my kardia.” Penellaphe gasped, her eyes widening with shock. “Good Fates,” she whispered. “I have known none who’ve done that.” I was obviously missing something and also getting tired of asking questions. “What is a kardia?” “It’s the piece of the soul—the spark—that all living creatures are born and die with. It allows them to love another not of their blood irrevocably, selflessly.” Penellaphe swallowed. “It must have been terribly painful to have that torn from you. To truly be unable to love.”

“Because you just tore apart a god with your hands, and I found that…kind of hot.”

“I can sense your need. Feel it. Taste it. You’re drowning in it.” His eyes slammed shut. “I’m fucking drowning in it.” A sharp dart of desire sliced through me. “Then drown with me.”

We all need someone to watch over us.” Heat crawled up my throat. “Do you?” “Desperately,” he whispered.

“Sera.” I thought I heard Nyktos whisper my name as I began to doze off. “You were never a ghost to me.”

“Why did you visit my lake if you had this?” Nyktos was quiet for so long that I looked at him. He was still staring at the pool. “Because it was your lake.”

Despite his very real inability to love. And because of that, all of that… I wanted more. I wanted to be his wife. His partner. His Queen. I wanted to be Nyktos’s Consort.

As is the Balfour family. Their name will be honored long after the great kingdoms fall.”