The fire burned for four sun cycles. Four days of constant flame and heat that trapped us inside the temple. Protected as it was, it still could not totally shield us from the heat, and we spent the hours lazing near or in the river, desperate for anything that might cool us off.

We drank big handfuls from the river often to avoid dehydration. It tasted of ash and metal, but it slaked our thirst.

Sleep came in fitful bursts. The first night we tried to sleep in one another's arms. It was nice, at first. His heartbeat was a soothing rhythm beneath my ear, and I felt safer at his side than I had ever felt hiding behind the palace walls. After an hour, we were forced to part. Our sweaty skin stuck together, and the additional body heat was unbearable. So we spent the rest of our nights stretched out on the cold stones.

On the fourth morning, we sank into the river up to our necks. Remiel's eyes were hollow as he watched me create miniature icebergs in the water. They floated around our bodies, offering a refreshing burst of cold. Unfortunately, they melted quickly, and after so many days of little sleep and little to eat, I didn't have the strength to maintain them.

"What's the longest the fires have ever burned?" he groaned.

"Nine days. But that's only by my count. Some Dryads claimed it burned for an entire moon cycle once."

Remiel muttered a prayer in the old tongue. One of deliverance. I didn't think anyone was listening, but I sent up a silent one of my own. It couldn't hurt. We hadn't come all this way to die of starvation in a temple.

Water dripped off his arm as he slicked his hair back. It was longer than I had ever seen it before, curling around his ears and the nape of his neck. His five o'clock shadow had long since passed, and his chiseled jaw was covered in a beard as black as the hair on his head. I found I quite liked it.

"What?" he asked, catching me staring.

"Nothing."

I splashed water at him. The droplets turned to steam in the air. His full lips tugged upward, and the heat inside me far exceeded that on the outside.

"Whatever you're thinking, you have to stop. It's too damn hot."

"For?"

"You know what for. It's been a special kind of torture being tucked away in this temple with you for days on end. Every time you crawl out of this river, that blasted tunic clings to you like a second skin, and since I know exactly how I feel just thinking about wanting to touch you, I can only imagine what would happen if I gave into those thoughts. I would combust."

If I hadn't been treading water, I might have gone weak at the knees. Hearing him talk like that wasn't exactly new. He had once told me if I was in his bed, we would be too spent to use magic, but I had assumed he said it in jest. To know he meant every word...

I chewed on my lip in anticipation of experiencing that with him. Tievel's flirtation had never elicited such a response from me. If anything, I often felt unsettled by it, but I had chalked it up to my inexperience. The prince made me want to hide, and the Reaper made me want to explore.

Water rippled as Remiel swam over to me. His muscular arms caged me in, and he nipped at my lower lip, scraping his teeth along the same path mine had just taken. I chased after him as he pulled away, but he shook his head. Shadows wavered around his body.

"Stop chewing your lip and looking at me like that."

"You're the one who put your mouth there."

"Because you're tormenting me. Probably on purpose."

"Am I?"

I fluttered my lashes at him innocently. This shouldn't go anywhere. Not right now. But we were both at the end of our tethers.

"I don't want to die without knowing what it's like to be with you."

"Morana," he groaned, his arms flexing on either side of my head as he fought against the urge to touch me.

"What else do we have to do?"

He narrowed his eyes at me. "That's exactly what a man wants to hear."

"Are you going to make me beg?"

He lifted one hand and pushed a strand of damp hair behind my ear. His eyes gleamed golden, and his knee nudged between my legs. "That's exactly what I'm going to make you do."

The temperature plummeted, and a smoky breeze blew through the temple. Overhead, the orange glow vanished, and I could see blue sky through the gray haze. Remiel whooped, picking me up by the waist and spinning until I grew dizzy. A quick kiss left me breathless, and then he hauled us both out of the river.

"Come on. We don't have time to waste," I said, wringing out my tunic and tugging on my shoes.

We ran down the tunnel to the entrance. The drawings on the wall blurred together, and the only sounds in the space were the stomp of our footsteps and ragged breathing.

I made my way down the stairs carefully. The Ravenstone steps were slick with fresh ash, and lingering heat seeped through my shoes. Remiel's hand hovered just above my lower back, ready to offer balance if needed.

"Oh, the poor horse," I murmured, spying bone fragments littering the ground beneath the towering trees that somehow stood unscathed. Mostly unscathed. Not a single leaf grew on the thin branches.

"It would have been a fast death."

A bit of joy faded. Then even more, as I realized the bind this put us in. "We'll be much slower now, and we have no supplies. They were all in the saddlebags."

"We just have to get to the palace, and it's not far. We can do this, Morana. Don't despair now."

"How?" She swayed. The initial burst of elation was gone, and fatigue and hunger weighed down my limbs.

"Come here." Remiel grasped my hand and pulled me around the temple, to the place where the river flowed into the building. He pointed at the murky shapes swimming close to the bottom. "We can follow the river and eat what we can catch. Just as we did these last few days."

"Excellent. More fish."

"Better than nothing."

I grumbled in agreement, and with nothing holding us in this place, we set out on foot. After so many days of never ending heat, the breeze felt glacial. It quickly dried our clothes, turning the material stiff and scratchy. Only Remiel's cloak remained as it was before, billowing around him and swallowing the light everywhere it went.

Night arrived quickly, and we hunkered under an outcropping of rock. Bland, broiled fish satisfied our hunger, even if it did nothing to satisfy our tastebuds. Astreia would surely tease me for being bothered by something so trivial.

'Who's the pampered princess now?One royal meal and suddenly, simple fare is beneath you?'

I could hear her teasing voice, clear as a bell. For all the fears that used to plague me, I had never considered that I might lose her one day. She had been my constant. My guiding light in the darkness, and I prayed she had found her way home.

"What are you thinking about?" Remiel pulled me into the curve of his chest and tucked his cloak around us both. "You're tense."

"Maybe it's the hard ground I'm sleeping on."

Warm breath heated my neck as he brushed aside my hair and pressed a kiss into my skin. "Tell me."

"Something made me think of Astreia. I miss her. Do you...do you think she and Yoko made it somewhere safe?"

He gave me a gentle squeeze. "I believe they did. There are very individuals I've met that are more capable than those two, and they will fiercely protect one another. You'll see them again. Of that I'm sure."

I fell asleep with his promise in my heart, and when we woke the next morning, I ate the fish without complaint. But my newfound optimism waned when the sun set on the second evening of walking through the forest ruins. Out here we were too exposed if the fires started up again.

The next day, we walked in near silence. Every so often, Remiel would glance at me, his dark brows furrowing when I replied with one-word answers to his questions. He was bound to ask me what was wrong before long, and I didn't know how to tell him I was contemplating using the magic I'd stolen from the Puca to get us to the palace faster. The magic he didn't yet know I possessed.

"There!" Remiel rushed up a hill and pointed.

I stumbled over a stone in my haste to catch up to him. Over the next hill, the glimmering white spires of a palace were visible. Like the rest of Araphel, the surrounding lands had turned to ash, but the palace was in perfect condition. A beacon of hope.

"It's like the temple," I declared.

"It has to be the Ravenstone. It won't burn, and that means once we're inside, we're safe."

I nodded hesitantly. "We might be safe from the fires, but we don't know what is waiting for us inside. In the dungeons."

There had to have been a reason I was frightened of them as a little girl, and I was afraid we were about to find out why.