like acid. “You are not used to the mortal world as it is now?” he said and she shook her head, her black hair swaying across her silver halter-top and her hazel eyes remaining fixed on the distant horizon. “You are unfamiliar with it and things like cars.” Her brow crinkled. “Cars?” He nodded and shifted another step closer. A small wave rolled over his boots but he didn’t care. The only thing that mattered to him right now was understanding more about Lysia. Everything else had fallen away again, leaving only her. “Large metal conveyances with lights and glass windows, and black round tyres that carry them.” Describing a car in such a fashion made him feel as if he were speaking to a child and he hoped she didn’t think he was treating her as if she were one. She was definitely not a child. His gaze betrayed him, hungrily dropping to her sensual curves and devouring them. She was all woman. His fangs itched for a taste of her. He dragged his eyes away and fixed them on the water. There was a fish dancing among the shallow waves. “Do they growl?” Lysia said. He shook his head. “I do not think fish make any noise.” She moved and snagged his attention, and he found her frowning at him. “Fish?” “Sorry. I was distracted by the fish.” He pointed to the water, hoping she would see the fish and not think he had lost his mind and couldn’t do something as simple as keeping up with a thread of conversation. She peered into the water. “There are many fish, but I was speaking of cars.” “Do cars growl?” He pondered that. “I suppose they do in a fashion. They have engines, a mechanical heart that gives them motion. Some are loud and some are silent.” “I believe I saw some of these monsters.” She waded into the water. “They are cars, not monsters… and what are you doing?” He went to go after her and the water washed across his greaves. He stepped back and frowned down at the black plates moulded over his shins and sent them away, leaving his legs and feet bare. She had advanced while he had been distracted with keeping his armour untarnished and was thigh-deep in the water. “I want to see the fish.” She looked back at him, her smile disarming him and making his step falter. He had never seen her so at ease. She was even more beautiful, an angel in form with the wings of a demon. Those wings dragged through the water behind her as she waded deeper. “You will spook the fish,” Nevar said when she scowled at the water. “Come out and they will return.” He held his hand out to her and she looked back at him. A jolt went through him when her eyes met his, a hot bolt of awareness that made his skin prickle and his blood burn. She reached out to him and he held his breath, anticipating the lightning that would zing through him when they touched. Her fingers brushed his palm and he hadn’t anticipated enough voltage. He twitched with the fierce current that went through him, lighting every inch of him up inside and dragging every drop of his focus to her. Her cheeks coloured and her eyes darkened, the deep flicker of desire in them awakening the hunger he felt for her and goading him into surrendering to it. “I like it here,” she whispered, her voice barely there, distant to his ears and her own judging by her lost expression. With you. He felt the words she didn’t say beating within him, filling his mind and taunting him. She liked it here with him and he meant to leave her. How would she react to that? She had reacted with violence when he had tried to leave her before. Would she do such a thing again now that she had found a place that made her feel safe? She no longer needed him to make her feel that way. She now had people around her who were more able to protect her than he was. And he had a mission to complete. She blushed and looked beyond him, towards the others. “Everything here is familiar.” He looked back at the camp. Small