The place breathed around him alive with ancient magic, roots pulsing like veins beneath the earth. Yet no matter how deep the pulse of the Heartroot, Vrogran felt a hollow ache that no power could fill.
He closed his eyes and saw her, Manon.
Her touch lingered on his skin like fire, the softness of her fingers against the rough bark of his chest a ghost he could not shake. He had never known such a sensation, this collision of hunger and tenderness. It was madness wrapped in salvation, a curse he both craved and despised.
But beneath that burning memory lay a crueler truth.
He had seen it.
Her heart fragile, fierce, beating not for him, but for Rashien.
The maddening prince who had stolen her first, broken and beautiful, tied to her by a thousand shattered promises.
Vrogran's fury was a tempest unleashed.
