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He pressed the locket against his bare chest and took a steadying breath.

Golden fire bloomed beneath his palm, flickering against his skin greedily.

The scent of burning flesh hit me, churning my stomach as I spluttered.

Helion's jaw clenched. Every muscle in his body locked as smoke curled from beneath his hand.

A scream tore out of me. The flesh on my chest blistering under the heat of a thousand suns.

I tried to push myself upright, but my arms buckled beneath me. The turquoise pool within my chest had dwindled to a shallow flicker, leaving me too weak to do anything but endure.

Pathetic.

Ice flooded my veins when he pulled his hand from his raw, weeping skin.

The silver locket had melted into his flesh, its edges swallowed beneath blisters. Black blood rolled over his abdomen in slow, viscous streams, each drop proof that he had willingly branded himself with my past.

“Your song won’t return your memories while it’s buried in my flesh,” he mumbled with a heavy voice. “They will stay buried next to my heart until you love me.”

A silent sob trembled through me, disbelief making my heart stutter.

“Can you love me?” he asked, voice breaking over the last word.

His words drifted farther away, swallowed beneath the thunder of blood roaring through my ears.

“I love...” The words barely left my lips before darkness dragged at the edges of my consciousness. “...Rythos.”

A sigh left him as a numbness spread through me, and his hands settled around my bare waist, cool against my feverish flesh.

The world lurched. Helion slung me over his shoulder as though I weighed nothing at all.

“I never said I hadn’t learnt to share.” His deep voice rumbled through me, ghosting a shiver up my spine.

I swayed limply against his back as he climbed the rope netting, seawater streaming from my silver hair to disappear into the swell below.

I tried to speak through the fire consuming me, but only a broken whimper escaped my lips.

“There, there,” he murmured, voice soft as silk as he climbed over the railing. “I’ll give you exactly what you need.”

The fire devoured me. My eyelids surrendered to its weight, the dull thud of Helion's waterlogged boots thudding against the deck as I sank in and out of consciousness.

A door creaked on its hinges.

I was placed against something soft, Helion’s arms releasing me. Darkness swallowed me again.

Time became meaningless and the only thing I knew was agony and the gentle sway that seemed to rock me.

A familiar tingling stirred beneath my skin. Lust trickled into the empty well inside my chest, slow and agonisingly sparse, just enough to drag my consciousness back toward the surface.

My eyelids fluttered open.

The soft glow of lantern light danced above me, smearing across walls the colour of ash before the room tilted with the slow roll of the sea.

I lay upon soft furs piled on the floor, the room swaying gently around me. Beyond my head, a small window carved into the timber wall framed a strip of ash-grey sky gliding past.

I searched the room for the source feeding me their lust and soothing the burnout.

My gaze found Helion.