The Inquisitor's Pet: A Cage of Silver and Sins

Pyre City was screaming, a discordant symphony of grinding gears and groaning iron that only Lillian Wylde could hear. On this rain-lashed night, the city of steam was a gargantuan tuning fork. Every rusted railing and copper pipe vibrated through the humid air like steel needles piercing her skull.

Lillian gripped the counter of the Silver Gull Apothecary, her knuckles bone-white. The noise was driving her to the brink of madness-until a phantom tear exploded in her mind.

It wasn't the city. It was living tissue being shredded by metal.

She bolted into the deluge, a grey ghost haunted by the scent of sulfur. In a cramped attic next door, seven-year-old Tom was convulsing, his face a bruised shade of violet.

"Shut up. Boil water. Get out," Lillian barked at the sobbing mother, her voice as cold as a scalpel.

The boy was dying. A jagged shard of industrial scrap iron was lodged in his throat, carving deeper with every spasm. Without magic, he was a corpse. Lillian reached out, her fingers brushing his scorching skin, and sent a silent, desperate command to the dead iron.

Obey me.

The backlash was instantaneous. A terrifying wave of heat surged from her spine, as if a thousand lit matches had been shoved into her veins. Magic Overload. Her body temperature skyrocketed, sweat pinning her linen shirt to her skin like a second, suffocating layer.

OUT!

With a sickening metallic scrape, the blood-slicked shard flew from the boy's mouth, clinking against her silver tweezers. He gasped, air rushing back into his lungs, but Lillian was falling apart. Every breath felt like steam escaping a boiler. Her skin felt raw, sensitive enough to feel the sandpaper-rub of the very air.

She had to get out. She was a walking human bomb.

Stumbling into the rain, Lillian let the icy deluge drench her, but the furnace in her blood roared louder. Her heart hammered against her ribs-thump, thump, thump-deafening her to everything but the fire.

She rounded a corner, bracing against soot-stained bricks, and slammed into a wall of midnight.

It wasn't stone. It was a body-hard, cold, and radiating an aura of lethal dominance. Lillian recoiled, but a heavy, gloved hand clamped around her wrist before she could fall.

Sizzle.

The temperature differential was violent. His damp, biting glove met her searing skin, and the collision of ice and fire sent a jolt of electric sensation up her arm. A shameful, low whimper escaped her throat.

"Careful, citizen," a voice dropped from above, raspy and laced with the casual arrogance of a predator.

Lillian forced her head up. The chaotic metal noise of the city died, replaced by a singular, hungry hum. At his hip hung a Cold-Iron sword-the weapon of a monster.

Linus Kerr. The Grand Inquisitor.

He loomed over her, his black trench coat heavy with rain, his shoulders broad enough to swallow the alley's light. But it was his eyes that froze her-indigo, devoid of warmth, appraising her like a wolf would a rabbit.

Lillian tried to wrench away, but his grip was a steel shackle.

"You're burning," Linus murmured, his eyes narrowing as they traveled like a physical touch over her flushed cheeks and the frantic rise of her chest. He stripped off his glove, and his bare, icy palm pressed directly against her forehead.

Boom.

The skin-on-skin contact was amplified a thousand times. Lillian gasped, her knees buckling. The betrayal of her own biology was sickening; she found herself craving his cold, wanting his large, freezing hands to douse the flames consuming her.

Linus felt her shiver. His gaze darkened with predatory focus. "High-level alchemy was just used nearby. The air reeks of ozone." He leaned down, his lips brushing the shell of her ear, his breath a cold mist. "And you, Miss Wylde... you smell like a lightning strike that has just been extinguished."

"I'm just an apothecary," she whispered, backing into the cold brick wall. Trapped.

Linus braced one hand beside her head, his massive shadow swallowing her whole. With his other hand, he pulled a small copper object from his pocket-a button from her dress, snapped off in her haste.

He held it between their faces, his lips curling into a smile that was both cruel and devastatingly handsome.

"Then explain this, little apothecary. Why is this button-still warm from your skin-vibrating in my hand with the rhythm of a forbidden heart?"