Chapter 2 The Brand of Ice

The copper button was a ticking bomb of sin, humming a frantic, serrated tune between Linus's fingertips. In its presence, every lie I had painstakingly woven withered into grey ash.

My breath hitched, a jagged sound lost in the relentless rain. Pressed against the weeping bricks, I felt the alleyway shrinking, the space swallowed by the man who loomed over me-an obsidian mountain of shadow and lethal intent.

But it wasn't the threat of the pyre that broke me first. It was the fire.

The inferno of the magic backlash was incinerating my nerves from the inside out. My vision began to hemorrhage into distorted streaks of crimson; my skin felt like parchment held over a candle, crisping and fragile. Every raindrop that kissed my face didn't roll down-it hissed into steam the moment it touched me.

I was going to detonate. If I didn't find a way to vent the resonance, my veins would burst like over-pressurized steam pipes.

"Nothing to say in your defense?"

Linus didn't reach for his shackles. He savored the silence, closing the final inch of distance until his chest nearly brushed my trembling heat. His indigo eyes shimmered with a spectral, predatory light, his gaze sliding down the damp, flushed line of my throat like a physical weight.

"I..." I tried to claw back my dignity, but my throat only surrendered a shattered, breathless groan. "Hot... please... so hot..."

My mind was a fevered wreck. My body, a traitor.

As Linus raised his bare, ungloved hand-reaching out to seize my chin-I snapped. Like a drowning woman catching a life raft, I lunged. I didn't just grab his hand; I invaded it. With a shameless desperation that burned more than the fever, I pressed my scorching cheek directly into his icy palm.

Sizzle.

A sob of pure, unadulterated relief broke from my lips.

It was glorious. A biting, glacial chill that felt like a spring in a parched desert. Linus Kerr was a man of the "Cold-Iron Law"-his blood was frost, his skin was winter. He was a walking glacier, and to me, he was the only antidote in hell.

I nuzzled into his hand, a delirious creature seeking salvation, greedily absorbing the frost radiating from his marrow.

Linus froze.

The man who loomed over me like a natural disaster suddenly went as still as the stone wall behind me.

I felt his muscles lock up instantly under my skin. His arm turned into rigid granite. His breath hitched-a sharp, ragged intake of air that sounded dangerously loud in the quiet alley. He didn't pull away, but his fingers twitched against my cheek, trembling slightly, as if the heat radiating from my skin was more terrifying than any magic he had ever hunted.

For the first time, the monster looked... stunned.

"What do you think you're doing?"

His voice was a rasp, dropping an octave lower than before. I felt the vibration of it in his chest, laced with a flicker of shock, yet-he didn't drop his hand.

"Don't move..." I murmured, my fingers clawing up the wool of his sleeve, seeking more of him. More of the ice. "Please... colder... give me more..."

A muscle feathered in his jaw, clenching tight enough to snap a tooth. His chest expanded on a sharp, jagged inhale, as if he'd just taken a physical blow to the gut.

"Enough."

Reason returned to him like a lash. Linus wrenched his hand back.

Deprived of the chill, I let out a pained whimper, my legs buckling as I began to slide down the wall. Instinctively, Linus caught me by the waist. Through the thin, rain-soaked linen of my dress, my heat branded itself against his chest.

"What the hell are you made of?" he cursed under his breath, looking down at me as if I were a puzzle that had just bitten him.

He didn't hesitate. He pinned me against him with one arm, his grip bruising, and reached into the inner pocket of his trench coat. He didn't pull out common iron. He pulled out a slender, frost-misted chain of Cold-Iron.

He coiled the chain once around his knuckles and pressed it roughly against the pulse of my throat.

"Ah..." My head snapped back. The touch of the Cold-Iron sent a violent shiver through me-a shiver laced with a twisted, shameful ecstasy.

Linus stared at my exposed neck, where a single vein beat frantically like a trapped bird. I watched his pupils blow wide, swallowing the indigo irises, darkening with a predatory impulse that made my knees weak.

I needed to be marked. I could see the decision solidify in his gaze.

Linus raised the copper button, still glowing dull red with my stolen resonance. With a mask of cold indifference, he threaded the Cold-Iron chain through the eyelets. The moment the materials met, they hissed in a sharp, metallic scream.

Then, he reached around my neck.

Click. The lock snapping shut sounded like a death sentence.

The copper button now hung heavy in the hollow of my collarbone-a badge of heresy. The Cold-Iron chain bit into my skin, a permanent conduit of frost that suppressed my fire while shackling my soul.

The sudden chill jolted me into clarity. My hand flew to the cold weight at my throat. "What... what have you done?"

Linus leaned down, his nose nearly brushing mine, a dark storm swirling in his blue eyes. He tugged the chain, forcing my chin up, treating me like a beast that had just been broken.

"This is your dog tag, Miss Wylde."

He whispered it against my lips, his voice cruel and satisfied.

"Since you crave my temperature so much... wear it. As long as this is around your neck, your life-and your heat-belong to me."

He gave the chain a sharp tug, dragging me stumbling toward the black carriage waiting at the end of the alley.

"Now, move. Your cage is ready."