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 Lillian had painstakingly woven withered into grey ash.

Lillian's breath hitched, a jagged sound lost in the rain. Pressed against the weeping bricks, she felt the alleyway shrinking, the space swallowed by the man who loomed over her-an obsidian mountain of shadow and lethal intent.

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

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

She was going to detonate. If she didn't find a way to vent the resonance, her 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 her trembling heat. His indigo eyes shimmered with a spectral, predatory light, his gaze sliding down the damp, flushed line of her throat like a physical weight.

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

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

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

Sizzle.

A sob of pure, unadulterated relief broke from her 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 Lillian, he was the only antidote in hell.

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

Linus froze.

As the Church's most feared hound, he was used to witches screaming at his feet or cursing his name with their dying breaths. He had never felt... this. The sensation in his palm was impossibly delicate, searingly hot, and thrumming with a damp, heart-stopping vitality.

"What do you think you're doing?" His voice turned raspy, laced with a flicker of insulted fury, yet his hand remained anchored to her skin.

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

Damn it. Linus felt a sudden, unbidden surge of heat rising from his own gut-a psychological assault. He was apprehending a heretic, yet she was clinging to him with the intimacy of a lover.

"Enough."

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

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

"What the hell are you made of?" he cursed under his breath.

He didn't hesitate. He pinned the delirious woman against him with one arm 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 her throat.

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

Linus stared at her exposed neck, where a single vein beat frantically like a trapped bird. A dark, predatory impulse flared in his mind. Simply dragging her to a cell was too merciful for a creature this defiant.

She needed to be marked.

Linus raised the copper button, still glowing dull red with her 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 her neck.

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

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

The sudden chill jolted Lillian into clarity. Her hand flew to the cold weight at her throat. "What... what have you done?"

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

"This is your dog tag, Miss Wylde."

He whispered it against her 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 a stumbling Lillian toward the black carriage waiting at the end of the alley.

"Now, move. Your cage is ready.