Chapter 1 Metal & Fever

Pyre City was screaming at me, a discordant symphony of grinding gears and groaning iron that only I 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 my skull.

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

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

I 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," I barked at the sobbing mother, my 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 dead. I reached out, my 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 my spine, as if a thousand lit matches had been shoved into my veins. Magic Overload. My body temperature skyrocketed, sweat pinning my linen shirt to my skin like a second, suffocating layer.

OUT!

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

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

Stumbling into the rain, I let the icy deluge drench me, but the furnace in my blood roared louder. My heart hammered against my ribs-thump, thump, thump-deafening me to everything but the fire.

I 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. I recoiled, but a heavy, gloved hand clamped around my wrist before I could fall.

Sizzle.

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

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

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

I 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 my flushed cheeks and the frantic rise of my chest. He stripped off his glove, and his bare, icy palm pressed directly against my forehead.

Boom.

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

Linus felt me 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 my 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," I whispered, backing into the cold brick wall. Trapped.

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

He held it between our 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?"