Free Forged in Darkfire: An Amber Lee Novella (Amber Lee Mysteries Book 5) by Katerina Martinez

he said, striding toward Natalie again. “I won’t let it take her—you—I won’t let it take you. Not after we’ve come this far.” Natalie looked up at him doe-eyed and blinking slowly. Maybe this was a trick, another test. “I’ll bind myself to her.”
    “Damien,” Lily said, all the urgency suddenly returned to her voice. “You can’t do that. The Dark Fire will take you both!”
    “If I can bind myself to her, I can give her enough of me that she’ll wake up… and all of this will be over.”
    The incoming storm rumbled and roared as it approached. The water was starting to churn, frothing and lapping harder against the pier, wind picking up and blowing harder than it had been a moment ago. He didn’t know if they had seconds or minutes left, but he wasn’t about to stick around to find out.
    Lily placed her hand on Damien’s shoulder. “Do you know what you’re saying?”
    “That I’ll be bound to her forever in mind, body, and soul,” he said, not once taking his eyes away from Natalie’s. “I owe her, Lily. She saved my life, now I have to save hers.”
    “You’re going to save me?” Natalie asked.
    Damien nodded. He cupped her face with his hands, her cool, pale face, and found her lips with his own. She opened her mouth for him, and soon their tongues met in the space between. Natalie arched into the kiss, pressing her body against his, and he did the same—pulling her closer and diving into her hair with his hands, searching for the back of her head. Honey , he could remember thinking, she tastes like honey.
    And then the storm came.
    He watched it unfold almost as if from a different set of eyes—like those of a distant observer. Damien and Natalie were tiny black sticks upon a long, broad, wooden pier, and the storm was a mantle of black and sickly green that rolled over everything and devoured whatever it touched. The cloud bowled over the land like a huge black wave, tearing buildings to the ground and then eating them up, and in the blink of an eye the pier was gone.
    But Damien and Natalie weren’t.
    They were inside the tempest, flying with it, embracing each other amidst the thundering roar and the crackling lightning. Green and black fire licked at their clothes, disintegrating them piece by piece. Shoes, pants, shirts; they all succumbed to the fire. But Damien and Natalie persisted.
    They were naked, now; the power of the Dark Fire itself holding them aloft and the power of the Witch keeping them alive and protected. Natalie’s hands started to gain life and will, and they used that will to explore the curve of Damien’s naked back. He could feel her breasts pressed between their bodies and he stiffened at the feel of her hard nipples on his skin.
    Lightning and fire screamed at them, infuriated at their defiance and their unwillingness to let it take them. From inside, the Dark Fire seemed more like a living, breathing thing than it ever had; the green light pulsing from behind the clouds, the ripping lightning, and the blazing fires were its organs, and the roar of the storm its voice.
    Damien had heard that same voice on his last night at the Compound. He would never forget the way his uncle Brian cut into his palm with a knife and spilled the Dark Fire into the world from his wound. It crackled and hissed, then, then it howled, and then it roared. And when the sight was too much for the onlookers to bear, they screamed.
    It was Lily who fought it back. She had known of Brian’s plan and stood ready to counter his Magick with her own. Once the Dark Fire was in the world she knew she wouldn’t be able to send it back from where it had come; only an act of selflessness and defiance would do that. But she didn’t need to control the Dark Fire, she only needed to control Brian; and none had stronger power over the mind than Lily.
    They watched him burn, consumed by his own hubris, and fled.
    He would never forget Brian’s dying wail, that awful, gargling sound, and