Free Darkness Awakened (Primal Heat Trilogy #1) (Order of the Blade) by Stephanie Rowe

firelight giving them romantic ambiance.
    Grace was trembling violently against him. All the protective instincts of his Calydon heritage catapulted to the surface, and he enfolded her in his arms to protect her, to hold her tight against him, willing what was left of his strength into her body. “You with me, Grace?”
    She let go of him suddenly, and he tightened his grip to keep her from falling to the rocky ground. He eased to his knees with her, his legs suddenly weak as well. He more exhausted than he’d ever been, thanks to his little stint with death. He was not going through that die-and-recover thing again. It was too damned inconvenient to feel like a mortal. He needed a healing sleep, and he needed it soon. “It’s over.” He touched her hair, the brittle, burned ends flaking off in his fingers. “We’re safe.”
    “No.” Her protest was a harsh whisper as she slid out of his grip to the ground, curling into a ball, her face resting against the sharp rocks. “Go. You have to go.”
    “Go where?” As good as his night vision was, the total absence of light in the tunnel was more than he could overcome, so he pulled out a small flashlight and turned it on. Then he shrugged off his jacket, lifted her head and tucked the jacket between her face and the rocks. Her skin was blistered and red, and he glanced at his own hands. His fingers were nuked where he’d grabbed the steel door and the burns stung as soon as he looked at them. He’d never heard of an Illusionist who was powerful enough to actually cause harm with the illusion. What the hell were they dealing with?
    “Get away from me. I’m too dangerous.” She scrunched her eyes shut, and a tear squeezed out from under her eyelid.
    “Shit.” He bent next to her and rubbed the pad of his thumb over her cheek, wiping away the tear that wrenched at his very soul. “We’re out, Grace. It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”
    She gave a shuddering sigh, then cracked her lids enough to look at him. “Thanks for getting me out of there, too. I...I would have stayed. It would have killed me.”
    He grinned. “I don’t like having people die on my property. It drives up my home insurance rates.” He brushed off a few small pebbles that had stuck to her cheek. There were burns on her face, her clothes charred, her eyes red from the smoke. He realized the illusion had hit her far harder than it had gotten him. He brushed her hair back from her face, his fingers drifting over the soft locks, soft where they weren’t burned at least. “How did you know it was an illusion, even before it hit us?”
    She opened her mouth, then sighed and looked up at the roof of the tunnel, shutting him out instead of answering him.
    Quinn ground his jaw. “Grace. You have to let me in. I have to know what I’m dealing with, both with you and your sister.” For Elijah’s sake. For her sake. It was a hell of a lot harder to fix things if he didn’t know what was broken, and he didn’t have time to mess around.
    The posse would be after him within hours, and it would be a race to find Elijah before they caught either of them, because he knew he would be declared a liability until they brought him in. “Grace, talk to me.” He let her feel the urgency of his request, needing her to understand that full disclosure had to come.
    After a moment, she brought her gaze back down to his face. “Would you kill an Illusionist on sight? Because their illusions could someday kill an innocent?”
    “No.” He was well aware that many would have a different answer, however. Illusionists were hunted, and from that fire, he could see why people feared them. They were impressive as hell. “The Order does preemptive strikes only against rogue Calydons. Everyone else can do whatever they want as long as they don’t threaten innocents in my presence. I’m not a police force.”
    She nodded, and he felt some of her tension ease. “Okay, then.”
    Quinn almost smiled as he watched