A small, breathless sound escaped her, and fuck, if he did not feel it to his very core. As faint as it was, it was enough to draw his heated focus to her sweet mouth. The visceral urge to kiss those rosette lips overriding every single thought as his pulse quickened with longing.

Elle had grown quiet, and Don wondered if his open declaration of love had stunned her. It served neither one of them to suppress his feelings and he had a glimmer of hope that he had not lost her. That she could still love him.

Everything he felt about her, every raw, burning feeling that circulated his mishandled heart, came to him as naturally as the air he breathed, and yet, it was those said intense feelings that stripped his soul bare, rendering him soft to the world.

Before Elle, he balked at the idea of unconditional love. Love was a vulnerability his cold, sequestered heart was disinclined to invest in. It was a pleasure in life he felt he had no right indulging given the reprehensible sins against him, and the iron-clad curse that shackled him to disfigurements and shadows.

Don saw what eternal love had done to his mother after his father had died. Freya Rossetti had withdrawn from the world, shrinking to a shell of herself. She had doted on him, of course, as any loving mother would do, but her grief had been enormous. It had stunted her fondness for life, and it made her easy prey for Seraphine, the woman he had trusted and invited into their lives. The mage using every enticing incentive to lure his fragile mother into her deadly trap. Freya had no reason to not trust Seraphine. This was the woman whom he had been courting, the love of his life whom he had pledged his heart and loyalty to, but like his guileless mother, he too had been susceptible to her deceptive charm.

When his father had died, he too had become emotionally numb to the world. Keeping his mother at arm's length. Loving her deeply, but from afar. When he met Seraphine, he had fallen hard and fast for her honeyed words and golden beauty, believing their love to be honest and true, much like the one that had sheltered and nurtured him.

Don couldn't have been more wrong, but when life granted you a second chance at love, one that was pure, honest, and forgiving, transcending the damaging commitment that came before, it reminded him that love could still fundamentally be selfless and true, and he would not waste another second on punitive feelings of unworthiness and self-contempt.

After two decades of loneliness and isolation, of self-deprecation and forcing relations and intimacy at bay, he had come to realize that a life without love was a life not worth knowing.

Elle had taught him that.

He would always have his regrets, but the risk of baring his heart was worth the reward of loving her for a lifetime.

Despite Seraphine's infernal curse, he had never felt more alive, more at peace than when he gazed into her warm gold-tinted eyes. Like an early sunrise to his midnight hour. Like the winking stars to his pining, black sky, he was nothing without Elle. What he felt for her could not be summed up in two words or less. It was complicated and all-consuming; it was obsessive and possessive. An unstoppable, selfish force that even if he had the willpower to fight, he wouldn't.

That moment on the cliff, when she had laid unresponsive in his arms, when the light had faded from her dark, beautiful eyes, had single-handedly been the most horrifying, devastating moment of his life. Next to losing his mother, losing Elle to his enemy was the ultimate blow, and a tragedy with which he could not harmonize. The despair and grief he had felt as he held her lifeless body in his arms, choking on the harsh reality that he hadn't saved her, had been indescribable. The pain and guilt so unbelievable, it had overshadowed every heartbreak and grievous misfortune that had shaped his entire life.

As Don cradled Elle's limp body high against his chest and he wept inconsolably, his scars and sins were most remote from his mind. In fact, they were no longer of consequence. He didn't care for his scarred visage, or the awful things he had done, nothing mattered but the woman lying inert in his arms.

The fact that Lucy, an unseasoned healer in secret, was able to revive her with no lasting or lingering effects, was nothing short of a miracle. He still could hardly believe it and could only hope that the maid had been correct about the ancestral power, that death had been enough to weaken its allure and keep the otherworldly from hunting the woman he loved. Because if he had to confront her loss again, it would be the last and final affront to his battered heart. His greatest regret in life having withheld his true feelings a second too late.

When Seraphine had betrayed him and spun her curse, revealing her heinous character, he had spurned all things relatively magic related. Warning his staff and serfs that should they so much as utter a word of it, should anyone be caught exercising witchcraft or engaging sorcery of any kind, their land or position would be seized immediately, and the offenders would forthwith be banished.

If Lucy had exposed her healing methods prematurely, he would not have been so receptive to her practices. He would not have trusted them, or her.

Is there a way to separate Elle from what makes her the Elemental Host? Don could remember asking the white witch.

Death. The elder de Ceville had replied.

Her morbid reply at that time had struck a chilling chord within him, convincing him all the more that Veda had ulterior motives and could not be trusted where Elle was concerned.

Now, it all made sense. Death was the ultimate end to all things living. A severance from life, and magic was considered a vital force. To purge the primitive power that forged Elle's body, which made her an active vessel for energy, she had to die. However, in a shocking and ironic twist of events, it was traces of those embedded forces that worked to strengthen Lucy's healing methods, making resurrection possible.

Don shuddered at the thought of what would have happened if Seraphine had succeeded in killing and inhabiting Elle's body. She was the only mage he knew that could move from one host to the next, employing magic at will. There would have been nothing and no one – not even her clairvoyant sister, that could have stopped her from coalescing all four elements and weaponizing them. The limitations on magic would have been obliterated and those powerful forces outright abused. There was no telling how much calamity and death would have ensued. Hundreds, if not thousands of innocent lives, massacred, all for one's insatiable greed for power.

Just as the elder de Ceville had prophesied.

It made him wonder if Veda had been apprised of her imminent demise early on, and yet, she still made a feeble attempt to save her irredeemable sister. Or had she? Maybe her intent all along was to pull Sera into the sea. Had the white witch known what was going to happen on that cliffside? Given her prophetic gifts, it was likely. If she hadn't intervened, Don didn't know where they would be.

But the largest and more pressing question remained ... had one or the other, if not both sisters, survived the fall?

From what Lucy had explained, without the primitive magic to transfer and uphold the foreign energies, the vessel virtually became ineffective. What happens once that power is unseated from its host? Is it misplaced or destroyed? It had to go somewhere and if not the latter, then how much of it remained? Would it be enough to keep Elle from being detected, and more importantly, safe?

She is not the first to exist, nor will she be the last.

It could be decades, maybe even centuries, before another Elemental Host resurfaced, but none of that mattered to him. If Sera was alive, she would eventually reappear and seek revenge for what was thwarted, and until he had viable proof that the sisters were no longer a threat, he would remain on edge.

Perhaps he would send Givens to the shoreline and have him do a thorough search of the region for any signs of life.

Don nearly lost Elle, and that gut-wrenching thought made his throat muscles contract around a hard knot of emotion.

He'd had no prior knowledge of the Elemental Host before Sera's shocking reemergence, much less that it was a young, blind woman, and that she would ultimately capture his heart. He hadn't believed in fate, just coincidences, but their paths had aligned with purpose because Elle was fated to be his. Vessel, or not, he wasn't taking any more chances with her life and wouldn't hesitate to go to battle if a threat was made on it again. He would be lying if he said he hadn't enjoyed slaughtering Sera's men, particularly, that rat-bastard Solomon. With every swing of his claymore, he had relished the speed and agility with which he had felled his enemies, a prowess he had mastered at a young age alongside his father, who once served as a knight for his king.

Typically, a longsword was more commonly used, but the two-handed claymore had been passed down from his Scottish grandfather, who had married a comely English woman. His grandmother. From there, the weapon was bequeathed to him after his father's untimely passing.

Its immense blade was presently coated in the blood of Sera's hounds, and it brought a thrill like no other, satisfying his inner beast that hungered for more.

The dark mage knew he delighted in a fight, and his former lover had used that to her advantage, making a deadly weapon out of him by threatening compulsion, manipulation, and using his mother as leverage.

This time around Don would become a finely honed weapon by choice. Whether it be a stinging remark, or a disparaging look, another bruise on her tender flesh, or the merest unkindness cast her way, no matter how trivial the insult or injury, the offender would incur his immediate and uncompromising wrath. He had no shortage of rage and would painlessly, and brutally, unleash it all on the reckless recipient, dismembering anyone or anything that hazard a tear from her eyes.

The copious amount of blood caking his body and sword would attest to that.

Don would not tolerate a single slight against Elle. As far as he was concerned, she had endured enough untold suffering and unkindness from the world. To wound her, was to wound him, for one did not endeavor to steal a rose without running the risk of getting punctured by its thorn.

But he faced an even greater adversary that he never saw coming, that completely disarmed him, and that was the emotional trauma that tormented her. Making him realize that she hadn't come out of the entire ordeal completely unaffected.

He was certain Elle didn't remember her death, and he heavily ruminated over whether he should disclose that vital piece of information. Would sparing her those graphic details cause more harm than good?

Looking at her now, so small and trembling in his bed, her injuries emphasized by the unhealthy pallor of her skin, one would never suspect that she had willfully stabbed a powerful, viperous witch. Recalling how courageous she had been in that terrifying moment, filled his heart with tremendous pride, but he could see in her large, expressive eyes that she recalled some fragments leading up to her death. Albeit, likely vague and difficult to piece together given her state of shock, what she could remember had left her noticeably shaken. It had been profound enough to create shadows in her eyes that hadn't been there before.

It fucking gutted him. It wrecked him to his miserable core, and he would do anything to spare her the agony. If he hadn't let her go, he could have protected her. He could have prevented her from a world of pain and suffering. Instead, he had failed her in the worst possible way, allowing his enemies to hurt her. The immense guilt of that blunder would always haunt him, stacking upon his heart like a ton of solid stone.

"What the fuck have you done?"

With a trembling grin that congealed the blood in his veins, Sera replied, "I gave her sight."

Had he known about Veda's concealment spell – about Elle being a rare and powerful vessel for magic, Don would have done everything within his power to have kept her safe and far from Seraphine. He could only imagine how staggering and frightening the visible world must seem to her. How overwhelming and vast it all must be, and he wished he could've been there the moment the spell was lifted.

It would take some time for her to adapt to her newfound vision, for her to heal, both spiritually and physically, but if she let him, he would be her walking staff and guide her every step of the way. They would navigate this thing they called life, together. If she allowed him, he would carve a clear and determined path to restore her unflagging optimism. To repair that endearing, innocent spirit that he admired and had captivated him from the very beginning.

Because he was hopelessly and madly in love with her. That intimate confession liberating him in ways he never thought possible. He may always be a prisoner to Sera's curse, but his deep affection and desire for Elle eclipsed his invaluable shadows and restless demons, to where he could make peace with them. For her. One word from Elle and he would readily entrust his heart to her. He would fall to his knees and plead for forgiveness, despite her having every reason to loath him. Whatever she needed, he would wholeheartedly give. Even if it meant living the rest of his existence without her.

"You ... you love me?" Her voice was hardly above a whisper, but it wrenched him from his musings as her wide, damp eyes sought him out, the naked emotion there squeezing at the organ thumping fanatically in his chest. The need to sweep her into his arms and crush her against him imbued every coiled muscle in his tense body, becoming almost overwhelming.

"I love you, Elle," Don settled for tender words so as not to alarm her, unsure if the soft declaration was what she needed most, but he knew that if he didn't make his honest feelings known, he would potentially react in a way that could perchance frighten her. "I have loved you from the moment I first laid eyes on you, when you made my black heart beat anew. When the moonlight was your awning and nothingness was your view. When you braved an encounter with a man more beast than human. Your unrivaled beauty and compassion for others, even for those undeserving, render me speechless. If we are destined to lose our forever, then I will not waste another precious second being heedless with your heart. You have me completely, sweetheart, scars, and all. I am yours if you will have me. If you want compromise, then I submit, in every respect, to your wishes. If you want to spar, then consider me bested. If you should stumble or fall, then I vow to catch you every time. I pledge my heart to you, nymph, because a future without you is a fate with which I cannot reconcile."

Her doe eyes were overrun with emotion, expressing things her trembling lips were unable to say; large pools of tears making them glassy in the soft light as she clutched the fur duvet to her bosom.

Generally, her expressions plainly displayed a spectrum of emotions, but her thoughts had become shuttered, and although she was not miles away, she was still somewhat removed from him, making it hard for Don to decipher what she was thinking or feeling. Elle gave him nothing but the intense sheen of her watery eyes, and he could not blame her for that. He was willing to go at her pace. Whatever she needed, he would heartily give.

Even if Elle could still love him after all of the terrible and hurtful things he had said, after all that had happened, there was still the matter of his curse. Or rather, his inability to age or die, and his less-than-stellar bearing. Some might say love could not be determined with time, but time was working against them. He loathed the use of magic, but if magic was the only way to keep her, would she be receptive to a forever with him? On the other hand, even if that were a possibility, could he really subject her to eternal life? Where she would be forced to watch her loved ones ultimately die. It was a fate he could not willingly condemn her to.

However long they had together, he would cherish every waking moment with her.

"You once said to me that it was never too late to be a better man," he started tentatively, watching her carefully as he inched dangerously close to the edge of the firelight. "What if I said I was ready to be that man for you? Would you tell me it was too late, nymph?"

Her dark, teary eyes tracked him slowly as he stalked around her, answering with a quickness that robbed him of breath. "You were always that man to me."

"I hope you mean that, sweetheart," Don answered gently, his tone dropping an octave lower as his calloused hands flexed with the need to touch her. "But I need to be sure. I need you to be sure." Shrugging out of his cloak, he grimaced in pain as he ripped his tunic from his chest, the flimsy material floating to his feet. "If I remember rightly, you bade me only shortly ago to show you what makes me a beast. Tell me, sweetling, are your seeing eyes as eager to unveil this monster as much as your wandering fingers were keen to do?"

Every word he enunciated was threaded with warning, each one forcing the duvet to slip further from her grasp, revealing the soft mounds of her breasts. He bit back an expletive, because damn him, he knew it was indecent to look given her vulnerable condition, but he couldn't resist drinking her in. She was irresistible to him, and the thought of another man touch her, claiming her, made him insane with murderous, possessive rage.

A guttural growl rumbled deep from Don's throat. "If I should finally elicit fear in those pretty eyes, nymph, you must remember that I would no sooner rip out my own heart than lay a violent hand on you. If you look upon my unsightly face and feel nothing but disgust and loathing for me, then I vow to release you and disturb you no more." He paused, gnashing his teeth before adding grudgingly, "And you are free to marry another man of your choosing."

Elle swallowed, and his gaze fell to that column of ivory skin before finding its way back to her wide-eyed stare. As the silence bridged between them, each loaded second wrenched a little harder at his pounding heart.

When her soft reply finally came, he was wildly unprepared for it, his knees nearly buckling as she muttered gingerly but firmly, "If your intent is to frighten me away, then I bid you to do your worst." She inhaled and exhaled a shaky breath, her eyes glittering with fresh tears as she dared on a whisper, "But if your aim is to gain my heart, then I encourage you to step into the light."